When Brown yielded time to Brasco and Hanna, he probably knew what they would do. Although the northerners’ defections were a surprise to Patman, they revealed the extent of Administration pressure. In 1974 Brasco was convicted for conspiring to take bribes, and Hanna similarly was found guilty for his role in the Koreagate scandal in 1978. Past illegal activities of both congressmen were known in the Department of Justice as of October 1972. Brasco had been the target of an investigation of alleged fraud and bribery activities since 1970. Late in 1973, John Dean told Senate investigators that John Mitchell had met with Brasco and a New York City Democratic leader to discuss Brasco’s role in the House Banking and Currency Committee proceedings. Governor Nelson Rockefeller admitted that he had arranged a meeting at that time between Mitchell, Brasco, and the Democratic leader. Dean also claimed that Mitchell told him he had “assurances” that a New York Congressman would not appear at the crucial House committee meeting or would oppose Patman.
A House subcommittee revealed in 1978 that the Administration had information dating back to November 24, 1971, regarding Congressman Hanna’s Korean connections. On that date, J. Edgar Hoover told Mitchell that Korean lobbyist Park Tongsun had made campaign payments to Hanna and that the money had originated with the Korean CIA. In another memo dating from early in 1972, Hoover reported that Hanna had actively solicited payments from Park. (Hoover’s reports also went to Henry Kissinger, who nevertheless later insisted that he had no knowledge of the affair until 1975.)37
In the September 15 White House meeting with Haldeman and Dean, the President told his aides that “the game has to be played awfully rough.” After the House Banking and Currency Committee rejected the subpoena motion, the Washington Post reported that the Administration’s “intense arm-twisting” was common knowledge. Congressman Reuss later remembered that the Justice Department had persuaded the committee’s members to believe that it had the investigation thoroughly under control. Brown admitted the next day that he had worked closely with Justice, but he denied Patman’s charges of intense White House pressure. “I would have to presume that the White House wouldn’t want further attention paid to this. I’m not so stupid to have to be told,” Brown said. In June 1973, however, he admitted he had been in contact with White House congressional liaison people, although years later he claimed to have advised them to “stay away.” In July 1973, Brown expressed remorse for his role, saying that if he had known of the Watergate cover-up in October, he would have voted differently. The committee, he said, “probably should have gone ahead with the investigating.”
Brown insisted throughout that he had had no contact with Dean or any representative of the President, adding that he began his opposition to Patman on his own. Representative William Curlin, Jr. (D–KY), was the most junior member of the committee. When Brown offered his public mea culpas in the summer of 1973, Curlin stated that “certain members of the committee were reminded of various past political indiscretions, or of relatives who might suffer as a result of [a] pro-subpoena vote.” It was not clear whether he was talking about Brown, Stephens, Brasco, Hanna, or all of them. But Curlin pinpointed the Administration’s role: “they really call in dues.”38
The Administration further undermined Patman by associating him with Elias P. Demetracopoulos, whose opposition to the Greek junta had antagonized powerful elements in and out of the government. Administration sources informed Banking and Currency Committee members that Demetracopoulos had arranged a Wall Street speaking engagement (and fee) for Patman, and they showed wavering committee members leaked documents charging Demetracopoulos as a pro-Communist agent. Documents subsequently released showed that the FBI, acting on instructions, had searched Demetracopoulos’s bank records to find evidence of ties to Patman. Chairman Patman knew of the smear campaign and warned Demetracopoulos, also noting that Hanna, his alleged friend, had been “bad-mouthing” him as part of the campaign to discredit both Patman and Demetracopoulos.39
House Minority Leader Gerald Ford’s role in the Patman Committee affair later came under particular scrutiny. During Senate confirmation hearings on Ford’s nomination as Vice President in November 1973, Senator Robert Byrd asked if Ford had acted to influence Republican members of the Patman Committee because he thought further investigation would be harmful to the President and the party. Ford said no, but during the White House meeting on September 15, the President had remarked that “Jerry’s really got to lead on this. He’s got to really lead.” Dean also suggested that Stans brief Ford. A few days before the House committee vote, Ford wrote to Republican members urging them to attend the committee meeting “to assure that the investigative resolution is appropriately drawn.”
