The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (135 page)

*
In fact, it was Thursday morning, March 22, 1973, at 11:00
A.M.
in Haldeman’s office, as Ehrlichman’s desk calendar reveals.

*
While it is possible they had forgotten during this conversation, later they simply denied that I had come to Camp David after the election with an audiocassette of Hunt’s conversation with Colson, demanding money from him, that made it very clear that the Watergate defendants expected to be paid for their silence. Dean Senate testimony, 3 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 969.

*
See
Appendix A
.

*
See
Appendix A
.

*
Haldeman’s youngest son, Peter, had just been expelled from Sidwell Friends, a private school in Washington. As Peter later wrote, these were very difficult years for him. Peter Haldeman, “Growing Up Haldeman,”
New York Times Magazine
, April 3, 1994.

*
Approximately six hours of Watergate-related discussions are missing, which would have been one reel of recordings. Haldeman made notes and diary entries of matters that he found of interest during the meetings where he was present.

*
This was an emotional speech vice presidential candidate Nixon gave during the 1952 presidential race in which he pleaded that he not be removed from the ticket with presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower because of a fund that had been created for him during his time in the U.S. Senate by prominent businessmen. He ended the speech by saying a man in Texas had sent his daughters a cocker spaniel they had named “Checkers, [and] the kids loved that dog, [so] regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.” It worked, and Eisenhower dared not remove him.

*
Ehrlichman would deny that he told me to “deep six” the material from Hunt’s safe. But I had been so stunned by his instruction at the outset of the cover-up that I mentioned it to my assistant, Fred Fielding, when it happened, and Fielding was later called as a witness to corroborate my testimony. See testimony of Fred Fielding,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
, November 5 and 21, 1974. Ehrlichman secretly recorded a confused Colson, who had been present when Ehrlichman ordered Hunt out of the country, and Colson thought that had happened in his office and Ehrlichman had not been present. So Ehrlichman used the information from Petersen after getting Colson to corroborate for him that it had not happened as I claimed to protect himself on that minor detail.

*
Because I had gone from my walk down Seventeenth Street with Liddy (where we had been seen by Jack Caulfield as we headed back toward the White House just before noon) directly to Ehrlichman’s office, and met with him at twelve o’clock, Ehrlichman had trouble denying I had reported to him just after meeting with Liddy. Since Ehrlichman had lied to the FBI about having any knowledge of Liddy’s activities after the Watergate break-in, he simply claimed he had no memory of my mentioning Liddy on June 19, 1972.

*
Years later Colson told me that his law partner, David I. Shapiro, was close to assistant U.S. attorney Seymour Glanzer, who later joined his Washington law firm, Dickstein Shapiro. Presumably, Glanzer was the source of this information, since few were privy to it.

*
Ehrlichman was apparently casting aside his knowledge of the law of agency, for he surely understood that a principal is liable for the actions of his agent, not to mention the law of conspiracy, in which all the coconspirators are accountable for the actions of the others when in furtherance of the conspiracy, even if they have no specific awareness of those actions.

*
Because of Nixon’s propensity to put words in the mouths of those he used to make points, I searched his recorded conversation with Rogers for the information he shared with Petersen. I can find no such statements by Rogers during any of the recorded conversations, and it does not appear Nixon had any unrecorded conversations with Rogers, although that certainly could have occurred.

*
As Haldeman’s notes of my conversations with Petersen document, he was giving me far more than status reports. In addition, Petersen overlooked perhaps the two most important of our conversations: when we met on June 20, 1972; and on November 8, 1972, after Nixon called for the resignation of all presidential appointees. When I spoke with Petersen to tell him he was safe in his post I had found him remarkably angry and very upset. He told me “he had gone above and beyond the call of duty [and] acted at some risk” in restraining the Watergate investigation, which was still ongoing, yet had been asked for his resignation. But as noted earlier, I had anticipated his concern and taken care to keep him in place.

*
Haldeman can be heard making notes on the president’s desk during this difficult to hear recorded conversation. Based on those notes, Haldeman later dictated to his diary his understanding of what Nixon was reporting from Petersen regarding the Magruder case: “They’ll say he’s named certain people, and that other people are non-indicted co-conspirators that will be named as a group. This will include Dean, but Petersen will not include Ehrlichman and Haldeman if they take a leave. The P said are you saying if Haldeman and Ehrlichman take a leave you won’t prosecute them? He said no, it just means they aren’t on the list. They’ll still appear at the grand jury and I’ll have to make their case there.” Haldeman further noted the president as saying, “Petersen’s really saying that we’ll be on the list unless we decide to take a leave.” H. R. Haldeman,
The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1993), 645.

*
In fact, I had a total of thirty-seven Watergate conversations with Nixon in the form of either meetings or telephone calls.

*
See
here
.

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Nixon had mentioned resigning to Haldeman on previous occasions as the collapse of the Watergate cover-up made it increasingly difficult for the president to focus on government business. Haldeman dismissed Nixon’s threats to resign as moments of self-pity, but as April progressed there were times when Nixon sounded as if he were seriously considering this option. But then his mood shifts, and he is ready to fight to the bitter end.

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Ziegler chose not to tell the president that the article implicated others as well: Colson, Mitchell, Magruder, Strachan, Chapin, Mardian and Stans. See Christopher Lydon, “Key Figures in Watergate Are Silent or Unavailable,”
New York Times
, April 19, 1973, 34.

*
This activity, along with the Ellsberg break-in, will become headlines in May 1973.

*
During his trial testimony, Haldeman acknowledged that he was aware the money was returned to the reelection committee to pay the defendants, but he believed it was for attorneys’ fees and support, or for humanitarian reasons. The jury rejected this defense. See testimony of H. R. Haldeman,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
, November 25, 1974, 8500ff.

