The Wars of Watergate
Page 31
Nixon’s election set in motion a variety of events that brought Elias Demetracopoulos into the limelight—and made him a repeated target of Administration reprisals. John Caulfield sent a memo to Ehrlichman in October 1969 regarding the “Greek Inquiry.” Demetracopoulos also remained under surveillance by the FBI, and probably by the CIA as well. In July 1971, Representative Benjamin Rosenthal (D–NY), Chairman of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, opened an investigation of the Administration’s support for the Greek regime. Demetracopoulos appeared as a witness on the twelfth and denounced Thomas Pappas’s connections, contending that he had been given extraordinary economic concessions for his support. In response to a question from Rosenthal, Demetracopoulos promised a detailed supporting memorandum, with documented material.
Following the open hearing, the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Henry Tasca, sent a lengthy telegram to Secretary of State William Rogers and Attorney General John Mitchell, urging that Demetracopoulos be thoroughly investigated by the FBI. Tasca called him a “subsidized agent” and a “dangerous and mysterious enemy.” The Ambassador regularly entertained Pappas, he was particularly close to the Greek regime, and Nixon had known him well since 1947. Within a few days after Tasca’s telegram arrived in Washington, agents from the Internal Security Section of the Department of Justice questioned the subcommittee staff and secured a stenographic transcript of the hearing but did not get the detailed memorandum until after Demetracopoulos filed it on September 17. The agents advised the staff that Demetracopoulos had possibly been in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They also visited officials at the Greek Desk in the State Department, who urged them to make “any kind of case” against Demetracopoulos, whom they regarded as a “shady character and a troublemaker.”
Representative Rosenthal announced that he would continue the investigation and perhaps call Thomas Pappas as a witness. Similar sentiments were expressed by Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, nothing happened. Pappas was not a man whom the Administration wanted to subject to public scrutiny. In December 1971, David Abshire, Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, assured various committee members that the department had no interest in persecuting Demetracopoulos, yet he vigorously defended Pappas’s conduct. Abshire also apologized to Demetracopoulos, clearing his letter of apology with John Dean.34
But the harassment continued. In September 1971, Murray Chotiner, the longtime Nixon operative, had visited Demetracopoulos (they were on a first-name basis) and warned him that he could be deported if he continued to attack Pappas and cooperated in any investigation of the President’s “friend,” as Chotiner characterized Pappas. Months later, a close friend of both Demetracopoulos and Mitchell reported that at a luncheon, Mitchell spoke loudly of his intention to deport the Greek. “He is furious at you—and your testimony against Pappas. He kept threatening to have you deported!” she wrote Demetracopoulos.35
Thomas Pappas’s links with the Nixon Administration became still stronger in the 1972 campaign as he solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen. He also raised illegal funds from foreign sources. (Receiving foreign money apparently was not unusual for a Nixon campaign: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos reportedly contributed in both 1968 and 1972.) Most important, Pappas figured heavily in discussions regarding the payment of hush money to the Watergate burglars. John Dean claimed that in March 1973 Ehrlichman suggested Pappas as a source of assistance. “Did you talk to the Greek?” Dean subsequently asked Mitchell. “Yes I have,” Mitchell replied. “Is the Greek bearing gifts?” Dean asked, but Mitchell could not answer on the telephone at the moment.
Dean himself said he had talked to Pappas about the need for hush money. In a later conversation with the President, Pappas acknowledged that he was, as Nixon remembered, “helping, uh, uh, John’s [Mitchell] special projects.” Nixon also acknowledged that he had been told that Pappas had been “very helpful on the, uh, Watergate thing.” How helpful? The Watergate Special Prosecutor later learned that Pappas had given Mitchell $50,000, ostensibly for “closing costs” on a real-estate loan. Pappas also admitted that he had been asked to contribute to help the defendants in the break-in. One memo in the prosecutor’s files states that “some documentary evidence indicates that those involved in the cover-up may have expected funds for it from Pappas.” One of the CREEP lawyers admitted to Dean that a Greek law firm actually was a CIA front and could channel some of the money to the defendants.36
Thomas Pappas had longstanding connections with the CIA and the Greek KYP; politically and economically, he supported the Greek junta. In 1976, Ambassador Tasca reportedly testified in executive session to the House Intelligence Committee that Pappas indeed had transferred funds from the KYP to the Nixon campaign committee in 1968. Pappas had powerful friends and real influence in the Administration. When the Colonels intervened in Cyprus in 1974, the Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Armed Forces claimed that Pappas brought a message from American officials to the KYP supporting the action.
