The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (100 page)

November 14
Buzhardt learns of the 18½-minute gap in the June 20, 1972, conversation with Haldeman. (See
Appendix B
.)

November 21
The White House informs Judge Sirica and the public of the 18½-minute gap, which leads to an investigation by the Watergate special prosecutor’s office that runs throughout November and into December. The investigation determines that the only persons to have had possession of the tape were Woods, Bull and Nixon, though others had access to it. Woods believes she erased about five minutes; Bull says he did no erasing; Nixon is not required to respond. (See
Appendix B
.)

December 10
Jaworski receives two of seven existing subpoenaed tapes from Sirica.

December 19
Sirica rules that two of the additional subpoenaed tapes and part of a third will not be turned over to Jaworski, because they have no relationship to Watergate.

December 21
Jaworski receives all the subpoenaed tapes that Sirica believes relevant to Watergate. Soon thereafter Jaworski listens to a segment of the March 21 conversation in the special prosecutor’s office. He is shaken when he hears Nixon’s “scheme” and is particularly disturbed by how Nixon “coach[es] Haldeman on how to testify untruthfully and yet not commit perjury. It amounted to subornation of perjury.”
³

December 24
Harris Poll: 73 percent to 21 percent think Nixon has “lost so much credibility that it will be hard for him to be accepted as president again.”

January 3
Nixon turns down the request of the Senate Watergate committee for some five hundred tapes and documents they believe relevant to their inquiry. The new attorney general, former Ohio senator William Saxbe (R-OH), is sworn in. Nixon did not know Saxbe well but needed a candidate who would be confirmed by the Senate.

January 6
The White House announces the appointment of James St. Clair, a Boston-based trial lawyer recommended by Colson, to head the president’s Watergate legal team. Buzhardt is appointed to fill my former post of counsel to the president.

January 7
Harris Poll: Nixon’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 30 percent; 48 percent to 40 percent believe he should be impeached if his tapes were destroyed. Gallup Poll: 46 percent to 46 percent on Nixon resigning; on impeachment, 53 percent opposed and 37 percent favored.

January 15
Panel of court-appointed experts determines that the 18½-minute gap was caused by five to nine separate manual erasures.

January 18
After a hearing in open court, Sirica recommends a grand jury investigate possible “unlawful destruction of evidence” in connection with the 18½-minute gap and the missing April 15 tape.

February 3
Jaworski corrects the president’s State of the Union claim that he had turned over all of the tapes requested.

February 4
St. Clair claims that my sworn testimony implicating Nixon was not borne out by the White House tapes and announces that the president will not comply with Jaworski’s requests for additional tapes.

February 6
The House of Representatives votes (with only four nays) to authorize impeachment proceedings against Nixon and to give the House Judiciary Committee broad subpoena powers to undertake the inquiry.

February 14
Jaworski publicly states that Nixon has failed to provide him additional requested tapes. The following day, St. Clair announces that Nixon believes the prosecutor had been given sufficient evidence to determine if crimes have, in fact, been committed.

February 22
Jaworski provides the House impeachment inquiry with a list of tapes and documents he has sought from the White House, as the House Judiciary Committee prepares to request information.

March 1
The special prosecutor indicts seven former Nixon aides for conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate cover-up, and several others are additionally charged: Mitchell (conspiracy, false statements to the FBI, grand jury perjury and Senate perjury), Haldeman (conspiracy and three counts of Senate perjury), Ehrlichman (conspiracy, false statements to the FBI and two counts of grand jury perjury), Colson (conspiracy), Mardian (conspiracy), Parkinson (conspiracy) and Strachan (conspiracy and grand jury perjury).

March 6
At his press conference the president is asked about Haldeman’s perjury indictment on the March 21 conversation for claiming Nixon had said “it would be wrong.” Nixon offers his by now standard version of this conversation, but since Haldeman has now been indicted based on the recording of that discussion (which only the prosecutors have heard), the president adds, “Now when individuals read the entire transcript of the twenty-first meeting, or hear the entire tape, where we discussed all these options, they may reach different interpretations, but I know what I meant, and I know also what I did. I meant that the whole transaction was wrong, the transaction for the purpose of keeping this whole matter covered up.” At a hearing that day in Sirica’s courtroom, St. Clair announces that the president has agreed to submit over eighteen recorded conversations to the House impeachment inquiry, which have earlier been provided to Jarworski, although the House had requested forty-two additional conversations.

