The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

by James Rosen

  18. Ruckelshaus’s announcement is reprinted at HJC, VII: 285–86.

  19. Letter to William D. Ruckelshaus from John N. Mitchell, May 17, 1973, reprinted at HJC, VII: 166–67.

  20. FBI memo for the attorney general from John Edgar Hoover, Re: Colonel Alexander M. Haig/Technical Surveillance Request, May 20, 1969, reprinted at HJC, VII: 194–95 (installed); FBI memo for the attorney general from John Edgar Hoover, Re: Mr. [redacted]/Technical Surveillance Request, July 23, 1969, reprinted at HJC, VII: 273 (higher authority).

  21. FBI memo to Mr. Tolson from C. D. DeLoach, Subject: [redacted]/Request for Electronic Surveillance/By Attorney General and President, September 10, 1969, reprinted at HJC, VII: 243; FBI memo for the attorney general from John Edgar Hoover, Re: [redacted], September 10, 1969, reprinted at HJC, VII: 244.

  22. FBI Letter from William D. Ruckelshaus to John N. Mitchell, May 24, 1973, reprinted at HJC, VII: 169–70. Ruckelshaus asked FBI handwriting analysts to authenticate Mitchell’s signatures, and they did; see FBI memo to Mr. Conrad from C. F. Downing, Subject: Sensitive Coverage Placed At/The Request of the White House, May 18, 1973, reprinted at HJC, VII: 168.

  23. SSC, IV: 1626–27.

  24. WSPF memo from Frank Martin to the file, Re: Interview of John Mitchell [conducted December 14, 1973], [filed] January 4, 1974; RG 460 WSPF U.S. v. Mitchell (Jencks)—Mitchell. Asked during his testimony before the House impeachment committee why “regular order” was not followed in the re-authorization of the wiretaps, Mitchell could only demur: “I can’t answer that question after this period of time. I have no recollection as to the discussions involved other than the basic authorization with respect to the concern that [Nixon] had over national security. I was not privy or knowledgeable of all of the discussions that the people in the White House may have had with the director of the FBI” see HJCW, II: 199. Mitchell found it hardest to explain the tap that most reflected his involvement: the physical surveillance placed on his youthful nemesis, John Sears.

  25. “Questions About Gray,” Time, March 5, 1973.

  26. HJC summary of John Mitchell interview [conducted] July 7, 1974, [drafted] July 8, 1974; RG 460 WSPF U.S. v. Mitchell (Jencks)—Mitchell, NARA.

  27. Ovid Demaris, The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover (Harper’s, 1975), p. 277. Kleindienst later expressed bitterness that Mitchell had misled him about the wiretaps. “This was the only aspect of my relationship with John Mitchell that I found [him] less than forthright, candid, and direct,” Kleindienst said. “He always maintained to me that…he had nothing to do with it; and it turned out, in later years, that he did” see Strober and Strober, p. 96.

  28. CI, April 13, 1987 (emphasis added).

  29. Letter to Ruckelshaus from Mitchell; DOJ letter to Hon. J. W. Fulbright from Elliot L. Richardson, September 12, 1973, reprinted at HJV, IV [White House Surveillance Activities], 200–201; CBS Evening News, May 16, 1973 (massive leaks); Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 223; Frank Jackman, “Nixon’s Liability in Tapping Upheld by the Top Court,” New York Daily News, June 23, 1981; Morton Halperin, interview with author, March 24, 1994. Halperin and Hedrick Smith, one of the wiretapped newsmen, filed civil suits against Mitchell and Kissinger—and in Halperin’s case, ex-President Nixon—charging invasion of privacy. Halperin v. Kissinger, for which both Mitchell and Nixon gave depositions, dragged on for almost a decade. In 1981, the Supreme Court deadlocked over whether to uphold a lower court’s assessment of damages against Mitchell and Nixon; Chief Justice Rehnquist recused himself from the case. Ultimately Mitchell was dropped as a defendant and the case settled—with no damages paid—when Kissinger sent Halperin a public apology. Anthony Lake, another wiretapped aide, asked Kissinger for a written statement affirming that Lake never violated any security clearances and acknowledging that the wiretapping program was wrong. When Kissinger refused, Lake sued his former boss; the case ended in January 1989, when Kissinger sent Lake a “Dear Tony” letter. Characteristically, Kissinger laid blame elsewhere—specifically on Mitchell, who had died two months earlier. “It was Attorney General Mitchell’s view that such techniques were within the president’s powers,” Kissinger wrote.

