Nixon's Secret (90 page)

Petersen gave the president a written document summarizing the charges against the two aides as of that date [April 16, 1973] based on the information I had provided in my off-the-record conversations with the prosecutors: [Acting FBI Director] Gray’s having been given material from Hunt’s safe; Ehrlichman’s having instructed me to “deep six” material found there; Ehrlichman’s ordering Hunt out of the country; Haldeman’s having been informed of my meetings with Mitchell and Liddy, during which I had rejected Liddy’s plan and Haldeman had agreed. But Petersen noted, Haldeman had done nothing to “discontinue” Liddy’s activities, and Magruder had told the prosecutors he had delivered to Strachan for Haldeman copies of information from “intercepted telephone conversations.” (p. 425)

•     The president constantly wanted to get the facts out:

“Well, God damn it, as I’ve often said it, John, if the facts are going to come out, let us help get them out.” (p. 284)

•     In this regard, Nixon constantly alluded to his experience in the Alger Hiss case as the reason for his belief as to why any cover-up would be worse than the actual facts:

“But the worst thing a guy can do, there are two things, each is bad: One is to lie, and the other is to cover up.” Ehrlichman agreed, and Nixon continued, “If you cover up, you’re going to get caught. And if you lie, you’re going to be guilty of perjury. Now, basically, that was the whole story of the Hiss case.” (pp. 105–106).

•     It is important to understand that Nixon did not see the Hiss case as merely exposing a Soviet spy in the State Department. He remembered it as a devastating scandal for the Truman administration, who had made it much worse by trying to cover it up.

•     Other of Nixon’s allusions to the Hiss case are at pp. 238, 241, 243, 247, and 250, but may be two dozen actual references. The point is that the president, if asked, would clearly have responded with the advice not to lie or cover-up, because the truth would come out in any event.

•     Dean denies that Watergate was part of a larger espionage/sabotage operation, as had been so dramatically claimed by Deep Throat:

Woodward and Bernstein had been focused on who was responsible for the break-in and on portraying it as part of a larger espionage and sabotage effort. If that operation existed in any organized fashion, I did not (and do not) know who was behind it, and even four decades later I have never found evidence for its existence; it seems, instead, to have been a fantasy scenario apparently advanced by their Deep Throat source, Mark Felt. (p. 209)

•     The importance of Dean’s assertion is explained in Max Holland’s new article on Tim Naftali, where he describes how unprepared he was in his oral history interview with Carl Bernstein:

One of the critical questions that should have been put to them, as any Watergate scholar would know, has to do with the Post’s centerpiece story of 10 October 1972. Occupying the prestigious upper-right quadrant of the front page, it was boldly headlined “FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats.” The story was and still is regarded as the “centerpiece” of the newspaper’s pre-election coverage. It seemingly tied together the scandal’s disparate strands and tried to put the break-in into a context, as one element in far-flung program to subvert the Democrats if not the democratic process—which included greasing the way so that Nixon faced the one candidate he wanted to run against the most, George McGovern. (
http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2014/06/naftali.html
)

•     Dean’s quoted materials tend to confirm Ehrlichman’s continued advocacy of getting the facts out, which was the principal defense he sought to introduce at the cover-up trial (p. 116). He was denied access to all of the other tape recordings, as well as to producing the former president as a witness, so he could not even begin to present this defense.

•     In addition, the rationale for the second break-in seems to support Mitchell’s legal defense that he never approved of the Liddy plan in the first place.

   For much of Dean’s book, the discussions on the tapes place the blame for Magruder’s decision to go forward with Liddy’s campaign intelligence plan on pressure from the White House and not on any decision by Mitchell. For example:

[On March 16, 1972] Ehrlichman provided Nixon his well-informed “theory of the case,” weaving facts with his considered speculation, and while there were some gaps in his knowledge, his theory was actually very close to the truth of the matter as it was documented by later investigations.

Ehrlichman described how the pressure built up on Magruder, who probably called Liddy in and said, “I’m getting unbelievable shit from the White House, “so he needed to do something. Liddy, in turn, said he would take care of it, but needed “a hundred grand or whatever.” Magruder sent Liddy to Sloan, who wanted to know if the money had been approved by Mitchell. Magruder then called Mitchell, and said, “Listen, you’ve got to call Sloan and clear this.” Ehrlichman reminded the president he was speculating, and then continued: Likely Magruder said to Mitchell, “John, you’ve got to call Sloan and clear the expenditure of a hundred thousand dollars cash.” And Mitchell said, “Well, what’s it for?” “Well,” he said, “Gordon Liddy is going to undertake to get that information that I keep getting badgered about from the White House.” (pp. 282–283)

   Several other discussions on the tapes place the blame for Magruder going forward on Colson’s call. For example:

Reconstructing from his notes, Haldeman summarized the report: Magruder had said, “The whole intelligence plan was hatched here at the White House by Hunt, Liddy and Colson. And Colson called Jeb twice to tell him to get going on this thing, and he specifically referred to the Larry O’Brien information, was hard on that. And Jeb says Hunt and Liddy were in Colson’s office, and LaRue was in Jeb’s office on that phone call.” (p. 355)

   They also blame it on Strachan following up on wanting a campaign intelligence plan, due to Haldeman’s tickler system:

Because McCord had claimed I was aware of the Watergate break-in, I would be called to the grand jury, and my testimony would not jibe with Magruder’s. As a result, Magruder had told the CRP lawyers, aware that they would tell others, that he had a new version of “what really happened in Watergate.” He was claiming that the plan had been cooked up at the White House, that it was triggered when Gordon Strachan told him, “Haldeman has said that you cannot delay getting this operation started any longer. The president had ordered you to go ahead immediately, and you are not to stall anymore. You’re to get it done.” (p. 346)

   This is repeated again a little later, at the same time that the idea is first presented that perhaps Mitchell did approve Liddy’s plan:

Haldeman now reported information I had given him from Paul O’Brien [a CRP attorney], who was “very distressed with Mitchell,” because he felt Mitchell “could cut this whole thing off if he would just step forward.” Haldeman explained, “As far as O’Brien can determine, Mitchell did sign off on this thing, and Dean believes that to be the case also,” although neither thought they could prove it. O’Brien was concerned because others were getting “whacked around” to protect Mitchell. Haldeman repeated for Ehrlichman’s benefit Magruder’s latest, that Liddy’s “superintelligence operation was put together by the White House, by Haldeman, Dean and others.” (p. 348)

   Dean says that Petersen said during a 9 p.m. phone call to the president on April 16, 1973, that LaRue had told the prosecutors that Mitchell had approved the Liddy plan at their March 30 meeting in Miami (p. 427). (This assertion directly conflicts with LaRue’s discussions with WSPF prosecutors and his testimony at the cover-up trial. It may be an error in Dean’s transcription.)

   Dean also says that Liddy used Mitchell’s call (about inadequate intelligence) as the excuse to go back into the Watergate office building for the second break-in. Here, Dean sides with Magruder in asserting that neither Mitchell nor Magruder deliberately sent Liddy back in for the second break-in (p. 404), thus directly contradicting Liddy’s own account.

•     The first mention of the term “hush money” on the tapes occurs on April 14, 1973, well into the scandal’s unfolding (p. 392). It does not appear anyone was informing Nixon of these payments before his March 21 meeting with Dean.