Information derogatory to Pappas was also information derogatory to the Administration—as Elias Demetracopoulos found out throughout the Nixon years. What that information was exactly, and how much Lawrence O’Brien knew about it, might well have fallen into the category of intelligence that Liddy and his wiretapping team had to ascertain. Curiously, through both campaigns in 1968 and 1972, O’Brien did not seem anxious to exploit the information. Nevertheless, knowledge about O’Brien’s knowledge of Demetracopoulos’s intelligence, together with “derogatory information” about O’Brien’s past dealings with Hughes, for example, might have offered the Administration some bargaining leverage with O’Brien.
In time, the Nixon Administration made Demetracopoulos pay dearly for what he had said. Columnists friendly to the Administration, such as James J. Kilpatrick, denounced Demetracopoulos as a fraud and suggested that he might be a Communist agent. (Kilpatrick, however, soon discovered that he had been misled and retracted every charge.) The FBI, the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Justice all maintained files containing allegedly hostile information on Demetracopoulos—information that each agency eventually acknowledged was wrong. Significantly, the “Greek Connection” theory of Watergate caused the most anxiety for the longest period of time for the Nixon Administration, and the agencies that served it.37
Since the Watergate break-in clearly was a political intelligence operation, the insights of the real campaign director deserve mention. Richard Nixon never offered an explicit or implicit theory explaining the event. In his memoirs, he broke his explanation down to the “factual truth” (a literal description of the events of Watergate, events that could never be completely reconstructed), the “legal truth” (involving judgments about motives), the “moral truth” (which considered whether the White House’s behavior was ethically wrong), and the “political truth.” The political truth, he explained, was the total impact of all the other truths on the nation and the nation’s judgment of Nixon and his Administration. On one point, of course, the President was firm and consistent: he had no prior knowledge of the break-in.38 He never discussed his responsibility for instructing his aides to gather derogatory information on O’Brien or other political enemies, however.
As time passes, the Watergate burglars and the specifics of their plans and deeds will recede further from historical consciousness. The burglary itself—its planning, its flawed execution, and even its motives—ultimately must be seen as part of a behavior pattern characterizing the President and his aides that stretched back to the beginnings of the Nixon Administration. The Watergate burglary parted the veil that hid the “underside” of that government. Even if we should learn that the Administration was victimized by a CIA plot—even if we should learn the motive for the burglary—that would change nothing regarding our understanding of John Mitchell’s “White House horrors.” Nor would it mitigate the resulting inter-institutional conflicts and
encounters, which raised profound constitutional and political questions, or the constitutional crisis generated by the Administration’s behavior in the wake of the burglary. That behavior resulted in the special crimes of cover-up and obstruction by high Administration officials—up to and including the President of the United States.
The FBI quickly assumed primary responsibility for the investigation of the Watergate break-in. In fact, overall responsibility for the effort belonged to the Department of Justice, particularly to the Criminal Division. Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, a career government official, headed the division. He maintained contact with Acting FBI Director Gray and with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington. U.S. Attorney Harold Titus turned the case over to his chief assistant, Earl Silbert. After Hunt and Liddy had been implicated, Titus directed two more assistants, Seymour Glanzer and Donald Campbell, to work with Silbert.
The FBI’s investigation, and the U.S. Attorney’s handling of the case, were later criticized as inept, unnecessarily cautious, and overly solicitous of the Administration.39 Such criticism ignores the Administration’s successful efforts to contain the investigation. Throughout the period, the White House directed a campaign of noncooperation, lies, and a tragic betrayal from within to effectively hamstring the FBI’s efforts.
The prosecutors sought to learn more about the break-in as they attempted to immunize one of the burglars and offered James McCord a deal in exchange for his cooperation. Three months of investigation and the prosecutors’ organization of evidence produced indictments on September 15 against the five burglars as well as Hunt and Liddy. Yet for six more months, the Administration successfully concealed facts and the involvement in the Watergate affair of a wide range of CREEP and White House officials, until such individuals as McCord, Magruder, and Dean decided to reveal the larger story out of their own self-interest.
From the very beginning, FBI efforts to move beyond the basic seven suspects met determined resistance. If agents interviewed White House officials such as Charles Colson, White House Counsel John Dean was present—and quarrelsome. When agents spoke to campaign officials, CREEP lawyers stayed in the room, often objecting to questions and interfering with the process. Earl Silbert counterattacked at one point by issuing grand-jury subpoenas to CREEP personnel so they could be questioned without attorneys present.
In a few cases, re-election committee employees made an effort to speak to investigating agents away from campaign headquarters. From one, FBI agents learned that a committee administrator had not been “frank” with agents and had diverted them from investigating substantive matters by providing leads to keep them “busy” with relative trivialities. Investigating agents simply could not corroborate other tips, such as one that important information had been destroyed.
