The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (55 page)

Haldeman’s notes and diary for this period indicated that I was keeping him informed of my activities—namely, that I had hired a criminal defense attorney, who was talking with the assistant U.S. attorneys handling the Watergate investigation and had advised me not to discuss my testimony with either Mitchell or Magruder. It was during this period that Ehrlichman decided he would conduct his own investigation, and he began meeting with or telephoning (while secretly recording) people.
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On April 5 and 7 I reported to Haldeman that my attorney had learned in conversations with
prosecutors Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Don Campbell that Liddy had, as Haldeman later described it, “told them everything he knows,” although not even Liddy’s own lawyer was aware of his doing so. While witnesses could be sent to jail for lying to federal investigators, there were no restrictions on federal investigators’ lying, and this information about Liddy turned out to be totally false.

On Sunday, April 8, I had my first “off-the-record” meeting with the prosecutors. When I informed Haldeman beforehand of the meeting, he asked me to hold off, offering the memorable metaphor: “Just remember that once the toothpaste is out of the tube it’s going to be very tough to get back in.” But Shaffer had set up the meeting in his office, so it was too late to change it. One of the first things I said to Earl Silbert, whom I had known at the Justice Department, was that I was surprised but pleased that Liddy had talked to them. When I learned a few days later that the purported Liddy confession had not in fact taken place, it gave me pause in dealing with them. It was also one of the factors that soon caused me to stop dealing with them altogether: They then breached the agreement they had made with Shaffer that anything and everything I told them would go no further than their office, and particularly not to the Justice Department. I knew if what I said made its way to Henry Petersen, their superior, it would then go to Kleindienst, and from there to the White House—where Haldeman and Ehrlichman would start covering themselves. Based on Shaffer’s good advice, however, I did not give them very much information.
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After I met with the prosecutors, Ehrlichman requested I meet with him and Haldeman at the White House, which I did.
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During the first two weeks of April, I effectively had one foot in the White House and one foot outside it, trying to deal with problems far larger than my own while being fair to others. I had Shaffer call Jeb Magruder’s lawyer, James Bierbower, on April 7 to advise him to get Magruder to the prosecutors’ office quickly, because I was dealing with them, which would create a problem for Magruder.
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I likewise refused the entreaties of the prosecutor to wear a hidden device to record my colleagues. At this point I had not even discussed the president or many of the grim details of the cover-up with Shaffer.
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While events were moving quickly, and I was taking steps to encourage that movement, I still hoped that Haldeman and Mitchell would do the right thing: step forward and take responsibility for their actions. But it became increasingly clear that that was not likely to happen.

Back at the White House, on the evening of April 8 Ehrlichman telephoned
the president after our meeting, reporting that I would not appear before the grand jury until I had a chance to talk to Mitchell and to pass word to Magruder through his lawyer about my grand jury appearance.
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Ehrlichman added that I was speculating that Liddy had “pulled the plug on Magruder,” because there was “no love lost” between them. The president responded, “Mitchell has got to decide whether he is going to tell John Dean, ‘Look here, I don’t think you want to say a word, and you’ve got to go down and lie.’” “[Dean] says John Mitchell is sort of living in a dream world right now,” Ehrlichman replied. “He thinks this is all going to go away. For instance, he hasn’t bothered to obtain counsel. He hasn’t really done much about preparing himself or anything of that kind.” When Nixon asked what my take on the overall situation was, Ehrlichman reported, “Well, Dean says it isn’t going to go away. It’s right on top of us, and the smartest thing he, Dean, could do is go down there and appear cooperative.” When the president asked about Magruder, Ehrlichman said that he remained “highly volatile,” adding, “But Dean’s very strong feeling is that this is the time when you just have to let it flow.”

“I tend to agree with him, you know. Do you?” the president asked. Ehrlichman did agree, and he reported how out of fairness I was going to inform Mitchell and Magruder of what I was doing, just as I had Ehrlichman and Haldeman.

