The Wars of Watergate (62 page)

The next day, April 18, the President called Petersen to ask whether there was “anything I need to know today?” Petersen had nothing significant to report, but Nixon probed him on Dean’s moves. It was as if he still had a glimmer of hope that his Counsel, who once had served so nobly, might yet contain and limit the investigation.
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Nixon met Ehrlichman on the afternoon of the nineteenth. He asked for a cold, objective assessment of the situation, “not in terms of Bob, in terms of the President.” The President operated again in his separate compartments. Dean had left him confused. Nixon claimed he no longer knew what he had been told. But how could anyone question Dean on this? “We were all talking frankly,” the President said, “that’s why the counsel was sworn.” But Nixon did not get an objective assessment; instead, the session ended with the now-familiar finger-pointing. He himself said that protecting Mitchell was the essence of the cover-up; “we weren’t protecting the White House now, right?” Ehrlichman responded that “we” merely had protected the President’s re-election, but added: “We didn’t know what from.” He agreed that the cover-up “was pure Mitchell.”
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Late that afternoon, the President had a long session with Special Counsel
Richard Moore, who had close ties to Mitchell and had been on very friendly terms with Dean. Moore himself had just been subpoenaed by the grand jury, and the President seemed anxious to learn the extent of his knowledge of Dean’s activities and the cover-up. At the outset of the conversation, Moore revealed that he had started smoking again during the campaign. “Goddamn campaign,” the President responded, lost as he was in his own troubles. Moore acknowledged he had some awareness of a number of Watergate-related activities and the cover-up. But he agreed with Nixon that Dean repeatedly had said that no one in the White House had been involved. The President had his opening for more finger-pointing: “I’m afraid that our great, dear friend, John Mitchell is the culprit,” he said. Then he painted Dean into the picture, falsely claiming that he had never spoken to Dean on Watergate-related business until after the election. Moore warned the President that Dean would make every effort to involve Haldeman and Ehrlichman, but Nixon countered that Haldeman had nothing to do with the break-in and wiretaps, while Ehrlichman’s role with the Plumbers involved national security. The President oozed confidence on the Plumbers episode; no way, he believed, could he or his aides be brought to account on that issue.

How could the President end the affair? Moore tried to make him understand the seriousness of the cover-up and, above all, the need to satisfy public perceptions of truth and propriety. Nixon wanted to believe that the public would perceive Dean as a scoundrel; Moore saw it otherwise, even arguing that Dean had been fulfilling the dictates of the Nuremberg Doctrine by refusing to cooperate in official wrongdoing. Moore told the President that heads must roll: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and he himself should go. That should satisfy the “vultures,” he thought. Mitchell and Dean would be indicted, and Kleindienst, “a corrupt Attorney General,” Moore noted. But he thought that the Democratic leadership, especially Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey, would be satisfied. Nixon and Moore agreed that Mitchell should take responsibility. The President wanted Moore to talk to Dean, to get him in place, but Moore declined because of his own jeopardy.

Moore tried to assure the President that nothing “touches you.” But Nixon worried about his conversations with Dean. He labored mightily to persuade Moore that the payments to the Watergate defendants were not an obstruction of justice, but Moore stood his ground. Nixon wanted reassurance that Dean would not attack him personally. Moore hesitated: “John’s a strange fellow,” he responded, “I don’t know much about him.” Dean had gone to three different schools, Moore noted, and he had had some ethical difficulty in his law firm (which the President seemed to know). “I don’t know how much principle he has.… I have a feeling he will attack anybody … and say anything, at this point forward, if it suits his purpose,” said Moore.