  30. Schoenebaum, Profiles of an Era, pp. 369–71; Haig interview (opposite [emphasis in original]).

  31. Hushen interview, December 30, 1993. Reporter Sanford J. Ungar placed Laird’s call on Sunday morning; professor David Rudenstine at one point dated it “late Saturday night or Sunday morning” yet elsewhere stated flatly that Mitchell “heard about [the Sunday article] from Laird the previous day.” Hushen, however, was certain the call came Sunday morning, before Mitchell had read the paper; see Sanford J. Ungar, The Papers and the Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers (Dutton, 1972), p. 108, and David Rudenstine, The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case (University of California Press, 1996), pp. 69–71.

  32. Except where noted, this study’s treatment of the Pentagon Papers case draws on Ungar, The Papers; Rudenstine, The Day the Presses Stopped, which drew on unpublished segments of the Papers and on a 1988 interview with Mitchell; and two indispensable collections of White House tape transcripts published online after 2001, the first by the National Security Archive, at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv, the second by Daniel Ellsberg, at www.ellsberg.net.

  33. H. R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power (Dell, 1978), pp. 154–55. Historians must treat this book with caution, for Haldeman later discounted it as more his coauthor’s product than his own, published at the wrong time (when Haldeman was entering prison), for the wrong reasons (to stave off creditors), and overly simplified for the reading public. Based on extensive taped interviews with Haldeman conducted in 1976–77, DiMona’s second draft, Haldeman recalled in 1993, “was so much better than the original draft that I didn’t realize how bad it was still…. So I agreed to let it be done, and it was a bestseller, and I made a lot of money on it, and it solved my problem at that time. But it created another problem, which is that it doesn’t say what I want it to say in the way I wanted to say it.”

  34. Kissinger interview.

  35. Laird denied so advising Mitchell; see Rudenstine, The Day the Presses Stopped, p. 82.

  36. National Security Archive transcript, NT, Nixon-Haldeman, Conversation 519–1, Oval Office, June 14, 1971, 8:49 a.m.–10:04 a.m. (damn Jew); National Security Archive transcript, NT, Nixon-Mitchell-Ziegler, Conversation No. 521–9, Oval Office, June 15, 1971, 3:45 p.m.–4:30 p.m. (Ellstein); HN, June 29, 1971 (the Jew). Nixon’s anti-Semitism was somewhat misplaced in Ellsberg’s case. The latter was, by his own account, “raised fanatically” in Christian Science, educated at an Episcopalian school, and married in Cambridge’s Christ Church. Leading a wholly secular life since the mid-1960s, Ellsberg has visited a synagogue only once in his life, to lecture about the Pentagon Papers; yet, despite all this, he has always, and proudly, identified himself as a Jew. “My parents always said we’re Jewish, but not in religion,” said Ellsberg. “I grew up thinking of myself as Christian, anyway…. Nixon could care fucking less whether you went to church or whatever. I was a Jew and I am a Jew. By his definition, I’m 100 percent a Jew, as I would be under Hitler’s” see Daniel Ellsberg, interview with author, March 13, 2004.

  37. Author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Mitchell-Kissinger, Conversation No. 532-23, Oval Office, June 30, 1971, 2:55 to 3:07 p.m. (destroy); author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Haldeman-Kissinger, Conversation No. 534-2, Oval Office, July 1, 1971, 8:45 to 9:52 a.m. (Hiss case, good lawyer, destroying, play this game).

