Moore tried to assure the President that nothing “touches you.” But Nixon worried about his conversations with Dean. He labored mightily to persuade Moore that the payments to the Watergate defendants were not an obstruction of justice, but Moore stood his ground. Nixon wanted reassurance that Dean would not attack him personally. Moore hesitated: “John’s a strange fellow,” he responded, “I don’t know much about him.” Dean had gone to three different schools, Moore noted, and he had had some ethical difficulty in his law firm (which the President seemed to know). “I don’t know how much principle he has.… I have a feeling he will attack anybody … and say anything, at this point forward, if it suits his purpose,” said Moore.
With that, the President reassumed his lofty posture, offering to get Dean immunity and letting him say anything. After all, Nixon said, “I understand it isn’t me personally. It’s the office we’ve got to protect.” (That same day Nixon had told Haldeman that “it just irritates me when people like Garment and others come in here and say, the hell with people, the Presidency is bigger, and so forth.”) The conversation with Moore ended on a totally different note, however, as Moore warned Nixon to be cautious in his dealings with Petersen.41
Earlier that day Haldeman told the President: “I did not know, and you did not know, and I don’t know today, and I don’t believe you do really, what happened in the Watergate case.” Nixon readily agreed, but as Haldeman later recalled, his own statement was a classic—presumably a classic intended to construct a defense for the President and his men. That morning discussion apparently paved the way for the President’s evening meeting with John Wilson and Frank Strickler, attorneys representing both Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The lawyers forcefully argued that the prosecutors could not have a very viable criminal case, and they urged the President to stand firm on behalf of their clients. Haldeman had warned that morning that “the President is going to be badly hurt by our stepping out.” Nixon appeared to waver in his decision to force his aides’ resignation, for the arguments seemed compelling. But Richard Nixon was a political man, not a legalist; he had to confront immediate political reality, not the law and the lengthy process of justice. Time enough for that later, he recognized.42
Nixon always was a man who knew his interest. Now he imagined favorable scenarios—that Dean would cooperate with the White House, for example, or that Mitchell would take complete responsibility. As late as April 25, Nixon still considered means of mollifying Dean. More likely than reclaiming Dean’s allegiance, however, was that retaining Haldeman and Ehrlichman would provide a measure of protection. The President gave complete trust only rarely. Could he trust these men if they were on their own? They knew so much—and they knew there were records. Haldeman had helped to install the secret Oval Office taping system; Ehrlichman was aware of the system as well, though apparently he was not supposed to be. Indeed, on April 26 Ehrlichman urged the President to listen to his tapes to determine exactly what he had said to Dean. Ehrlichman reassured Nixon that he and Haldeman wanted no harm inflicted on the President or the office, but he thought impeachment might be conceivable—“on the ground that you committed a crime.” Ehrlichman hastily added that he did not think Nixon had done so, but he suggested listening to the tapes.
Nixon had to get his men behind him. “What would you fellows answer[,] for example[,] if Dean testifies that there was a discussion in which I said Hunt’s lawyer had to get paid off[?]” Ehrlichman responded, “Let’s see what the tapes do.” They then moved from Nixon’s “central concern,” as Haldeman characterized it, to the future of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman fought like a tiger. Fire Dean, he urged. Haldeman should take a leave because of the charges, but Ehrlichman himself should stay on, because no serious charge had been leveled at him. Someone—the President, Haldeman, or Ehrlichman—bitterly assailed Dean and Petersen, somehow suggesting that Dean had blackmailed Petersen and thus would get immunity—a statement wholly opposite from Petersen’s position. (On April 26, Nixon pathetically told Haldeman that Petersen was “all I got,” after he learned that Haldeman’s lawyers did not trust the Assistant Attorney General. Nixon thought that Petersen would “hold up.” “[D]epends on how much Dean has on him, and he’s got a lot,” Haldeman responded.)
Ehrlichman warned that if he had to take leave, “I gotta start answering questions.” Whether he was presenting a fact or a threat was not clear. “Let me ask you this, to be quite candid,” the President responded. “Is there any way you can use cash?” Haldeman reacted with a blend of fury and sarcasm. They were being “drummed” out of office for their “supposed role” in payments to the defendants, and now the President offered them cash. “That compounds the problem,” he told Nixon. “That really does.”