March 7
Ehrlichman, Colson and Liddy are indicted by the Watergate special prosecutor for conspiring to violate the rights of Dr. Fielding in the Ellsberg break-in. Ehrlichman is also indicted for perjury.

March 12
Jaworski sends a letter to St. Clair seeking sixty-four additional recorded conversations, which include the June 23, 1972, tape, in connection with the criminal proceedings against Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Strachan and the others in the case, which has been designated
U.S. v. Mitchell et al
.

March 28
The White House press office states that the court records show that ten of the forty conversations sought by the House impeachment inquiry were never recorded.

April 11
The House impeachment inquiry votes 33 to 3 to subpoena the forty-two recorded conversations it has requested. Jaworski sends St. Clair a follow-up letter advising him that if the White House refuses to voluntarily produce the sixty-four recorded conversations requested, a subpoena will be issued.

April 16–18
Jaworski requests that Sirica issue a subpoena to the president for the sixty-four requested conversations, which Sirica does on April 18.

April 29–30
In an address to the nation, Nixon announces he will turn over to the House impeachment inquiry, and make public, edited transcripts of Watergate conversations. He claims this submission “will at last” and “once and for all” confirm that his role in Watergate has been “just as I have described them to you from the very beginning.” On April 30 he releases 1,308 pages of edited
transcripts. The document opens with a 50-page introduction that attempts to point out discrepancies in my testimony of my memory of our discussions versus the recorded conversations. It next includes a 4-page listing of the forty-seven select transcripts included, beginning with our September 15, 1972, conversation; then February 28, 1973; followed by select meetings and telephone conversations in March and April 1973, most of the latter featuring Haldeman and Ehrlichman considering how to deal with me; and nine conversations when I spoke with Nixon.
⁴
Largely ignoring the White House’s effort to frame the conversations, newspapers throughout the country print verbatim copies of the massive collection. Commentators quickly note the conspicuous absence of conversations that had been requested by the House impeachment inquiry.

May 1
The House impeachment inquiry votes 20 to 18 (along partisan lines) to reject Nixon’s edited transcripts and formally declares that the president had failed to comply with its subpoena for forty-two requested conversations. Nixon’s lawyers seek to quash Jaworski’s subpoena for sixty-four conversations related to the cover-up. St. Clair informs the impeachment inquiry that it has been given everything that the White House will consent to provide. The impeachment inquiry announces it has discovered discrepancies between parts of the newly released White House transcripts and the transcripts that it has had prepared.

May 7
Republican Senate minority leader Hugh Scott calls the White House–edited transcripts a “deplorable, shabby, disgusting and immoral performance.” St. Clair reports that the president would provide no further tapes to Jaworski or the House impeachment inquiry.

May 11
Harris Poll: 49 percent to 41 percent favor Nixon’s impeachment (April results were 42 percent to 42 percent).

May 20
Judge Sirica orders Nixon to produce the sixty-four tapes subpoenaed by Jaworski for his inspection by May 31.

May 24
Jaworski takes Nixon’s appeal of Judge Sirica’s order to produce sixty-four taped conversations directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

May 30
House impeachment inquiry informs Nixon that defiance of its subpoenas may “constitute a ground for impeachment.”

May 31
The U.S. Supreme Court accepts Jaworski’s appeal seeking sixty-four taped conversations.

June 4
A court-appointed panel of experts issues its final report on the 18½-minute gap, stating “the only completely plausible explanation” for the gap was “pushing the keys” at least five times on the recorder. (See
Appendix B
.)

June 13
Buzhardt has a heart attack and is reported to be in serious condition.

June 23
Len Garment, asked by a reporter, refuses to say if Nixon would comply with a Supreme Court order to provide the subpoenaed conversations to Jaworski.

