The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (36 page)

“My view is, say nothing about the event on the ground that the matter is still in the courts and on appeal,” the president said. I agreed, and he continued. “That’s my position. Second, my view is to say nothing about the hearings at this point, except that I trust that they will be conducted in the proper way, and I will not comment on the hearings while they are in process. And then, of course, if they break through, if they get lucky—” This thought seemed too unpleasant to pursue, so the president told me, “But you see, it’s best not to elevate, and I’ll get Ziegler to do the same, it’s best not to elevate that thing here in the White House, because I don’t want the White House gabbing around about the God damned thing.” Briefly the president surmised what his detractors might say, yet this did not change his thinking. “But the president should not be commenting on this case. Do you agree to that?” I told him I did.

When the conversation turned to investigating Donald Segretti, it raised the matter of Herb Kalmbach’s records, since it had been he who had paid Segretti. The president observed, “Kalmbach is a decent fellow. He’ll make a good witness. He’s smart.” I agreed, and I told the president Kalmbach had been taking a hammering in the Los Angeles press, much to the displeasure of his law partners. “Oh, well, it’ll be hard for him, because it’ll get out about Hunt. I suppose the big thing is the financing transaction they’ll go after. How did the money get to the Bank of Mexico and so forth? What’ll he say?”

Mention of the Mexican money, which had come up at the outset of the Watergate investigation, indicated that the president had certainly been informed at that point. “That, it can all be explained,” I assured Nixon. The president, surprised, appears to have well recalled that this was the reason that Haldeman had wanted to call in the CIA to get the FBI to back off, and he and Haldeman had used it in an effort to get the FBI to end the Watergate investigation of Hunt, as well. I answered, “Yes, indeed. Yes, sir. They’re going to be disappointed with a lot of the answers they get when they actually get the facts, because the
Times
and the
Post
had such fun with innuendo,” I reported. (Indeed, on this matter they
were
disappointed, for the Mexican money was neither an illegal campaign contribution nor had it financed Liddy’s Watergate-related activities.)

After Nixon told me that Howard Baker should run the Watergate
investigation as he had run the Hiss investigation, I replied, “Well, you know, we’ve gone a long road on this thing now. I had thought it was an impossible task to hold it together until after the election as things just started squirting out, but we’ve made it this far, and I’m convinced we’re going to make it the whole road and put this thing in the funny pages of the history books rather than anything serious. We’ve got to. It’s got to be that way.”

“Well, anyway, it’ll be somewhat serious. But,” the president added, “the main thing, of course, is also the isolation of the presidency from this.” “Absolutely,” I agreed. “Because that, fortunately, is totally true,” Nixon noted. “I know that, sir,” I assured him.

“Good God almighty. I mean, of course, I’m not dumb, and I will never forget when I heard about this God damned thing [in Florida, I thought], Jesus Christ, what in the hell is this? What’s the matter with these people? Are they crazy? I thought they were nuts. You know that it was a prank. But it wasn’t. It was really something. I think that our Democratic friends know that’s true, too. They know what the hell this was. I mean, they know that we then wouldn’t be involved in such—” He did not finish the point he had already made, that it was a stupid thing. “They’d think others were capable of it, however. I think they are correct. They think Colson would do anything.” The president chuckled. “Well, anyway, have a little fun. And now, I will not talk to you again until you have something to report to me.”

He repeated that I should speak with Kleindienst and suggested I tell him, “Look, for Christ sakes, Colson’s got brass balls and so forth.” The point he wanted me to make with Kleindienst was the fact that “this was not done by the White House. This was done by the Committee to Re-elect, and Mitchell was the chairman, correct?” I said that was correct, and Nixon added, “So, I would think that it would be that Kleindienst owes Mitchell everything. Mitchell wanted him for attorney general, he wanted him for deputy, and here he is. And God damn it, Baker’s got to realize this, and that if he allows this thing to get out [of hand], he’s going to potentially ruin John Mitchell. He won’t. I mean, Mitchell won’t allow himself to be ruined. He’s too clever. He’ll put on his big stone-face act, but I hope to Christ he does. The point is that, as you well know, that’s the fish they’re after. But the [Senate Watergate] committee is after somebody in the White House. They’d like to get Haldeman, Colson or Ehrlichman.” I added, “Or possibly Dean.” I hoped he might ask why I thought that, because I was not clear how much he did or did not know about my role in the cover-up. So I added, “Anybody
they can. I’m a small fish, but—” He cut me off, and continued, “Anybody in the White House they would, but in your case I think they realize you’re a lawyer, and they know you didn’t have a God damned thing to do with the campaign.” When I agreed less than wholeheartedly, the president read my tone and remarked, “That’s what I think. Well, we’ll see.”

