The Last of the President's Men

by Bob Woodward

  Butterfield was untethered.

  “I really was sorry,” he told me at another point. “On the other hand, there was this disinterested citizen in me, this is going to be kind of a service to the country in a way.”

  And there were practical considerations. He was thinking in part, he said, “It’d sure be great if this information were out. We would save a lot of—how long is this nation going to do this? We can settle all of this real fast if you guys just listen to me.” He added, “Anyone who knew would feel the same and have the same thoughts.” At least anyone who did not want to conceal the truth.

  He also said he did not fear Nixon. “I thought, Jesus, you know I hate the idea of Nixon hating me.”

  So his were a jumble of thoughts and emotions that would remain with him for decades. Nonetheless, he said, there was a bottom line. “I was open and honest and straightforward.”

  • • •

  But I pushed him on the question of motive. The mystery of human motivation looms as a big, central question, I said, particularly when so much consequence attaches to what he did. I noted that Graham Greene, the celebrated novelist, wrote of “those interior courts where our true decisions are made.”

  Often real motives are hard to discern, I told Butterfield. Maybe they are so deep and tangled that we cannot know ourselves, and they remain concealed in that interior court. Maybe there is a cover story. Can it be penetrated or is the road too long and fraught with uncomfortable introspection? This suggests there is some limit to understanding, and the path there is not only foggy but endless.

  Butterfield said he agreed.

  Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, wrote, “We can never, even by strict examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.”

  Are these “secret springs” like the “interior courts”?

  In 1961, my freshman year in college, I remember coming upon a much more simple explanation in a short novel that was all the rage, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Here the young protagonist, Holden Caulfield, full of angst over the phonies of the world, declares, “I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it?”

  John le Carré, the great spy novelist, had another take. He wrote in his 1979 spy thriller, Smiley’s People, about the floor at headquarters where the bosses had their offices, “Why did the fifth floor always think people had to have one motive only.”

  Much later I came upon Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim and these lines: “They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!” If facts could not get you there, what could?

  When I pressed Butterfield for more, further contemplation about his motive, he insisted, “I can assure you I don’t feel that I had a motive. I just don’t think I had a motive—like I’m going to tell eventually, I’ll find a way to tell.” He said he had wanted to avoid a legal trap in which he said something that was not true and perjured himself. “But I do believe that in the interest of justice, it had to come out. I mean, I’m not in favor of people getting away with something.”

  Yet, he stated flatly, he did not see himself as the dispenser of justice. “I got caught up in this wave,” he said. “In a wave, and I was riding this wave.” There was a momentum that pointed toward disclosure. Yes, he said, that was the wave.

  Nixon could have invoked executive privilege for you, I said, as he eventually did with the Secret Service technical agents who installed the taping system. Could that conceivably have prevented you from appearing at the Ervin committee staff interview? Nixon could have said you were so intimately involved in his presidency, and had such a unique view and were so close to him that he could not permit that you testify. He could have argued that you were like a psychiatrist, a lawyer or even a spouse. And that he, as president, was deserving of a special privilege and protection from your testimony. That would have resulted in a long delay in the courts for months if not more. The Senate Ervin committee, the House Judiciary Committee investigating possible impeachment, the Watergate special prosecutor, the media and the public might have grown tired of Watergate and turned to other matters.

  “Yeah,” Butterfield said, clearly tiring of the discussion of motives. “It could have been different. Could’ve been different.”

  • • •

  The day after his closed-door testimony, Saturday, Butterfield went to his office as was his habit. He was an administrator and the comforting routine of paper and small decisions filled the morning. In the afternoon he flew up to New Hampshire to dedicate a new air control tower. The audience for the speech and ribbon-cutting ceremony consisted of about 100 people, including state and local aviation officials. In the back of his mind, he was worrying that he might soon be addressing a larger audience.

  He arrived back home to Admiral Drive in Alexandria by 6 p.m.

  “You’ve had calls all afternoon,” Charlotte said. “One person, Scott Armstrong.” And he wanted the name of your former White House secretary.

  The web was expanding, Butterfield realized. Investigations have an insidious quality, moving in an ever-widening circle. The president’s staff and now the secretaries to the staff. He called Armstrong, who said the Watergate Committee was going to tie him to the revelation of the tapes. Armstrong was recommending that Butterfield be called as a public witness before the whole committee.

  “Surely, you can keep the tapes’ existence under wraps,” Butterfield pleaded. At least for two weeks until Haldeman was scheduled to testify before the committee.

  “Impossible!” Armstrong said. “It’s going to leak for sure!”

  Armstrong seemed in a frenzy to Butterfield, almost out of control. Butterfield felt sick and realized he needed to get advice. But from whom? He called Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. Baker was the senior Republican on the Watergate Committee and its vice chairman. Butterfield knew him casually from times when Baker visited the White House. He wanted to discuss in person some major, fast-moving developments, he said. Baker agreed to see Butterfield at his home the next afternoon, Sunday.

  Butterfield, worried about his FAA duties, didn’t want Watergate to interfere with his important trip to the Soviet Union. He was supposed to negotiate some critical aviation and trade issues beginning Tuesday.

