The Last of the President's Men

by Bob Woodward

  “Mr. President,” Haldeman said. “This is Alex Butterfield. He’s the one I’ve been telling you about. He’s coming in as my deputy. He was in the Air Force.” He explained that he had no choice but to go to California about the sale of his house.

  “I’ll be gone three, four days. And Alex will be sitting in my office and I just wanted you to meet him. Alex will be at my desk tomorrow, and he’ll be running the Oval Office operation for the next four days.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. President,” Butterfield said, extending his hand, “and to be here too. I’m really grateful for the appointment. It’s a great honor for me to be a member of your team.”

  It was a good firm handshake. “There are only three of us there,” Butterfield recalled, “so it’s time for the third guy to speak.”

  “Ah, uh, hmm, ah, ahh,” the president mumbled, clearing his throat and gesturing toward Haldeman. “Urm, urm.” His right hand went up to his mouth, covering it briefly. He seemed about to speak, glanced at Butterfield and motioned to Haldeman. But still there were no words. Nixon began to make little circles with his hand as if to recall something to mind. “Urm, urm,” he said.

  Butterfield looked pleadingly at Haldeman.

  Nixon again uttered some low-pitched guttural sounds that were not words. Suddenly he began to move one foot back and forth, almost pawing the carpet.

  It was torture. Butterfield was considering a prayer asking for divine intervention, someone to help the president, anything.

  Haldeman suddenly shifted his position.

  Good idea, Butterfield thought, shifting his own body. But he felt strangely uncoordinated. In the silence he found himself also pawing the carpet with one foot like Nixon. He could not think of a time in his life when he had felt more uncomfortable.

  The president seemed as if he were trying mightily to say something. He was perspiring, and no words came out, only a kind of growl. It was nothing intelligible. Someone had to end this suffering, Butterfield thought, and he started to speak. He wanted to say something about getting back to work. But at the same instant Haldeman broke in, firmly and abruptly extinguishing Butterfield’s words.

  Butterfield did not register what Haldeman said, but the tension seemed relieved.

  Haldeman and Butterfield glided toward the door as if they had just adjourned a normal meeting.

  Butterfield felt as if he were a zombie.

  “Well, thanks, Mr. President,” Haldeman said, almost chirping his words out. “Alex will be at my desk in the morning. I’ll be working Alex into some of your meetings starting first thing next week.”

  “Fine, fine,” the president responded. “Oh, say, Bob, I’ve got this goddamned reception over in the East Room. You know, the diplomatic thing. Are you coming over?”

  “No, sir. I hadn’t planned on it. Do you want me there?”

  “Oh, no,” the president said. “I’ll call you later.”

  Haldeman grabbed Butterfield by the shoulder and they rushed out of the Oval Office.

  “God damn, God damn!” Haldeman said all the way as they ran.

  Back in Haldeman’s office briefly, Butterfield fell into a chair.

  What did I do wrong? he asked.

  Nothing, Haldeman insisted. It had been his fault for not finding a more leisurely moment in the president’s schedule. “Tomorrow would have been a lot better. He’s got a pretty light day. Or Sunday, after the worship service. But you see now, don’t you, why I was so insistent that the timing be right?”

  “Yeah,” Butterfield replied, “I sure do.”

  “I should have been more patient,” Haldeman said. “But I need you in there more than ever now.”

  Haldeman departed at once. Butterfield was left to worry alone. Not a word! Whatever the reason, it was a total disaster, an experience he would never have thought possible. Three minutes he would never, ever forget. He felt lost. Was he dead in the water, as Haldeman had earlier suggested? Talk about invisible. Talk about not paying attention. Did the president even know he existed? That he had been in the Oval Office pawing the carpet mildly traumatized? Was it because of him? There was no way not to take this personally.

  “I can’t tell you how bad it was,” Butterfield recalled. “And I thought, whoa, where the hell am I? You know? Disneyland? I just didn’t understand what the next couple of days were going to hold for me.”

  5

  * * *

  Butterfield was in Haldeman’s office right next to Nixon’s the next day. He wavered between still feeling traumatized and isolated by his wordless and devastating Oval Office encounter the day before and the odd sensation of being right there next to the most powerful man in the world.

  How could Nixon avoid speaking with him now? But Nixon went through a busy schedule and did not call or buzz once. It was a long, unnerving day. It seemed that the president was doing everything to avoid him. Normally by evening, Haldeman would have been with the president four or five times. Butterfield was anxious to go back in there, and concluded that the absence of a summons had to be purposeful. “He’s trying to run the Oval Office by himself without my help,” he concluded.

  At 6:30 p.m. the president summoned his personal physician, Air Force Colonel Walter Tkach. Butterfield now worried that Nixon could make a clandestine exit, slip out of the Oval Office through the glass-paneled door leading to the Rose Garden, and be over in the residence before Butterfield noticed. He vowed that he could not let that happen.

  So at 7 p.m. sharp, after the president had been with Dr. Tkach for half an hour, Butterfield walked into the Oval Office.

  “Excuse me, Mr. President,” he said, “but I didn’t want you to get away without signing the day’s accumulation of bills. Some of these things have to get out tonight.”