The President persisted in lining up his alibis. “We have to remember what our, what the line, and the line has got to be.” The others agreed that Dean now must be their primary target. The President should tell the nation that he could not operate the presidency under threat from the likes of John Dean, Haldeman said. Ehrlichman contributed his part: “The American people—you gotta go on the assumption that the American people want to believe in their President.” Cover-up still was the order of the day, but now John Dean would be the scapegoat.43
Haldeman listened to the March 21 tape that afternoon and then gave an interpretation that would remain at the foundation of the President’s defense. Nixon and Dean had discussed the White House’s role in the break-in and the defendant’s demands for money. Now, Haldeman proposed the following version: Nixon had asked leading questions; he was trying to “bust the case,” and he did not know “whether to believe this guy [Dean] at this point.” The President had also then realized that Hunt was blackmailing him on the Plumbers, but he no longer would support payments because he knew he could defend the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on national-security grounds. Haldeman was not sure that this interpretation of the March 21 record could be sustained—particularly if Dean had a different version of the conversation. “I just wonder if the son-of-a-bitch had a recorder on him,” Nixon remarked. The two men had raised the possibility earlier in the morning. “I just can’t believe that anybody, that even John Dean, would come into this office with a tape recorder.” Few conversations in this period dripped with more irony.
The next day the President told Haldeman that they had to keep the Oval Office taping system secret. If the tapes became public knowledge, Nixon said, they should admit they made them, but only for “national security information”—which, of course, then had to remain secret. “You never want to be in a position to say the President taped it, you know. I mean taped somebody.” Haldeman thought there was no need to worry—unless there were impeachment proceedings, which he considered out of the question. “My God, what the hell have we done to be impeached?” Nixon responded. Haldeman thought that if Dean taped the March 21 meeting, it would only show he was trying to trap the President, and his motives would be subject to scrutiny. Nixon praised his men for the protection they gave him, but laid down the alibi one more time: “I didn’t know, you know. I mean I didn’t. I deliberately got—the staff protected me from it for their credit[,] and I just wasn’t getting involved.”44
On the evening of April 25, Ehrlichman learned that his spirited defense of himself earlier that day had been for naught. Nixon called to relay the news that the Justice Department had notified the Ellsberg case’s trial judge about the Plumbers; Petersen had finally decided to reject the President’s earlier angry order not to “be messing in national security matters.” Gently, but absurdly, Nixon told Ehrlichman that he had instructed Kleindienst to do everything possible to keep the news secret. Now, the President said, Ehrlichman had to take a leave of absence. Bad news exploded like Chinese firecrackers. Two minutes after Kleindienst called about the Plumbers, Nixon learned that the New York Times was about to reveal Pat Gray’s destruction of the evidence from Hunt’s safe linking Colson to the Plumbers—evidence Ehrlichman
had suggested that Gray “deep six.”
Nixon’s last official conference with Haldeman ended with a tirade—against Dean, Ehrlichman, Alger Hiss, Sherman Adams, the usual enemies, and the violence that had been directed against him; it all spilled forth like a torrent. What went wrong? “I mean, we don’t have any investigators, that’s our problem, see,” he said. This, as Haldeman later noted, from the man who created the Plumbers.45
Not all the bad news reached the White House. The prosecutors had learned from Anthony Ulasewicz, a former New York policeman, that he had been a courier for Herbert Kalmbach and had delivered cash payments to several of the Watergate defendants, including $154,000 to Howard Hunt.46 With Ulasewicz offering corroborating testimony, John Dean’s credibility increased significantly. So, too, did his vulnerability—as did that of his various superiors at the White House.