  The next afternoon, in Howard Baker’s living room, he unloaded the whole story of the secret taping system. “You know me, it took me an hour and a half to tell him,” he said later.

  When he finished, Baker said that he already knew the whole story. He had just been briefed by his own staff. “I’ve got the whole file upstairs,” he said, smiling the Baker smile, friendly but sly.

  Jesus! Butterfield thought. He looked for some nuance in Baker’s grin. But there was none. “I want to be certain,” Butterfield told Baker, “that mature and senior people were considering the ramifications of the release of this information . . .”

  “Alex,” Senator Baker said in a tone that suggested he was going to share the secrets of the ways of the world. “Everything leaks! I don’t like to admit it, but everything leaks.” He would be surprised if it kept for another day.

  “So what’s the plan?” Butterfield asked. “I was on the sidelines where Watergate was concerned. And my business now is aviation safety.” He was going to Moscow in two days. “We’re kicking off what amounts to a new era of trade between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It’s called Aeronautica ’73 and involves hundreds of government and industry leaders.”

  If a look could convey “I don’t give a shit about Aeronautica ’73” it was on Baker’s face. “I’d say there’s as much chance you won’t have to testify as there is that you will.” It was the classic Baker line. Whatever the outcome, he’d be right. Baker was well known in the Nixon White House for trying to have it both ways, raising the strategy to an art form. Nonetheless, he went further and indicated he would do what he could to quell any effort to put Butterfield on the witness stand before the cameras.

  Butterfield wa
s at the door feeling that he would not have to testify publicly. After all, Baker was now in his corner.

  “Does the president know about this yet?” Baker asked, one Republican to another. “Hadn’t you better inform Haig or someone over there that the committee has had this information since Friday?” Having been summoned out of the Army, Haig was now in Haldeman’s old position as White House chief of staff.

  Butterfield thanked Baker for his time, and support. On the way home he had his driver stop at the Windsor Park Hotel. He jumped out of the car, found a pay phone, and left a message for Len Garment, the White House lawyer who was his designated contact at the White House.

  Garment called him at home about 9 p.m. Butterfield unloaded his story.

  “Jesus Christ!” Garment almost shouted. It seemed an involuntary and uncharacteristic bark of surprise. Butterfield understood, and could sympathize. Garment hung up without another word.

  26

  * * *

  “There is little I don’t remember about July 16,” Butterfield wrote two decades later. He came in early to the office that Monday to get a head start on his inbox, normally the soothing—even addicting—chore to prepare for a 9 a.m. staff meeting. Time flies at a staff meeting when you are the one in charge. As the leader of the U.S. delegation for Aeronautica ’73, he was preparing for a two-week trip.

  Still no call from Howard Baker or anyone on the Watergate Committee to confirm that he would not have to appear.

  He kept an 11 a.m. appointment to have his hair cut at the Carlton Hotel, a few blocks north of the White House. The barber was Milton Pitts, whom Butterfield had personally recruited several years earlier to cut President Nixon’s hair. Chuck Colson, one of Nixon’s hatchet men, had recommended Pitts. After a security check Pitts became the official Nixon barber installed one day a week in the one-chair barbershop in the West Wing basement. Pitts was a stylist. He shampooed Nixon’s hair, blended the cut with a razor, and then used a blow-dryer. The simple routine transformed Nixon’s steely-gray, oily and curly hair into a softer, fuller, more natural and modern look.

  It was such a change that Time magazine sent a reporter to investigate and Pitts was publicly proclaimed a hero.

  Butterfield was a regular with Pitts at his shop in the Carlton. While waiting his turn this morning, he almost fell asleep before being called.

  Nearly every TV set in the nation, certainly in Washington, was turned to the live hearing of the Senate Watergate Committee. A set in the corner of the barbershop had it on.

  Keep your eye on your work, Mr. Pitts, Butterfield said, and I will follow the hearings and promise to alert you to anything extraordinary. The White House witness, Dick Moore, a special presidential counsel and a public relations image expert, was testifying. He sounded befuddled as if he were trying to confuse whatever issue came up. It was a circus, comical, Butterfield thought. As Moore veered further and further from any question, Butterfield’s mind drifted and his eyelids drooped as Pitts snipped and chatted away.

  “It’s for you!” the receptionist called, handing Butterfield the phone, breaking his reverie. He had not even heard the phone ring.

  Jim Hamilton, an assistant chief counsel for the Watergate Committee, introduced himself. The decision had been made that Butterfield would appear publicly before the committee at the beginning of the afternoon session that day at 2 p.m.

  What! Butterfield was steaming mad. This was not right or fair. What about Howard Baker? What about Butterfield’s schedule? He told Hamilton he would not appear.

  “Very well,” Hamilton replied coolly, “but I’ll have to report to the chairman your refusal to appear.”

  “Fine,” Butterfield snapped. “You do that, because I mean what I say. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to jump through a hoop for the mere convenience of your committee. I think all of you are moving much too fast on a matter that I consider to be both sensitive and delicate in the extreme.” Butterfield realized he was so tightly wound that he was practically shouting.