Congresswoman Margaret Heckler, a member of the committee, stated that Ford had briefed her, relaying White House assurances that Hunt and Liddy alone had perpetrated the Watergate “caper.” Ford charged that Patman had started a “political witch hunt” and offered his own assurances that no one in the White House or CREEP had been involved. He also met with other members of the Banking and Currency Committee—after the September 15 meeting, not before, as Ford first said—but he insisted that he had received no White House directions.
In its 1974 recommendations for impeachment proceedings, the House Judiciary Committee cited Richard Nixon for “obstruction of justice” because of the White House role in blocking the Patman Committee inquiry. But when Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman (D–NY) during the 1976 campaign asked the Special Prosecutor and the Department of Justice to reexamine Ford’s role, both refused. Attorney General Edward Levi replied that “there is no credible evidence, new or old, justifying further investigation.” Ford meanwhile blamed Dean for the allegation. “He’s a little snake in the grass who’ll say anything about anyone,” Ford told his advisers in 1976.40
As the Patman Committee prepared to vote, George McGovern once again assailed the Nixon Administration, calling it the most corrupt in history. He blamed the President for hiding the truth of White House involvement in the Watergate affair. Wright Patman redoubled his efforts. He wrote to the GAO, urging that office to continue its investigation. More important, he wrote to District Court Judge John Sirica on October 4, complaining that Sirica’s order forbidding discussion by government officials, defendants, or lawyers in the pending case against the Watergate burglars had been used by the Administration as an excuse to thwart other investigative avenues. The judge modified the order the next day, noting that he had not intended to affect congressional activity or news-media reporting. This ruling came too late for Patman, but perhaps not too late for Sirica to heed Patman’s warnings. The Texan told the judge that the Justice Department had no interest in continuing the investigation, charging that high departmental officials had intervened with his committee, and he warned Sirica that they would use the judge’s orders for their own “blatant political purposes.”41
Patman still had some tricks up his sleeve. He scheduled a meeting for October 12, inviting Mitchell, MacGregor, and Stans to testify. CREEP chief counsel Kenneth Parkinson replied that he had advised his clients not to appear. Patman also invited Dean, but the White House Counsel declined, invoking executive privilege. Patman staged a “hearing” with empty chairs for the witnesses. He blamed the President “for the elimination of the people’s right to know.” The President and his campaign committee, he said, were determined to sabotage the two-party system, making for “a sad spectacle, a really sorry affair which must sicken anyone who really believes in our system of Government.”
Patman, by now, was playing for the historical record. On October 31 he released the House Banking and Currency Committee’s staff report linking CREEP officials to the burglars and charging that the White House had authorized the most effective “curtain of secrecy ever erected.” Ford remained faithful to the Administration, demanding dismissal of the staff members. He derided the report and the Chairman for “last-minute smear tactics.”42 Just as predictably, the report had no infl
uence on the electorate.
John Dean had his marching orders, but by the time of the Patman Committee’s report he realized that preserving the cover-up and his own safety were inextricably linked. “We really need to turn Patman off,” he told Haldeman. Although he felt a measure of self-satisfaction and pride in his work, Dean realized how easily matters could spin out of control. The same day Patman held his empty-chairs hearing, the Washington Post published stories about Donald Segretti’s “dirty tricks” campaign. Dean did not think that Segretti had violated any laws, but he knew that Segretti would lead to inquiries about Haldeman, White House aide Dwight Chapin, and Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, and their questionable campaign-fund dealings. The President himself was aware at the time that Kalmbach had paid Segretti for his work.43
The Watergate “caper” had become a ball of yarn, slowly but steadily unraveling. Containment appeared increasingly difficult—cutting off loose strings would no longer do. Patman’s inquiry accomplished nothing in the immediate sense, but its encounters with CREEP and the White House had some important consequences. Patman’s pressure required that the cover-up be intensified and expanded, thus widening chances for error and eventual exposure. Meanwhile, Patman had perceived the cover-up. He was a formidable enemy, with a long memory and a penchant for settling scores. Several months later, he ordered his staff to share its materials and findings with Senator Sam Ervin and the newly created Senate Select Committee, named to probe 1972 campaign financing. Patman himself wrote to Ervin, urging that Dean be questioned closely on his interference with the House Banking and Currency Committee.44 Finally, Patman’s probe drove the Administration to a new level of provocation in its coercive relationships with congressmen, an illustrative lesson that did not go unnoticed.