That evening he wrote in his diary: “I had another very good talk with John Dean. I am very impressed by him. He shows enormous strength, great intelligence, and great subtlety. He went back and read not only
Six Crises
but particularly the speech I made in the Congress and it made the very points I’m trying to get across here—that the Truman administration had put up a stonewall when we tried to conduct an investigation. They wouldn’t allow the FBI or the Justice Department or any agencies of the government to cooperate with us and they were supported totally by the press at that time. I’m glad that I am talking to Dean now rather than going through Haldeman and Ehrlichman. I think I have made a mistake in going through the others, when there is a man with the capabilities of Dean I can talk to directly.”
⁹

Despite his instruction not to report back to him until I had new information, the next day the president wanted to meet first thing in the morning, and then an hour later and again shortly after lunch. His concerns were provoked by Gray’s confirmation hearing. When I was summoned to the Oval Office, he asked if I had spoken with Kleindienst, and I reported that the attorney general was taking the position that he could not speak for the White House, but he personally thought that presidential aides should be unavailable, as a general rule, unless there was some exceptional circumstance that would have to be examined at that time.
¹⁰
Nixon’s real concern, though, was the report in the morning papers that Pat Gray had told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would turn over raw FBI investigative files relating to Watergate. In doing so he effectively shattered the FBI’s long precedent regarding providing such information to Congress.
¹¹
Everyone had been stunned, including me.

“What’s the matter with him?” Nixon growled. “For Christ’s sakes, I mean, he must be out of his mind.” The president wanted me to remind Kleindienst that during the Hiss case the FBI had not cooperated with him
at all, and the Department of Justice would not even allow Hoover to talk with him. “God damn it, that’s the line he’s got to realize,” the president insisted. I mentioned that I had learned they were pushing Gray as well on whether Segretti had been given FBI reports by the White House, as claimed by
The
Washington Post
. I assured the president that that had not happened and added, “Kleindienst is going to pull him up short on it, and say he didn’t clear the position with the attorney general.” Kleindienst had told me he was upset with Gray, and while he was willing to provide summaries, only in a worst-case scenario would he allow the committee counsel, but not the senators, to look at raw FBI reports.

“Why wasn’t he prepared, John, in advance of this? He should have gone over this with Kleindienst,” the president said. “Jesus Christ, is he a little dumb?” I answered as diplomatically as I could, suggesting that Gray was “a little bull-headed,” but I noted that this was “a bad slip on his part” and that he was going to return to the hearings and testify that he “didn’t have authority to say that,” which seemed to satisfy the president.

I told the president that the FBI agents who Gray was volunteering to the Senate would likely say that they had been very unhappy that I had sat in on their interviews of White House staff, which I had done at Ehrlichman’s instruction. “Why, of course,” the president replied. “You are counsel for them, aren’t you?” I said I was, and Nixon asked, “Who else did they want—outside counsel? Jesus, in the White House they’re entitled to their counsel.” Then he suggested how to handle the standing policy of the FBI that no one should be present when they conducted investigative interviews: “[Tell them] you’re conducting your investigation for the president.” Although I had not done so, I agreed, since Nixon had said on August 29, 1972, that I had undertaken such an investigation. He thought Gray should say the same, although I never passed that directive on to him.