  Nixon glanced at Butterfield, and without a word, looked back at Tkach and resumed their conversation.

  Again! thought Butterfield. Again! He walked over to Nixon’s desk and placed the open folder of legislation and correspondence that needed his signature near his left elbow. As Haldeman had instructed in clone school, he held the first bill in front of Nixon at an angle convenient for signing. “There aren’t really too many of these tonight,” he explained, “about a dozen.” He expected Nixon to respond, acknowledge the necessity of the often twice-daily ritual of signing.

  Instead there was an awkward moment: pure quiet.

  Tkach then asked a question, and Nixon answered him as he signed the bills. He put the cap back on his pen and resumed his conversation with Tkach as if they were alone in the room.

  Butterfield felt flushed, but he gathered his documents and walked toward the door.

  See you later, Alex, said Tkach, perhaps sensing the embarrassment.

  “Okay, Walter, see you tomorrow,” Butterfield said and exited.

  There was no ambiguity. The president had not only been cold, distant and dismissive. He had been rude. Driving home, he could think of nothing else. As he lay in bed, he could not shake it. Not a word. Goddamnit! he thought. Who did he think he was? For a moment, however, he managed a smile. He, of course, knew the answer. After all, Nixon was president of the United States. But that should not provide him with immunity from the niceties of human interaction. When all was said and done, he did not have to be rude and uncivil. Butterfield wondered if he should go to Haldeman when he returned and volunteer to leave. How was this ever going to work out?

  Butterfield later described his thoughts to me. “I wondered, is he really rude, or is he just terribly shy? I was really upset. Here I was, and I had given up the whole Air Force deal, my career. Now I’ve been lured into this thing. Obviously, I was starting to blame it on other people.” He laughed. “It was all my decision. I knew that. But it looked like I am toast.”

  • • •

  The next morning, February 19, Bryce Harlow, the head of White House liaison with Congress, came to see Butterfield. Harlow was considered a master of congressional relations with a soft-sp
oken but persistent style. He had held the same congressional liaison job for President Eisenhower, and was widely considered the wise man for congressional and public relations. At 53 he was a World War II veteran and a contemporary of Nixon’s.

  Butterfield knew enough to listen to Harlow.

  Let’s make sure the president is brought up to date on a brewing issue in the Virgin Islands legislature, Harlow said. The legislature for the U.S. territory was agitating for Nixon to fill a vacancy in the governorship, arguing that they could not proceed with their budget without a new governor. Lots of the congressional leaders coming in for an 8:30 a.m. meeting with the president were aware of the issue and it might come up.

  He was plainly warning Butterfield: Don’t let the president be embarrassed.

  At 8:10 a.m. Butterfield hurriedly put together a memo on the issue of the Virgin Islands legislature and governorship. He called Harlow and suggested he brief the president so Nixon would not be blindsided.

  Harlow called back to say that he had been in with the president but had not had a chance to raise the Virgin Islands problem. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird was currently in the Oval Office with the president. It would be “prudent,” he said, to brief the president. “Prudent” from Harlow meant, Do what I suggest.

  Butterfield said he had written a memo on the Virgin Islands legislature and would hand it to the president as soon as Laird left the Oval Office. He knew that Harlow was eager to get to the Cabinet Room to mingle with the congressional leaders—his constituency as head of White House liaison with the Hill.

  Butterfield phoned Rose Woods, whose office was strategically placed on the other side of the Oval Office. Her office had direct access to the Cabinet Room. Call me please, he asked, as soon as Laird has left and the president is alone.

  The minutes ticked by. No call from Rose.

  At 8:27 a.m., three minutes before the leadership meeting was scheduled to begin, Butterfield decided to act. Haldeman would not let this slip. “Feeling duty-bound” as he would later write in his unpublished memoir, his job was to make sure that Nixon was not embarrassed or “caught short.” He opened the door directly into the Oval Office, the memo in hand, and walked in. He was just in time. The president and Laird were out of their chairs and heading for the leadership meeting.

  “Mr. President,” Butterfield said. “It’ll only take a minute, but you should read this one-page memo before you go into the leadership meeting.” He extended the memo toward Nixon. Something was not right. “Or I can brief you orally,” he added lamely.

  Nixon was visibly annoyed. The expression on his face was chilling.

  Butterfield momentarily felt almost defiant. He didn’t give a damn. This was his job. He was representative of the system Haldeman and he were putting in place—looking out for, protecting the president. The president and his new aide stood there for a fraction of a second almost facing off.

  “What the hell is it about?” Nixon snapped. “What do you want?”

  Butterfield wanted to say, “I’m doing my job.” But he realized he was about to step in it. Oh, how insignificant his answer was going to seem. Here was the commander-in-chief meeting with his secretary of defense in the middle of a war, perhaps the most controversial in U.S. history. How could he couch it succinctly to make it sound worthy of stopping the commander-in-chief almost literally in his tracks?