  38. Author’s transcript, NT, Conversation No. 534-12, op. cit. (better off); HN, July 1, 1971 (see it clearly).

  39. “I learned about it from [John] Dean somewhere along the way,” Mitchell recalled shortly before he died; see CI, April 15, 1988. In July 1974, however, Mitchell said he learned about the Ellsberg break-in from either “Dean or Mardian.” After the Watergate arrests, Mitchell told House investigators, “Mardian and De
an…met with Liddy and Liddy informed them of the Ellsberg break-in.” In fact, Dean was not present for Mardian’s debriefing of Liddy, thus making it likelier that Mardian, not Dean, informed Mitchell of the Ellsberg break-in. Mitchell also told investigators that, once informed, he discussed the break-in with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, but “consciously avoided” raising it with Nixon; see HJC summary of John Mitchell interview [conducted] July 4, 1974 [filed] July 5, 1974; RG 460 WSPF U.S. v. Mitchell (Jencks)—Mitchell, NARA. After the break-in was publicly disclosed, in the spring of 1973, Ellsberg’s lawyer, Leonard Boudin, wrongly told Federal District Judge Matthew Byrne the crime “was the product of a political espionage operation by…John Mitchell” see CBS Morning News, May 1, 1973. Two days later, President Nixon privately suggested likewise, even though he knew full well Mitchell had opposed the Plumbers’ creation. “Hunt did work on the Ellsberg case,” Nixon told Kleindienst, “and that was one of the main things they were working on, you know, through our dear friend John Mitchell” see author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Kleindienst, Conversation No. 911-2, Oval Office, May 3, 1971, 8:51 a.m. to 9:09 a.m.

  40. HN, June 17, 1971 (hang FDR); author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Mitchell-Haldeman-Ehrlichman-Col son, Conversation No. 576-6, Oval Office, September 18, 1971, 10:40 a.m. to 2:05 p.m.

  41. SSCEX, Gordon Strachan, July 12, 1973.

  42. James Rosen, “Nixon and the Chiefs,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2002.

  43. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 188; H. L. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (HarperCollins, 1997), passim; Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Little, Brown, 1993), pp. 240–41, 428–33.

  44. Melvin Laird, author interview, August 28, 1997.

  45. Ronald H. Cole and Willard J. Webb, The Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Joint History Office, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, 1995); William F. Jasper, “Admirals Sound the Alarm,” The New American 15, 7, March 29, 1999; All Hands: The Bureau of Naval Personnel Career Publication, July 1970, pp. 8–13; Schoenebaum, Profiles of an Era, pp. 449–51; Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 173, 182, 268.

  46. Cole and Webb, Chairmanship; Schoenebaum, Profiles of an Era.

  47. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., On Watch (Quadrangle, 1976), p. xiv; Chalmers M. Roberts, “American Power Margin Is Slipping,” Washington Post, October 4, 1970; Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Volume 2 (Warner Books, 1979), pp. 242–43 (crap); George Lardner Jr., “On Tapes, Nixon Sounds Off on Woman, Blacks, Cabinet,” Washington Post, December 27, 1998.

  48. Author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Haig, Conversation No. 17–28, White House Telephone, December 24, 1971, 5:01–5:08 p.m., NARA. “We had firm evidence,” Haig recalled years later, “that the Russians and the Indians were colluding, that the Russians were urging the Indians to dismantle Pakistan. This was a regional Cold War issue” see Haig, July 27, 2000.

  49. Jack Anderson with George Clifford, The Anderson Papers (Ballantine, 1974), p. 281. Kissinger claimed his remarks were “taken out of context” see Associated Press, “Column,” January 5, 1972, 3:31 a.m. EST, in WHSF—SMOF, JDE Special Subject File, Box 37, Young Project, NARA.

  50. SSC, VI: 2410 (very ability). Mitchell concluded the SALT leak came from “someone who was in the NSC meeting in the Roosevelt Room” at which the negotiating position was adopted; see WH memo for the record by David R. Young, Subject: Meeting on 7/28/71 at 9:30–10:15 a.m., [filed] July 28, 1971; RG 460 WSPF Plumbers Task Force, General File—Documentary Evidence, David R. Young White House Files, Box 10—Memoranda, Chronological David R. Young Folder, NARA.

  51. Testimony of Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, USN, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 21, 1974, HHBP; Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President (St. Martin’s, 1991), pp. 3–68, 279–439, 456 (Ellsberg syndrome). Prior to the release in October 2000 of the relevant White House tapes, which were published for the first time in Rosen, “Nixon and the Chiefs,” Silent Coup offered the most comprehensive account of the Moorer-Radford scandal, adducing, as Kissinger biographer Walter Isaacson noted, “a wealth of detail…[and] much useful reporting and information” on the episode. Isaacson’s Kissinger also treated the affair in depth, as did Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power—which, like Silent Coup, drew on interviews with Mitchell. In addition to testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 1974, Radford spoke at length to Hersh; Colodny and Gettlin; Jim Hougan, author of Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA (Ballantine Books, 1984); and journalist Richard Lamb, who profiled Radford in “Tale of the Shadow Chaser,” George, October 1998.