The morning conversation with Haldeman in the Oval Office rehashed familiar Watergate subjects, along with their disgust at Colson’s having passed a lie-detector test about the break-in.
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“Oh, God, it’s all such a tawdry damn thing,” Nixon said. Haldeman reported on the meeting he and Ehrlichman had with me the preceding evening, and that I had pointed out the danger for the president with everyone’s having his own lawyer: Those lawyers would have no interest in protecting the president or the presidency, because their responsibilities were to their clients. After a long silence, Nixon raised a matter that was seriously troubling him.

“You know, with regard to recording what goes on here in the room. I feel uneasy about that, not uneasy in terms of anybody else seeing it, because we’ll control it, but uneasy because of the fact it’s even done.” This concern provoked a twenty-minute discussion of the secret recording system and
other record-keeping methods. When Nixon asked about how notes were made of his meetings, Haldeman explained, “I keep notes, and later I’ll write a book. [So] I dictate a thing each night that just covers what was covered during that day. It summarizes the developments.” He said it did not cover all meetings but “really covers an awful lot.” White House staff members attending other meetings also wrote memoranda of them for the president’s files. “Some are good, and some are lousy, and some don’t ever get done,” he added. Haldeman felt there was limited value in the taping system. “The only value of the tapes would be,” he suggested, “if you, in your notes, find something, you know, where you’re working on it and you say, I don’t remember that. You can get into exactly what, who said [what], and then you can go back and run it. The problem with them, and I’ve wondered about that, [is] you’ve got just an unbelievable [number] of hours of tape.”

The president said he could not allow “anybody else [to] look at them,” and Haldeman agreed that that was a problem limiting their usefulness. “I’m never going to want to read all that crap,” Nixon said of his tapes. “I never will.” They discussed who might listen to them, and the president said he did not want Rose Woods doing so, only he and Haldeman. “What I would like to do is this,” the president said. “I think we should take all that we’ve got and destroy them.” Making a note, Haldeman said, “Okay, I understand,” and the president continued. “We should, I think we should stop them.” Nixon then asked how the Secret Service handled them, and Haldeman explained that Alex Butterfield had set up the system, which was now being overseen by Steve Bull, who had taken over Butterfield’s responsibilities; Haldeman himself had “stayed away from” it. Nixon asked if there were copies, and Haldeman assured him that none had been made. “I thought about this in San Clemente, when we were there last week,” the president explained. “I’d like you to stop it now. And second, I think we should destroy them, because I have so much material right now in my own files that I’ll never be able to [get through it], you know what I mean? There’s just so much.”

Haldeman now questioned the wisdom of destroying everything, as well as closing down the system itself. He reminded Nixon that they had historically important material relating to the decision to go to China, as well as other key national security decisions, where often Kissinger was the only other person discussing matters with the president. They both knew that Kissinger made notes of his conversations and worried that Henry might recount this history from his point of view. The president agreed they must
not destroy the key national security conversations, and liked Haldeman’s suggestion of having a little hidden switch he could use to record select conversations, which was what Ehrlichman did in his own office. Accordingly, they decided they would go through the president’s daily schedule to decide what to record. “Rather than maintaining a full record,” Haldeman repeated to clarify his instructions, they would maintain only a select one. “I will feel much better about it if we do that,” the president said, adding, “I don’t want to have in the record the discussions we’ve had in this room about Watergate.” Nor did he want to keep recordings with his often negative comments on Kissinger and Bill Rogers. When the president asked if Haldeman agreed, Haldeman reminded him, “Those are supervaluable, in some ways.” Nixon acknowledged that fact but noted that they could not use them, saying, “And we’ll remember enough.”
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At 2:05
P.M.
Haldeman returned to the president’s EOB office and, before Ehrlichman arrived, reviewed their policy on the secret taping system.
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Haldeman explained how the system worked: The Secret Service locator signal, which tracked the president’s whereabouts in the White House, activated the recording system. “So that it only works in this office when you’re in it, or in another office when you’re in it.” The president’s telephones in his EOB and Oval offices, and maybe the Lincoln Sitting Room as well, all recorded automatically. Haldeman reminded Nixon that there was a similar system at Camp David and assured him that nobody was monitoring his calls: “This is all done automatically.” Haldeman noted again that others in the White House—Colson, Ehrlichman and himself—had devices that enabled them to record telephone calls selectively, which, he noted, was “perfectly legal.” Nixon, however, remained uncertain about what he wanted to do regarding the recording of his telephone conversations, and the matter was not resolved.