*
There was (and still is) no statute of the nature Ehrlichman describes. The CIA case to which he was referring was a situation in which CIA director Richard Helms requested the president’s support and assistance with the Justice Department in blocking the publication of a tell-all book by former CIA operative Victor Marchetti in the spring of 1972. The CIA wanted the Justice Department to prevent publication of the book by enforcing the confidentiality agreement Marchetti (and others) had signed when he joined the CIA. At the White House’s request, the Justice Department went to court and got a federal judge to enforce the contract. White House staff did not sign such confidentiality agreements.

*
While this judgment proved very wrong, in fairness to these attorneys, they were given less than all the facts by Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who at that time could not conceive of the possibility that much of the actual record of their conduct would become available in Nixon’s recordings, which would convict them with their own words.

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Haldeman’s telephone log showed that he made the call to Mitchell at 12:30
P.M.
on March 21, 1973, and he would later be forced to admit that he requested Mitchell come to Washington, where Mitchell would report that money had been paid to Hunt. Testimony of H. R. Haldeman,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
, December 2, 1974, 8586–87.

*
Bud Krogh would put the lie to Ehrlichman’s seeming public indifference toward Hunt’s blackmail, for privately he was very concerned. Testimony of Egil Krogh,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al
. November 22, 1974, 7663–81.

*
The fact that apparently Haldeman halted here and did not mention that the Technical Security Division also operated Nixon’s secret taping systems suggests that Ehrlichman still had not been told of the recording operation. Notwithstanding my administrative responsibilities, I, too, was unaware of the system.

*
Howard K. Smith was wrong in his historical example of Harding. See John W. Dean,
Warren G. Harding
(New York: Times Books, 2004).

*
Some of these names are difficult to hear. This name sounds like Noel Cook, but there was no Noel Cook, rather a Noel Koch.

*
Needless to say, members of the U.S. Senate only have the power to convict, not the power to impeach, a president, which is left to a majority of the members of the U. S. House of Representatives.

*
See
here
.

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In fact, Haldeman first reported paying the Watergate defendants on August 1, 1972 (see
here
), and Nixon expressed concern that the payments could be bribes during that conversation.

*
Bud Krogh negotiated a plea agreement with the Watergate special prosecutor regarding his false statements to a grand jury and pled guilty on November 30, 1973. He became a key witness against Ehrlichman regarding the Ellsberg break-in.

*
Ehrlichman was interviewed by the FBI in this matter on May 1, 1973, and later indicted for the false statements he gave the FBI during that interview. See
U.S. v. Ehrlichman et al.,
379 F. Supp. 291 (1974).

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It was not so ridiculous, for within three months Agnew would discover that he was the subject of a federal investigation for extortion, bribery and tax evasion by the U.S. attorney in Maryland, a case that Henry Petersen was overseeing. On October 10, 1973, Agnew resigned as vice president and appeared in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to plead
nolo contendere
to a federal felony for failing to report $29,500 in taxable income he had received in 1967 while governor of Maryland, a plea bargain approved by Petersen. If Petersen had any knowledge of this during this April 27 conversation, he did not give any indication at that time.

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On two separate occasions I was later asked—first by Jim Neal and later by Richard Ben-Veniste of the Watergate special prosecutor’s office—when I was in the U.S. Marshals’ witness protection program (at the urging of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and Senate Watergate committee chief counsel Sam Dash) if I thought Nixon would or could put a hit out on my life. I thought it doubtful, but if he was in one of his dark moods, I said, he might ask Bebe Rebozo to arrange it.

*
Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski would later tell me that the March 21 conversation was the first Nixon tape he would listen to when it became available, and it removed all doubts for him that the president was deeply involved in the Watergate cover-up. Assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, who was with Jaworski when he listened to the March 21 recording, told me it had clearly shaken Jaworski, and as Ben-Veniste would later write, Jaworski understood after hearing it: “[H]e would be confronted with far more difficult decisions than he ever anticipated when he accepted the job as Nixon’s second Watergate Special Prosecutor.” Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr.,
Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 209.

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Haldeman was indicted and convicted for lying to the Senate Watergate committee about Nixon’s March 21, 1973, conversation when he testified on July 30–31, 1973. His testimony conflicted not only with what could be heard on the recording but also with the notes he made of what he had heard. Haldeman testified exactly as they had agreed: Nixon had told me that “it would be wrong” to raise money for the Watergate defendants, when, in fact, he had said the exact opposite. The overwhelming evidence of Haldeman’s perjury was assembled when he was prosecuted. See counts 8 and 9, Indictment, and closing statement of James Neal,
U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
(December 20, 1974) 11,695–11,699; see also,
U.S. v. Haldeman et al.
, 559 F.2d 31 (1976).

*
When I arrived at the White House in July 1970, Tom Charles Huston was placed on my staff by Haldeman. I never really knew what Huston did until after he soon departed, and Haldeman explained that he had developed a plan for the president to remove restrictions of domestic intelligence gathering. Haldeman felt Huston might have offended FBI director J. Edgar Hoover when trying to implement his plan, which the president had approved, and wanted me to see what I could do. Soon the plan arrived in my office with its remarkable label: “Top Secret/Handle Via COMINT Channels Only”—a classification so high that the classification itself was classified. To make the story very short, I did not implement the plan. At the time I broke ranks over Watergate, there was no hard documentary evidence of Nixon’s belief that the law did not apply to presidents, a view I did not share. So after consultation with Shaffer, I placed this remarkable document in a safe-deposit box and Shaffer gave the keys to Judge John Sirica. See John W. Dean,
Blind Ambition
(New York: Simon & Schuster), 36–38, 254, 276, 278, and 293.