The FBI’s subsequent evaluation of its investigation acknowledged that it had been wrong to allow Dean to sit in during interviews and to clear all requests for information. But there had been no alternative: the investigatory procedure had been determined by FBI Acting Director Gray, who proceeded under White House orders. Furthermore, Gray had routinely submitted FBI investigative reports to Dean, which enabled the White House aide to keep abreast of the investigation. What also would be learned was that Dean had given Gray important evidence belonging to Howard Hunt, evidence that Gray would withhold and later destroy.
In their investigation of the re-election committee, Bureau agents logically focused on McCord’s links, trying to determine who had hired him, what money was available to him, and who worked with him. The agents conducted more than sixty interviews at CREEP headquarters, but later revelations showed that those interviewed had lied and evaded questions, including Mitchell, Magruder, and Liddy’s secretary. Robert Odle, the CREEP director of administration, waited ten months before revealing that he had hidden the Gemstone file from investigators. Agents had been told on several occasions in June 1972 that evidence had been destroyed, and specifically that Liddy had shredded documents, but they simply could not prove the destruction. Nearly a year later, Mitchell described for the Senate Select Committee the White House determination in “keeping the lid on and no information volunteered.” Those interviewed had been coached to lie, and their testimony had been rehearsed.
Several hours after the burglary, Liddy turned up at a Washington golf course to see Attorney General Kleindienst. According to Kleindienst, Liddy said that Mitchell wanted the Attorney General to get the suspects out of jail at once. Kleindienst claimed he did not believe Mitchell would send such a message and publicly threatened to have Liddy arrested. But he told no one of the incident. The FBI later claimed that if it had known immediately of that episode, it would have more easily identified Liddy as an important actor in the events it was investigating, would have wasted less time on needless interviews at committee headquarters, and would have had reason to zero in early on Mitchell and Liddy. Perhaps, Bureau investigators later speculated, the cover-up might have been more quickly exposed. But even when FBI agents questioned Mitchell and various White House officials, they naturally “assume[d] that men of [such] stature would have no involvement,” as Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski said two years later.40
The President had a favorite word for the White House strategy: “stonewall.”
Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States, 1969–1974. (National Archives)
Spiro T. Agnew, Judy Agnew, Pat Nixon, and Richard M. Nixon at the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami. (National Archives)
The President and Vice President with the entire Cabinet and other leading presidential advisers, at the White House, November 1969. (National Archives)
Vice President Agnew and President Nixon, 1971. (National Archives)
The President and his key aides, Henry Kissinger, John Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman, in the Oval Office. (National Archives)
Nixon campaigning for George Bush in Texas, 1970. (National Archives)
Nixon, Attorney General John Mitchell, Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. (National Archives)
HEW Secretary Robert Finch (left) after his dismissal in June 1970, with his successor, Elliot Richardson, and the President. (National Archives)
Alexander Butterfield, Oval Office aide and custodian of the taping system, with Nixon. (National Archives)
Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai and Nixon, Beijing, January 1972. (National Archives)
Charles Colson, presidential assistant.
Jeb Stuart Magruder, White House aide and Deputy Director of CREEP. (National Archives)
Watergate burglars (clockwise from top left): Eugenio R. Martinez, Bernard L. Barker, Frank A. Sturgis, and Virgilio R. Gonzalez. (AP/Wide World Photos)
James McCord, Watergate burglar, former CIA agent, and Chief of Security for CREEP, testifying before the Senate Select Committee. (Washington Star)
E. Howard Hunt, Watergate burglar, Colson aide, and former CIA employee. (Washington Star)
G. Gordon Liddy, CREEP employee and planner of the Watergate burglary. (Washington Star)
L. Patrick Gray, Acting Director of the FBI, 1972–1973. (Washington Star)
Richard Helms, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testifying before the Senate Select Committee. (Washington Star)
Nixon with Thomas Pappas, “the Greek bearing gifts.” (LAM)
Patrick Buchanan. (National Archives)
Donald Segretti, convicted for campaign “dirty tricks” in 1972. (Washington Star)
Hugh Sloan, CREEP Treasurer, testifying in 1973. (Washington Star)
Federal Judge John Sirica, who presided over several Watergate trials. (Washington Star)
Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, who directed early phases of the Watergate investigation. (Washington Star)
White House Counsel John Dean in May 1973, after his dismissal by the President. (National Archives)
Leonard Garment (left), after his appointment as Counsel in May 1973, with Ron Ziegler. (National Archives)
White House aides with Presidential Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt. (National Archives)
Vice Chairman Howard Baker (left) and Chairman Sam Ervin of the Senate Select Committee, June 1973. (Washington Star)
Senate Select Committee Counsel Samuel Dash (left) and Senator Lowell Weicker, June 1973. (Washington Star)
Nixon and CBS correspondent Dan Rather in a heated exchange during a September 1973 press conference. (National Archives)
Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on a Potomac cruise during a recess in the Senate hearings, June 1973. (National Archives)
IX
“WHAT REALLY HURTS IS IF YOU TRY TO COVER IT UP.”