When Ehrlichman joined the conversation he had just returned from a lunch with Kleindienst, who was about to testify before Congress on executive privilege. “Basically what he will testify to is that this is entirely up to the president, and if you don’t like it, lump it.” Ehrlichman reported that he had also spoken with me, but I had not talked with Mitchell, because I
wanted to meet face-to-face to explain the situation. This prompted the president to wonder if he was having enough contact with Mitchell, “in terms of reassuring him,” and then asked, “Who the hell is Mitchell talking to?” Ehrlichman reported that he was talking with Paul O’Brien and Dick Moore. “Well, I’ll get back to John,” the president said, for he did not want his former partner to feel he was deserting him. Nixon assured Ehrlichman that, if necessary, he would take care of Mitchell, so long as the president came out unscathed. Ehrlichman recommended that Nixon give Mitchell a general reassurance of his undying friendship, but not become more involved, or discuss the details of the case.

Len Garment, a former law partner of Nixon’s and White House staff member from the outset of the Nixon presidency, who was working with Ehrlichman to establish the rules of the Senate’s Watergate hearings, was asked to join the meeting. The president told Garment he did not want him getting deeply involved, and as regards John Mitchell, a former partner of both of them, Nixon explained, “Let me say this: I have never asked him about it. I don’t ever want to be in a position that John tells me [something that isn’t true].” The president said, “I do not know.” Nixon continued, saying that, based on what he had learned from me and others, no one at the White House had approved the Watergate operation. “Not from Colson, not from Haldeman, that I know. That’s one of the reasons we were all God damn surprised when it came out.” He added, “That’s why Ziegler called it a third-rate burglary.” Nixon claimed I had checked it out and learned it had been hatched at the reelection committee. Then, putting “the most favorable light on it,” Nixon said he thought Mitchell had approved a “security operation,” but “he did not have knowledge of or approve the Watergate operation. That’s what I get. Where his vulnerability is, whether or not he’s gone overboard in [what he told the grand jury],” which Nixon said he did not know. He added, “You and I, at this point, have to believe John.” But he again cautioned Garment not to get involved in trying to figure out who did what; rather, he should let the grand jury take care of that.

That evening Ehrlichman reported to Nixon by telephone about his off-the-record meeting with Senate Watergate committee chairman Sam Ervin and vice chairman Howard Baker at the Blair House, the residence across the street from the White House for guests of the president.
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The visit was “very cordial, very friendly. Ervin’s attitude was very, very good.” They would meet again Wednesday, April 11. Ehrlichman noted, “We spent most of our time talking about John Dean,” which did not surprise the president. Garment
and the committee’s counsel would get together “and try and work out a system by which Dean’s information can be taken without violating executive privilege.” Ehrlichman had assured Ervin and Baker that, contrary to press reports, I had not “showed FBI reports to Segretti,” so they could get such information by written interrogatories, and the charges against me were hearsay twice removed, which would be the equlivant to my giving sworn testimony without my having to appear before the committee. Ehrlichman said the hearings would begin “right after the recess” in late April, and “McCord is locked in as the first witness.” He further reported, “And television [coverage], interestingly enough, is discretionary.” If a witness objected, “then it will be in the discretion of the committee.”

Shortly after this telephone conversation ended, the president called Ehrlichman back to be sure he had told Garment to take a very hard line, “that we cannot give on Dean going down” to testify at the hearings.
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“In other words, we’ve got to hold on something, and so I think we should hold on Dean. That we will answer anything on him in written interrogatories.” Ehrlichman agreed.