On April 27 Nixon spoke to Assistant Attorney General Petersen again. Published reports indicated that Dean had implicated the President. Petersen assured Nixon that he had instructed the prosecutors that they had no “mandate” to investigate the President; “we investigate Watergate,” he told them. He flatly told Nixon—and consistently maintained the position—that the House of Representatives had the responsibility for investigating the President of the United States. In short, only an impeachment inquiry was proper. But Nixon demanded that Petersen determine the source of the Dean story. Several minutes later, Petersen returned, reporting that the threat had come from Dean’s attorney, and the prosecutors had no idea what he had in mind. They thought the lawyer had engaged in bombast as part of plea-bargaining.
Nixon was furious. He called in Ziegler and ordered the story refuted, claiming that Petersen had found it untrue. The anger compounded with mockery and self-pity. He told Petersen that he had “to maintain the Presidency out of this. I have got things to do for this country,” Nixon said. “I sometimes feel I’d like to resign. Let Agnew be President for a while. He’d love it.” One minute he said he did not want to hurt Dean; moments later he told Petersen he would fight Dean and refute any challenge. Nixon thought it would be fine to immunize Dean, but Petersen resisted because he believed an immunized Dean would lose credibility. Petersen’s successful challenge on this score was crucial for maintaining Dean’s standing as a public witness. Petersen told Nixon that immunity was the responsibility of the Department of Justice; the President’s opinion would be “advisory only.” He envisioned John Dean—co-defendant, not immunized witness—providing the key testimony against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Richard Nixon did not own Henry Petersen; the Assistant Attorney General was not Henry Kissinger, after all.
Nixon pleaded for advice in dealing with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The least painful course for him was that they take leaves of absence. But Petersen challenged the President: why did he think he could separate the two from Dean—because they were “loyal” to the last minute? Petersen considered the distinction between dismissal and leave illusory. Later, he testily remarked that “the President was poorly advised on the premises.” But his suspicions were aroused. His wife, he told Nixon, had asked him whether he thought the President had been involved. He himself would resign if he thought so, he told her. Oblique as the implied request was, Petersen had asked the President the most important question of all. “Mr. President, I pray for you, sir,” Petersen remarked, as if to reinforce his concern. And again, he urged Nixon not to distinguish Haldeman and Ehrlichman from Dean. He pleaded with him to be forceful and take action. He knew the President and others wanted the investigation shut down. Petersen had told his parish priest that he considered Watergate the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War, “and this guy [the President] is sitting there telling me I had to be fair to these people.” Eight days earlier Petersen had assured the President of his “confidence” in him. Obviously, the past eight days had shaken Petersen’s certain world. But Nixon refused to give him the direct answer he wanted. “We’ve got to get it out.… I have wrestled with it,” was all Nixon could manage.47
Pat Gray’s withdrawal of his nomination as FBI Director, on April 5, allowed him to stay in place pending the appointment of a successor. But the end for Gray came suddenly on April 27—probably before either he or the President intended, particularly in the light of Nixon’s crisis involving the futures of his closest White House aides. The New York Times revealed that Ehrlichman and Dean had given Gray, then Acting FBI Director, the contents of Howard Hunt’s office safe at a White House meeting on June 28, 1972. Dean reportedly said that the contents “should never see the light of day.” Gray accepted the material after Dean assured him that it had nothing to do with the Watergate incident. He stored the papers in his house until July 3 and then brought them to FBI headquarters for destruction, claiming that he never examined them. Dean had informed the Justice Department of the incident in mid-April, after he had lost control of the cover-up and as he bargained for the best possible advantage for himself. Gray twice denied the charge but finally admitted it to Petersen. He acknowledged having burned the material, although he claimed he had never read it. Gray stood exposed as a perjurer, for he had testified earlier to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was convinced Dean had made no effort to conceal Hunt’s files.