  52. SSC memo to Fred Thompson from Don Sanders and Howard Liebengood, Subject: Donald Stewart Interview, July 24, 1973, HHBP (deception). Stewart told the Senate Watergate committee he only “boxed,” or polygraph tested, Radford on one occasion, and only questioned him over the period December 16–17; Radford, on the same day, told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was “interrogated almost daily” by the same individuals over “two to three weeks,” including “several” polygraph tests; see SSCEX Stewart; and Testimony of YNI Charles E. Radford, USN, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 19, 1974, HHBP.

  53. Lamb, “Tale of the Shadow Chaser.”

  54. In one forty-nine-day period from March to May 1971, Anderson published thirteen columns based on leaks of classified material, including articles reporting U.S. seeding operations over clouds in Indochina, aimed at increasing rainfall on the Ho Chi Minh Trail; the Pentagon’s development of secret plans to mine Haiphong Harbor, not carried out until May 1972; and American wiretapping of the Saigon palace of President Thieu. Anderson’s source for these columns was not Radford but Stephen W. Linger, an enlisted man in the JCS Digital Information Relay Center; see TPOP, 182–83, 472.

  55. Rosen, “Nixon and the Chiefs.” Citations for all Moorer-Radford tapes quoted here appear on p. 580.

  56. Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 277.

  57. CI, April 28, 1986.

  58. CI [Mary Gore Dean], October 6, 1987.

  59. CI, May 30, 1986. “I’ve been talking to Tom Moorer about a business transaction,” Mitchell said. The two men served on corporate boards for separate companies engaged in what Mitchell called “a joint venture.”

  60. KI, February 9, 1988, April 11, 1988.

  61. Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 279. In later years, Kissinger downplayed the episode. “There were traditional cold warriors who were opposed to the détente policy, no question about it,” Kissinger said in 1995; but he suggested there was never any animus involved. “Moorer was actually a friend of mine. Radford I barely knew—I didn’t know. That was just a way for them of getting information about what we were doing. It wasn’t aimed at me, it was aimed at the office.” Yet in a contemporaneous discussion about the incident, in January 1974—surreptitiously recorded by Kissinger and declassified thirty years later—Kissinger spoke of “these people spying on me” and added: “I could never tell whether this was superbureaucratic gamesmanship, or something a little more sinister. My feeling is that, you know, bureaucratic empires always go up by knowing things. It got out of control. I mean it may have started as bureaucratic gamesmanship and it got out of control” see State Department Telcon, Secretary Kissinger/Hugh Sidey, January 21, 1974, 9:50 a.m., at foia.state.gov.

  62. The transcript of the Ehrlichman-Welander interrogation was published, for the first time and in its entirety, as an appendix in Colodny and Gettlin, Silent Coup.

  63. CI, November 1985 (grabber, abandon), August 17, 1986 (crucial, different light). Mitchell believed Haig was Deep Throat; see Gettlin interview.

  64. Years later, Haig remembered thes
e calls differently: “The president said, called me, he said, ‘Al, what is this? I’ve got spies in the NS-C? Is this the military trying to take over the government?’…I said, ‘Hey, Mr. President, come on!’” See Haig interview (emphases in original). The tapes reflect no such conversation.

  65. Ehrlichman interview.

  CLOUD OF SUSPICION

  1. WSPF transcript, NT, Nixon-Haldeman-Colson, Conversation No. 697–29, Oval Office, March 30, 1972, 12:47 p.m.–2:32 p.m., NARA.

  2. Frank Carlucci, interview with author, February 8, 2001; Rehnquist interview; letter from William H. Rehnquist to the author, June 29, 1993; CI, August 17, 1986 (smart ass), January 24, 1987 (full of); John Dean, Blind Ambition (Pocket Books, 1977), p. 42; Charles Bartlett, “Kleindienst Withdrawal Weighed?” Washington Evening Star, March 14, 1972.