July 1
Jaworski’s brief to the Supreme Court argues that Nixon was involved in the cover-up and names him as an unindicted coconspirator, which makes his conversations relating to the conspiracy to obstruct justice relevant and admissible in the trial of members of the conspiracy (principally Haldeman,
Ehrlichman and Mitchell; a “born-again” Colson had negotiated a plea to be dropped from
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
, in exchange for pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg and Russo case).

July 8
Eight justices of the Supreme Court hear Jaworski’s oral arguments regarding the sixty-four taped conversations that he seeks; St. Clair argues the president’s case. Justice Rehnquist, because of his relationship with many of the parties involved, recuses himself.

July 9
St. Clair reveals that in the “public interest” Nixon might defy a Supreme Court ruling forcing him to produce the tapes.

July 17
Harris Poll: 53 percent to 34 percent favor Nixon’s impeachment; 47 percent to 34 percent believe the Senate should convict.

July 22
St. Clair again refuses to say whether the president will comply with an order of the Supreme Court to turn over his subpoenaed conversations to Jaworski.

July 24
At 11:00
A.M.
a unanimous Supreme Court rules that the president must turn over the sixty-four requested conversations to Judge Sirica. When Buzhardt calls Haig at the Western White House to inform him of the Court’s decision, to his surprise, Nixon joins in on the call and tells him, “There might be a problem with the June 23 tape, Fred,” and instructs him to listen to the tape.
⁵
Nixon’s staff has by now already concluded that one or more of the tapes would be problematic, or he would not have fought so hard to keep them buried. Buzhardt quickly discovers the disaster. St. Clair, who realizes he has made material misrepresentations to the House impeachment inquiry, is very unhappy with his representation of Nixon. Buzhardt, Garment and others have concluded that Nixon should destroy his tapes, pardon everyone involved (Garment has reviewed over thirty potential pardons, should that option be undertaken), and resign. That evening, after several hours of convincing Nixon he has no choice, St. Clair announces the president will comply with the high Court’s order. (St. Clair and others knew that Nixon wanted to stall, possibly for weeks, which would put them all in an impossible position.)

July 26
St. Clair, instructed by Judge Sirica to work out a production schedule with Jaworski, agrees to produce by 4:00
P.M.
on July 30 the twenty conversations the White House had edited for earlier release as transcripts on April 29; he would produce the thirteen conversations Nixon had listened to in May by August 1; the remainder would be produced as quickly as they were prepared, even one or two at a time, if necessary. When St. Clair advises Sirica that this agreement is subject to Nixon’s final approval, Sirica orders St. Clair himself to listen to the conversations, making him personally responsible and a potential witness. At the White House St. Clair refuses to listen to the three June 23, 1972, conversations of Nixon and Haldeman, or to help prepare the other conversations, but departs for a golf tournament on Cape Cod.

July 27
The House Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 (six Republicans join all twenty-one Democrats) to recommend Nixon’s impeachment for obstruction of justice in the Watergate investigation. (Article I of the bill of impeachment.)
Ziegler telephones the president, who is at the beach with his daughter Tricia and son-in-law Ed Cox, to inform him of the vote.

July 28
As Nixon returns to Washington from San Clemente, only Buzhardt is convinced that the three June 20, 1972, conversations with Haldeman are the “smoking gun”; St. Clair is uncertain. Nixon himself insists that he knew what he meant: Having Haldeman and Ehrlichman meet with the CIA to deflect the FBI’s Watergate investigation was a national security matter and not an obstruction of justice.

July 29
With Bull in his EOB office cueing tapes, Nixon listens to conversations he had not heard, including his first discussion with Haldeman on June 20, 1972. Late that afternoon he instructs Buzhardt and St. Clair to listen to the twenty conversations that St. Clair had committed to producing by the following day. That evening Nixon summons Bull back to the White House so he can listen to the two other conversations he had with Haldeman on June 23. The House Judiciary Committee adopts a second article of impeachment by a vote of 28 to 10, addressing Nixon’s abuses of power.