The President heard the news while aboard Air Force One and ordered Ehrlichman to demand Gray’s immediate resignation from the FBI. On that same flight, the President mused to Ehrlichman that 50 percent of him and Haldeman was worth more than 100 percent of any replacement. Nixon seemed to be offering a graceful exit, as he told Ehrlichman that he and Haldeman could continue to work on their files and ease things for their successors. Comfortingly, he added that Sherman Adams never had been indicted.48
The President—and the FBI—now desperately needed a leader who would be perceived as “Mr. Clean.” He came in the form of William Ruckelshaus, a bright, highly respected, middle-level Administration official then serving as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. Although he filled the bill, however, Ruckelshaus was not exactly what Nixon had in mind. The model remained J. Edgar Hoover—feared, loathed, respected, useful—but withal, too independent and too powerful. Nixon had no objection to the Hoover model, save for a proviso that the Director be his Director. The President instructed Ziegler to announce that Ruckelshaus was not being considered for the post on a permanent basis and would eventually return to the Environmental Protection Agency, at Ruckelshaus’s own request. Nixon and Ehrlichman met immediately with Ruckelshaus. Following their session, Ehrlichman went to his office for an FBI interview regarding his role in the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.49 The land mines seemed to be everywhere.
The Ruckelshaus appointment again rattled the FBI hierarchy. Not lightly did they accept the selection of a man who had led celebrations of Earth Day as head of the EPA while they had masterminded surveillance of the same event. The old guard was in near-mutiny, boldly sending a letter to the President urging consideration for “the highly qualified professionals with impeccable credentials of integrity within the organization itself.” Ruckelshaus immediately ordered heads of FBI field offices to Washington to a meeting and reassured them that the Bureau would maintain independence. He thought that the disaffection rested only at the very top levels. When he took office, he realized the Bureau was “torn asunder,” yet he did not think it was “falling apart.” He found the institution as a whole quite strong, “so highly structured, with its assignments so clearly delineated,… [that] the institution itself was largely untouched outside of Washington.” Ironically but appropriately, Ruckelshaus credited Hoover for the legacy of an effective, functioning FBI. Hoover’s old aides, however, actively schemed for one of their own as Director. Louis Nichols, a former Associate Director who was close to the President, urged that Nixon personally approach Cartha DeLoach, a former top official, or ex-agent John Bugas, both then highly placed in the business world. In case the President still felt indebted to William Sullivan, hi
s ally in the Huston Plan and Hoover’s old nemesis, Nichols passed the word that Sullivan had had a nervous breakdown and also that he had opposed Nixon in 1968.50 The War of the FBI Succession was more than a skirmish in the widening Watergate War.
When Ruckelshaus agreed to take the FBI post, he asked Nixon whether the President himself had been involved in the Watergate affair in any way. Nixon offered the respectful Ruckelshaus “a very convincing argument” that he was in no way implicated in any wrongdoing. That was the last time Ruckelshaus saw the President; but he was not the last to hear Nixon’s “convincing argument” for his innocence.51
The Plumbers and the Gray revelations proved too much for Attorney General Kleindienst. On Friday, April 27, as Gray stepped down, Kleindienst decided to submit his resignation the following Monday. But Richard Nixon had other plans. On Sunday he summoned Haldeman and Ehrlichman to Camp David to demand their resignations. Five days earlier, Nixon had told Haldeman that he would consider asking him to take a leave of absence, but he would not demand his resignation. For his part, Ehrlichman had not expected such summary treatment and resisted, furious that he was lumped together with Dean. The President told each man separately that he prayed he would not awake; to Haldeman, he added that “I’m the guilty one,” mentioning his giving free rein to Colson, his allowing Dean to maintain the cover-up, and his mistake in allowing Mitchell to run the campaign.
Despite his tearful appearance, the President knew his course. That weekend, he also called in Kleindienst and ordered him to submit his resignation at once. He wanted to announce the resignations of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean—and Kleindienst—as a package, to demonstrate his determination for a “clean sweep.” Kleindienst argued it was unfair to link him to the others. Nixon recalled that “the poor beleaguered man” sobbed, yet the President told him that Elliot Richardson already had been selected to succeed him and, in fact, was in the next room. The firings were the “toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” the President told Richardson. Nixon called Kissinger that evening, “nearly incoherent with grief,” and told him that he needed him more than ever, to “help me protect the national security matters now that Ehrlichman is leaving.” Kissinger spitefully, but correctly, regarded the remark as both “a plea and a form of blackmail.”52
The Wars of Watergate Page 47