  “It’s about the Virgin Islands legislature,” Butterfield said, “and—”

  “The Virgin Islands legislature?” the president shouted. “Jesus Christ! I don’t give a good goddamn about the Virgin Islands legislature!” He turned to Laird. “Mel, do you give a damn about the Virgin Islands legislature?” essentially asking if Laird were an idiot like this other guy, Butterfield.

  “No, sir, I don’t give a damn about the Virgin Islands legislature,” Laird dutifully replied. He was obviously enjoying this little bit of Oval Office theater. There was the president chewing out one of his underlings, demonstrating command and common sense, which the underling clearly had not.

  The president shook his head.

  An artful combination of disgust and disbelief, Butterfield could see. The perfect put-down.

  Without another word, Nixon turned back toward the far door and with Laird close on his heels, walked out.

  Butterfield recalled, “I got these two rude sons of bitches. The thing is about to come apart for me.” His first impulse was to tear up the memo and erase it and the encounter from his mind. Instead, restraint was the order of the day. He placed the memo on the president’s desk and returned to Haldeman’s office.

  “I knew I was going to quit,” Butterfield later told me after reviewing his notes, memos and book draft. “I was going to quit this job. No one had ever talked to me that way. In all my years in the military, no one had ever talked like that.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you how close I came to walking out. I was mad. God, I thought that was rude. Rude!

  “Haldeman brought me in there, he’s away and I’m flunking the course my first time out of the box. I wanted to say, ‘Fuck you,’ I mean, I did want to say that.”

  He did nothing of the kind. Throughout the balance of that day, the president did not buzz for him. That would have been unheard of if Haldeman were there. And Butterfield found no reason to call or go see the president.

  That night Butterfield had dinner in the White House staff mess and went home late. Brooding, he played back the scene. No, he had never in his adult life been spoken to or treated with so little respect. He was in shambles and bewildered. “My mind was made up,” he wrote in his book draft. “I’d tell Haldeman—if the president hadn’t done so already—that I was not the man for the job. Until then, I’d swallow my pride and perform as well as I knew how.” He had been an aide to two top-level Air Force officers and the secretary of defense. It was endless work but not difficult. Judgment was the key ingredient, and he had been tested many times. “I was not a boob.”

  6

  * * *

  The next morning, February 20, Butterfield wrote in his book draft: “On the way to the White House Thursday morning I promised myself I’d give no hint to anyone of my anger and disgust. I’d take on a cheery demeanor, smile a lot and hope the day went quickly. It would be my last in an environment I’d suddenly come to loathe.

  “I don’t like the environment. I don’t like anything about him, I have to admit that. And I’m upset as hell.”

  At 7 a.m., he went into the Oval Office for a routine check to make sure everything was in order before the president arrived, almost religiously, between 7:50 a.m. and 8:10 a.m. A roaring fire was going in both the president’s fireplace and Haldeman’s. Freshly cut flowers from the White House nursery were in place. He went to the president’s outbox. Only Haldeman and he were allowed to remove materials. He noticed that the memo he had written on the Virgin Islands legislature the day before was there. In the memo Butterfield had explained that he did not want the president to be caught short on the issue and suggested it be handed off to the secretary of the interior, who oversaw the U.S. territories.

  He glanced at the bottom of the memo where he had listed three options for the president:

  Agree ________

  Disagree ________

  Comments ________

  Nixon had initialed his RN in the Agree line.

  What a pleasant surprise! Butterfield thought. He expected the president would ignore the memo or return it with no decision. He read the simple “RN” as an apology of sorts. His spirits began to rise. He did some follow-up paperwork so the president could make an appointment for the Virgin Islands governorship. Some documents came back with approving presidential check marks in the upper-right-hand corner—Nixon’s way of agreeing. At minimum it was an accommodation.

  How a check mark could lift the spirits!

  Later in the day in Haldeman’s office the buzzer went off. Could this really be? Surely not. The buzzer sounded again.

  Butterfi
eld grabbed a pen, the yellow pad and walked into the Oval Office.

  “Good morning, Mr. President.”

  “Yes, well,” the president began, “I thought you might have some things to be signed. I don’t think we got to that yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got a number of things. Let me get the folder.” He scurried back to Haldeman’s office, struck that the president had observed that there had been no signings the evening before. Butterfield believed they had been playing a little game, aware of the mood swings of the other. Now it was time to kiss and make up. He was glad. He did not want to fail. Perhaps he was over-interpreting, making too much of the president’s neglect. Within a minute he was back in the Oval Office.

  “Alex,” Nixon said. His name sounded weird coming from this weird man. “Maury Stans is coming in, as you know,” the president said. Stans, the commerce secretary and chief Nixon fundraiser, wanted to parade his key deputies and assistants through the Oval Office to meet the president. “He’s due any minute. You stick around when he comes in because we want to get rid of him quickly. I want it to look like we’re working on something—you know, the schedule or some damn thing.” Nixon kept signing, bing, bing, bing, paying little attention to each paper. “If we don’t do that, they’ll never get out of here. It’s just supposed to be a handshake but Maury will want to tell me everyone’s life history.”

  Tell Chapin, the appointments secretary, to tip off Stans that the president is having an especially busy day, Nixon ordered.