The White House continued to search for vindication and the high ground. Late in September, Vice President Agnew remarked that “someone set up these people to have them get caught … to embarrass the Republican party.” The President took his own civil liberties tack at an October 5 press conference. Questioned about the indictments of the burglars, Nixon recalled the furor he had once raised when he labeled California slayer Charles Manson guilty before he was tried. With apparent self-satisfaction and a just-perceptible grin, Nixon told reporters: “I know you would want me to follow the same simple standard by not commenting on this case.”
The outcome in the Banking Committee investigation offered some vindication for Maurice Stans. He went about his task of fundraising seemingly oblivious to any impending disaster. Stans told the President on October 5 that a September fundraiser had netted between $6.5 and $7 million—50 percent more than had ever been raised in a single affair in political history.45 Stans knew the President’s penchant for “firsts.”
For Stans, fundraising was a labor of love for a President he deeply admired; moreover, his perception of McGovern as a dangerous radical undoubtedly spurred his efforts. Who cared about Watergate? Public-opinion polls consistently confirmed the general impression that Watergate was a “Washington story.” By a 70–13 margin, respondents in one survey thought the tapping of Democratic headquarters was merely a case of acceptable political spying, and by a 57–25 count they believed political spying was a common occurrence, particularly during the heat of a campaign. Only 18 percent of respondents believed that the President’s re-election committee had received huge amounts of contributions from special interests and had concealed the amounts. “Who the hell cares?” Bob Haldeman had demanded in the September 15 meeting with the President and Dean—with justification.
The 1972 campaign ended with the President’s victory margin settling at the point where the polls had all along predicted it. George McGovern’s effort began in confusion and ended in disarray. The Administration successfully portrayed him as a bungler, a demagogue, and a radical. Richard Nixon and his campaign managers pursued Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 prescription of isolating the opposition and persuading the nation that it had no real alternative to “four more years” of the incumbent.
McGovern frightened many and alienated more. The Washington Post coverage of Watergate and the campaign offered a case in point. Throughout October, Watergate news appeared on page one nearly every day, especially an ongoing story of Haldeman’s suspected connection to a secret campaign fund. But in November, the situation changed dramatically; Watergate coverage virtually disappeared. Between November 4 and November 18, the Post published only one related story. The paper did not endorse Nixon, but it muted its editorial attacks. Clearly, McGovern was unacceptable to the Post, which repeatedly questioned his “aptitude for political leadership”—and by extension, his ability to govern wisely and well. Still, given Nixon’s “darker side,” the choice, the Post concluded, “was neither easy nor obvious.”46
Nixon repeatedly had expressed concern over how his victory would be interpreted. He urged his aides to predict only a margin of 10 million votes and to establish that figure in the public mind, because he feared that commentators would think even a 15-million-vote margin “very” disappointing. After his victory, Nixon confidently told one of his chroniclers that the election had been settled the night McGovern was nominated. Probably that was true; still, the notes of the President’s aides indicate that hardly a day passed without Nixon’s analyzing what needed to be done to win.
The results of November 7 should have given him enormous pleasure. More than 47 million Americans voted for him, nearly 18 million more than had voted for George McGovern. The President swept every electoral vote save those of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He shattered familiar voting behavior patterns: 55 percent of blue-collar workers voted for him, 51 percent of union families, 37 percent of registered Democrats. Traditionally Democratic ethnics—Italians, Poles, Irish, and Jews—gave their votes to a Republican candidate in unprecedented numbers. (Eisenhower had never captured more than 23 percent of Democratic voters.)