With that, the President reassumed his lofty posture, offering to get Dean
immunity and letting him say anything. After all, Nixon said, “I understand it isn’t me personally. It’s the office we’ve got to protect.” (That same day Nixon had told Haldeman that “it just irritates me when people like Garment and others come in here and say, the hell with people, the Presidency is bigger, and so forth.”) The conversation with Moore ended on a totally different note, however, as Moore warned Nixon to be cautious in his dealings with Petersen.
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Earlier that day Haldeman told the President: “I did not know, and you did not know, and I don’t know today, and I don’t believe you do really,
what happened
in the Watergate case.” Nixon readily agreed, but as Haldeman later recalled, his own statement was a classic—presumably a classic intended to construct a defense for the President and his men. That morning discussion apparently paved the way for the President’s evening meeting with John Wilson and Frank Strickler, attorneys representing both Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The lawyers forcefully argued that the prosecutors could not have a very viable criminal case, and they urged the President to stand firm on behalf of their clients. Haldeman had warned that morning that “the President is going to be badly hurt by our stepping out.” Nixon appeared to waver in his decision to force his aides’ resignation, for the arguments seemed compelling. But Richard Nixon was a political man, not a legalist; he had to confront immediate political reality, not the law and the lengthy process of justice. Time enough for that later, he recognized.
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Nixon always was a man who knew his interest. Now he imagined favorable scenarios—that Dean would cooperate with the White House, for example, or that Mitchell would take complete responsibility. As late as April 25, Nixon still considered means of mollifying Dean. More likely than reclaiming Dean’s allegiance, however, was that retaining Haldeman and Ehrlichman would provide a measure of protection. The President gave complete trust only rarely. Could he trust these men if they were on their own? They knew so much—and they knew there were records. Haldeman had helped to install the secret Oval Office taping system; Ehrlichman was aware of the system as well, though apparently he was not supposed to be. Indeed, on April 26 Ehrlichman urged the President to listen to his tapes to determine exactly what he had said to Dean. Ehrlichman reassured Nixon that he and Haldeman wanted no harm inflicted on the President or the office, but he thought impeachment might be conceivable—“on the ground that you committed a crime.” Ehrlichman hastily added that he did not think Nixon had done so, but he suggested listening to the tapes.

Nixon had to get his men behind him. “What would you fellows answer[,] for example[,] if Dean testifies that there
was
a discussion in which I said Hunt’s lawyer had to get paid off[?]” Ehrlichman responded, “Let’s see what the tapes do.” They then moved from Nixon’s “central concern,” as Haldeman characterized it, to the future of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman
fought like a tiger. Fire Dean, he urged. Haldeman should take a leave because of the charges, but Ehrlichman himself should stay on, because no serious charge had been leveled at him. Someone—the President, Haldeman, or Ehrlichman—bitterly assailed Dean and Petersen, somehow suggesting that Dean had blackmailed Petersen and thus would get immunity—a statement wholly opposite from Petersen’s position. (On April 26, Nixon pathetically told Haldeman that Petersen was “all I got,” after he learned that Haldeman’s lawyers did not trust the Assistant Attorney General. Nixon thought that Petersen would “hold up.” “[D]epends on how much Dean has on him, and he’s got a lot,” Haldeman responded.)

Ehrlichman warned that if he had to take leave, “I gotta start answering questions.” Whether he was presenting a fact or a threat was not clear. “Let me ask you this, to be quite candid,” the President responded. “Is there any way you can use
cash?
” Haldeman reacted with a blend of fury and sarcasm. They were being “drummed” out of office for their “supposed role” in payments to the defendants, and now the President offered them cash. “That compounds the problem,” he told Nixon. “That really does.”

The President persisted in lining up his alibis. “We have to remember what our, what the line, and the line has got to be.” The others agreed that Dean now must be their primary target. The President should tell the nation that he could not operate the presidency under threat from the likes of John Dean, Haldeman said. Ehrlichman contributed his part: “The American people—you gotta go on the assumption that the American people want to believe in their President.” Cover-up still was the order of the day, but now John Dean would be the scapegoat.
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Haldeman listened to the March 21 tape that afternoon and then gave an interpretation that would remain at the foundation of the President’s defense. Nixon and Dean had discussed the White House’s role in the break-in and the defendant’s demands for money. Now, Haldeman proposed the following version: Nixon had asked leading questions; he was trying to “bust the case,” and he did not know “whether to believe this guy [Dean] at this point.” The President had also then realized that Hunt was blackmailing him on the Plumbers, but he no longer would support payments because he knew he could defend the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on national-security grounds. Haldeman was not sure that this interpretation of the March 21 record could be sustained—particularly if Dean had a different version of the conversation. “I just wonder if the son-of-a-bitch had a recorder on him,” Nixon remarked. The two men had raised the possibility earlier in the morning. “I just can’t believe that anybody, that even John Dean, would come into this office with a tape recorder.” Few conversations in this period dripped with more irony.