Nixon observed that “Gray has demonstrated in his first day’s hearing he’s got a weakness” and added that that was “the reason I was very hesitant about appointing him. There’s too much bravado there. He’s a big, strong navy guy, you know, everything is great, boy, let’s go.” Then, with a more reflective tone, he noted, “A guy that has that much outward self-confidence doesn’t have much inward self-confidence.” I found that an interesting observation and said so. Nixon continued, “It’s like a poker player, you know, the guy that’s got the cards; with a good poker player you never know either way, if he’s got the cards or whether he doesn’t, Christ, you’ll never know.”
But with a bad player, “when he doesn’t have them he’s a little loud, he talks too much.” As the conversation progressed Nixon said that if Gray did too much pandering to the Senate, he would simply remove him as the nominee. “I have no compunctions about that,” he added, and while he understood that Gray was “frightened and all that,” he felt that under Gray the FBI had not been adequately managed, especially as regards the Watergate investigation.

The president mentioned that Pat Gray had called him on July 6, 1972, while he was in San Clemente to warn him about his aides. He thought Gray was being an alarmist. At the time of this conversation with Nixon, I was only vaguely aware of the June 23, 1972, meeting of Ehrlichman and Haldeman with Helms and Walters, which had resulted in Walters going to Gray to get the FBI off the investigation of the Mexican money. I told Nixon what I thought had prompted Gray’s call: “[We] had been leaning on Gray to stay on top of the investigation,” I explained, which was a fact. “And Pat was out making a lot of speeches, and we kept telling him, Pat, you ought to sit on top of this investigation and keep an eye on it.” Although I did not go into detail, Gray had literally been campaigning for the job of FBI director by visiting virtually every FBI field office in the United States, where he would give a boilerplate speech to a mandatory standing ovation from the agents. Ehrlichman had been livid that Gray was never in Washington and out of touch with the Watergate investigation, other than the periodic briefings he got from Mark Felt.

I had not been back in my office for an hour when I was summoned back to the Oval Office.
¹²
Nixon wanted to know if I had talked with Kleindienst, since Kleindienst was trying to call him. I had indeed spoken with Kleindienst, who said he had discussed the FBI files with Gray. The president wanted to know if Kleindienst had read about the Hiss case, and I reported that I was sending that chapter to him from my copy of
Six Crises
. “God damn it, tell him to get the book and read it,” Nixon insisted.

We briefly discussed executive privilege, and before I knew it, the president was reading to me, unable to hide his glee, from Malcolm Smith’s
John F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Great Mistakes in the White House
to make the point he had raised in our earlier conversation:

In the spring, there occurred between Kennedy and business leaders a dramatic battle with congressional overtones. At three o’clock on an
April morning a ringing telephone bell wakened an Associated Press reporter. The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and told the AP man to expect an early visit from the FBI. One hour later FBI agents rang his doorbell. Two hours after that, a reporter from the
Wall Street Journal
was rooted out of bed by other FBI agents. At 6:30
A.M.
a newsman working for the Wilmington, Delaware,
Evening Journal
, found FBI men waiting at his office door. The special early-morning attentions of the FBI were given as well two major executives of large steel operations which have announced price increases. These invasions of privacy were at the order of the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy. As attorney general he misused his authority.

“There it is,” the president said, with a tone of satisfaction. It appeared that he had called me back just to make this point, so that I might appreciate that his predecessor had played hardball and gotten away with it. I told him I thought this was excellent information and, given the often exaggerated charges of abuse being brought against his administration, should be made known. “The records are full of this sort of thing,” he assured me. Nixon requested that I bring him the speech he had made in the House of Representatives on the Hiss case. As it happened, and he noted in his diary, I had pulled, read and copied this almost-eleven-thousand-word speech from the January 26, 1950,
Congressional Record
, so I sent it over with a draft of the executive privilege statement when I returned to my office.

While I was gathering and sending that material to the president, he was talking to Kleindienst, asking him if he had read the Hiss material yet.
¹³
Kleindienst had, and they discussed this history at some length. When Kleindienst reported that he had been meeting with Pat Gray two or three times each day, Nixon indicated that he wanted Gray to be “totally forthcoming,” for he had to “establish his image as a lawman, but on the other hand don’t go to the point where he wins bravados in the newspapers, and the columns, and the editorials of the Eastern press. If you go that far, then you’ve lost, because they do not want you to do the right thing. They want you to do the wrong thing, see?” Kleindienst could only laugh, notwithstanding the fact that the president was serious. It was the kind of impossibly nuanced instruction Nixon often gave, and would soon be giving me.