Nevertheless, throughout the summer of 1972, Nixon had impressed upon his staff the need for “the most intensive campaign in history.” He considered McGovern to be dangerous, and he was convinced that for the good of the nation, he must defeat his opponent decisively. The President consistently talked about the opportunity to forge a broad mandate. The campaign of 1972 was to be very different from the calculated divisiveness of 1968. Now, the President assiduously courted Democrats, labor, blacks, Jews, and the young, while expecting (quite correctly) that his 1968 constituency would remain with him if only because it had nowhere else to go.47
The President was anxious to know whether he had beaten Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 margins—he had more electoral votes but a smaller popular percentage—and how he had done in the South. Unlike LBJ, Nixon failed to capture any working majority in Congress. Beguiled by the possibilities of winning all the states and surpassing LBJ’s votes, the Nixon campaign focused on the presidential race and made little effort to create any coattail effect for lesser Republicans. The Democrats remained in control of Congress by margins of 57–43 in the Senate (up two), and 243–192 in the House (down twelve). Personally, Nixon spoke bitterly of his party. He remembered that in 1970 “I broke my ass for the party at considerable cost.” As far as he was concerned, the Republican National Committee simply could be folded into the White House. He told Ehrlichman that he had never stood higher in public esteem, while the Republican National Committee had never stood lower. The fact is that in order to gain personal support Nixon willingly sidestepped giving support to Republican candidates. A year earlier, he told Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and Magruder that Democrats who had opposed the Mansfield Amendment, providing for a cutoff in support for the Vietnam war, were not to have “significant” Republican opposition. He told Senator George Smathers (D–FL) that he wanted leading congressional Democrats to support him or at least stay neutral while they concentrated on their own races.48
The President’s erstwhile campaign manager had no doubts as to the meaning of the 1972 election. John Mitche
ll told the President that voters saw Richard Nixon as “the personification” of what they wanted in the office. Those voters might not have understood the “brilliance” of the President’s foreign policy or all the “nuances of his economic policy,” but somehow, Mitchell said, “they can perceive the total accomplishment and accept it as in their interest and in the interest of the USA.” Nixon told Haldeman that this was a “brilliantly perceptive” thought. Mitchell also praised the President’s understanding of the political forces in the nation. Finally, he touched on that favorite sore—“our friends in the media.” They were wrong, Mitchell gloated: “Richard Nixon was the one” who really had hold of the national pulse. The President marked the passage and told Haldeman that it would be “good for a column.”49
As usual, Nixon had his own special post-election analysis. Before and after the election, he told his aides that they should prepare a monograph entitled, “Dirtiest Campaign in History Against a President.” Throughout the campaign he emphasized the need to expose and counterattack “smears”—a category in which he included any attacks regarding Watergate. He wanted the smears connected to similar attacks in the past to show that he had always been the victim, not the perpetrator. In his earlier campaigns, Nixon admitted, “RN hit hard on the issues, but never … rais[ed] questions about motives or patriotism, only about judgment.” The President remembered his campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas as “one of the cleanest” in history. Most important to Nixon, he wanted his aides, in publicizing the election, to emphasize that “RN Won It”—not that McGovern lost it or that the McGovern candidacy was tailor-made for an easy victory. He stressed the “overwhelming odds” he confronted—a hostile Congress and a Republican registration of only 25 percent of all voters, down from the 35 percent of the Eisenhower years. Then, too, he wanted “RN” praised for the “tough decisions” he had made, such as on Cambodia; the mining of Haiphong Harbor; the visit to China; his Supreme Court appointments; his Southern Strategy; his opposition to busing; his “standing firm on the patriotic theme”; his opposition to expanded welfare, marijuana, and amnesty—on the whole, “where RN took a strong position, he turned out to be right and some of the staffers turned out to be wrong.” McGovern didn’t lose the election, the President repeatedly insisted; “it was the case of RN winning the election.”50
The Wars of Watergate Page 35