The next day the President told Haldeman that they had to keep the Oval Office taping system secret. If the tapes became public knowledge, Nixon
said, they should admit they made them, but only for “national security information”—which, of course, then had to remain secret. “You never want to be in a position to say the President taped it, you know. I mean taped somebody.” Haldeman thought there was no need to worry—unless there were impeachment proceedings, which he considered out of the question. “My God, what the hell have we done to be impeached?” Nixon responded. Haldeman thought that if Dean taped the March 21 meeting, it would only show he was trying to trap the President, and his motives would be subject to scrutiny. Nixon praised his men for the protection they gave him, but laid down the alibi one more time: “I didn’t know, you know. I mean I didn’t. I deliberately got—the staff protected me from it for their credit[,] and I just wasn’t getting involved.”
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On the evening of April 25, Ehrlichman learned that his spirited defense of himself earlier that day had been for naught. Nixon called to relay the news that the Justice Department had notified the Ellsberg case’s trial judge about the Plumbers; Petersen had finally decided to reject the President’s earlier angry order not to “be messing in national security matters.” Gently, but absurdly, Nixon told Ehrlichman that he had instructed Kleindienst to do everything possible to keep the news secret. Now, the President said, Ehrlichman had to take a leave of absence. Bad news exploded like Chinese firecrackers. Two minutes after Kleindienst called about the Plumbers, Nixon learned that the
New York Times
was about to reveal Pat Gray’s destruction of the evidence from Hunt’s safe linking Colson to the Plumbers—evidence Ehrlichman had suggested that Gray “deep six.”

Nixon’s last official conference with Haldeman ended with a tirade—against Dean, Ehrlichman, Alger Hiss, Sherman Adams, the usual enemies, and the violence that had been directed against
him;
it all spilled forth like a torrent. What went wrong? “I mean, we don’t have any
investigators
, that’s our
problem
, see,” he said. This, as Haldeman later noted, from the man who created the Plumbers.
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Not all the bad news reached the White House. The prosecutors had learned from Anthony Ulasewicz, a former New York policeman, that he had been a courier for Herbert Kalmbach and had delivered cash payments to several of the Watergate defendants, including $154,000 to Howard Hunt.
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With Ulasewicz offering corroborating testimony, John Dean’s credibility increased significantly. So, too, did his vulnerability—as did that of his various superiors at the White House.

On April 27 Nixon spoke to Assistant Attorney General Petersen again. Published reports indicated that Dean had implicated the President. Petersen assured Nixon that he had instructed the prosecutors that they had no “mandate” to investigate the President; “we investigate Watergate,” he told them.
He flatly told Nixon—and consistently maintained the position—that the House of Representatives had the responsibility for investigating the President of the United States. In short, only an impeachment inquiry was proper. But Nixon demanded that Petersen determine the source of the Dean story. Several minutes later, Petersen returned, reporting that the threat had come from Dean’s attorney, and the prosecutors had no idea what he had in mind. They thought the lawyer had engaged in bombast as part of plea-bargaining.

Nixon was furious. He called in Ziegler and ordered the story refuted, claiming that Petersen had found it untrue. The anger compounded with mockery and self-pity. He told Petersen that he had “to maintain the Presidency out of this. I have got things to do for this country,” Nixon said. “I sometimes feel I’d like to resign. Let Agnew be President for a while. He’d love it.” One minute he said he did not want to hurt Dean; moments later he told Petersen he would fight Dean and refute any challenge. Nixon thought it would be fine to immunize Dean, but Petersen resisted because he believed an immunized Dean would lose credibility. Petersen’s successful challenge on this score was crucial for maintaining Dean’s standing as a public witness. Petersen told Nixon that immunity was the responsibility of the Department of Justice; the President’s opinion would be “advisory only.” He envisioned John Dean—co-defendant, not immunized witness—providing the key testimony against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Richard Nixon did not own Henry Petersen; the Assistant Attorney General was not Henry Kissinger, after all.