  Hamilton said he had not known that Butterfield would be so upset. He apologized and hung up.

  Butterfield immediately realized that he should have been the one apologizing. Hamilton was just relaying a message. Where the hell was Senator Baker, his ally?

  Even in 1973 there were what seemed to be the wonders of modern communications. Butterfield now noticed on the TV screen that a young man with a full head of hair was bending over Senator Ervin, then age 76, whispering in his ear. Ervin couldn’t turn around very well, so Butterfield could see the young man fully. Could that be Hamilton?

  “There’s the fellow I was just talking to,” Butterfield said to Pitts, surmising what might have happened, “the one whispering to Senator Ervin.”

  Ervin’s famous bushy eyebrows rose and fell—a distinctive, almost trademark whoop, whoop, whoop—suggesting that he had just heard unexpected and surprising news. He turned and whispered something back.

  “I just talked to Senator Ervin,” Hamilton said in his second call to Butterfield.

  “I know. I think I saw you on the tube.”

  “Well,” Hamilton said, “the senator told me to tell you that if you’re not in his office by 12:30 he’ll have federal marshals pick you up on the street.”

  Improbable, Butterfield thought. But it was time to calm down, smooth it over if he could. Chuckling, he apologized for his earlier outburst and said he would need some more time, but promised to be in Ervin’s office by 1 p.m.

  After his haircut, he went straight to a phone booth and called home.

  “Susan,” he said, fortunately reaching his daughter, who had just completed her sophomore year at the University of Virginia. Get one of my clean white button-down shirts, and the dark suit and my favorite tie, the bluish one with diagonal stripes. Bring them to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant at the north end of Alexandria. I will meet you there in 20 minutes. No time to explain, he said.

  He called Len Garment at the White House to alert him. “Len, the Ervin committee just called. They want me to testify today, this afternoon at two o’clock.”

  “You’ll have to get your own lawyer!” Garment said with uncharacteristic sharpness. And bang down went the phone.

  Butterfield realized that he probably should have been seeking legal advice. But he had an attitude about lawyers. They tended to muck things up. Though of two minds about lawyers—it never hurts to ask for legal advice at least informally—he felt he would proceed on the track he was on.

  Soon he was in a meeting with Ervin, Baker and their counsels in the same messy, windowless conference Room G-334 where he had first been questioned.

  Butterfield began by apologizing for his earlier outburst to Jim Hamilton. Then speaking directly to Senator Ervin he argued that it would be “inappropriate” for him to be the one to testify in public. Let someone more involved like Haldeman do it. “I’m completely on the periphery here,” Butterfield said. This was a weak argument, he quickly realized.

  Ervin displayed his Southern understanding. To have someone else reveal the taping system would be “inappropriate,” he countered, implying that Butterfield should get the credit.

  Butterfield felt the meeting was “relaxed, friendly and unhurried,” as he later wrote. Of course, if he had insisted on having a lawyer, there was no way the four lawyers in the room could deny him. Everyone who appeared before the committee was granted the right to counsel.

  But Butterfield made no demands, no requests. If he had, it almost certainly would not have changed history. But a delay would have given Nixon and the White House time to plan a strategy. Butterfield felt he was riding this wave and part of him did want the credit. He was going along with their process and procedures.

  “It’s getting late,” Ervin said. He and Baker showered him with compliments. He was their witness now.

  Butterfield went to the washroom. He had not brought a toothbrush or his gargle. But he had a comb to run through his hair. He leaned forward o
n the sink and stared into the mirror. He bit hard on his lower lip and tried to picture the future. Suddenly the names of several world leaders, Golda Meir and British prime minister Harold Wilson, came to mind. What were they and other world leaders going to think about being secretly taped? Or everyone or every group that had had what they thought were private meetings with Nixon in the White House?

  The afternoon news had a report headlined: MYSTERY WITNESS NEXT.

  Butterfield had a moment to call Charlotte.

  “Don’t tell me you’re the Mystery Witness?” she said.

  • • •

  Then eight uniformed Capitol Hill police arrived to take him up to testify. Clomp, clomp, clomp through the marble corridors. Two in front waving people out of their path. Two others in tandem on each side, and two behind. There was something overbearing about it, a Roman parade, clearing the way to the elevator.

  As the phalanx entered the Senate Caucus Room, a large, ornate famous hearing room, they bulled their way down the far aisle to the witness table maintaining a furious momentum through the jam-packed interior that was alive with sound and cameras clicking.

  Butterfield was sworn in. Fred Thompson, the minority counsel and Baker’s right-hand man, began the questioning because Sanders, also a minority staff member, had elicited the information of primary interest.

  Butterfield sat erect, looking hesitant with his fingers interlocked. He felt relaxed, however, because he knew what would be asked and what he would answer. Thompson, who later became a movie actor and senator himself, spoke in his confident voice. He had long sideburns and longish hair in the style of the time.

  This was it, Butterfield said to himself. After a few preliminary questions, Thompson asked: “Are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office?”

  Butterfield paused. Thompson had used the present tense.

  “I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir,” he said, correcting to past tense.