The President spoke to the nation the next evening, Monday, April 30. In retrospect, his words ring hollow. But at the time he projected a measure of confidence, and given his undoubted exhaustion from the events of the past few days, he displayed remarkable resiliency.
Nixon decided to admit no culpability for himself, a decision he later explained as a response to his growing fear of the nature of his enemies and opposition. In his memoirs, he acknowledged he had “thrown down a gauntlet to Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and the Washington establishment and challenged them to engage in epic battle.” If he admitted any vulnerabilities, he thought, his opponents would “savage” him. He believed he could portray events as “just politics.” The resulting address was vintage Nixon. He blamed externals, extolled his record, and both praised and questioned the motives of others. He accepted responsibility as “the man at the top,” a thinly veiled abstraction that he later admitted fooled no one. Nixon lied when he said he had no knowledge of events prior to March 21. He thought he could put Watergate behind him with “excuses,” a style not unfamiliar to him. Later, he realized that “he could not have made a more disastrous miscalculation.”53 “Fatal” would have been more accurate.
Henry Kissinger had watched the President’s April 30 television address and found it unconvincing. Worse, he thought, no one “could avoid the impression that he was no longer in control of events.” The President had offered a similar judgment a few days earlier: “It’s all over, do you know that?” he remarked to his Press Secretary. Nixon later realized that he had amputated both arms. Perhaps he could survive, he recalled, but the day left him “so anguished and saddened that from that day on the presidency lost all joy for me.” He noted that he had written his last full diary entry on April 14. “Events became so cheerless that I no longer had the time or the desire to dictate daily reflections.” But an anonymous aide fit the event into a familiar Nixon pattern: “For Nixon,” he claimed, “the shortest distance between two points is over four corpses.” Around this time, former aide Daniel Moynihan offered the President some curious comfort, suggesting that his men had not acted evilly but had brought on the “present shame” as a result of their “innocence.” Somehow, Moynihan concluded their actions were analogous to the “innocence” of antiwar and antiestablishment demonstrators in “elite schools.” “Extremely thoughtful,” Nixon told Alexander Haig, who had moved into Haldeman’s place.54
The bright prospects for the second term had dimmed. The high expectations for fresh ideas and personnel were strangled at the outset, virtually stillborn as the President and his closest aides grappled with the growing tentacles of Watergate. Their struggles were futile; in effect, by April 30 the presidency of Richard Nixon was over. The President told the nation in his television address that he wanted the 1,361 days remaining in his term “to be the best days in America’s history.” But Richard Nixon spent the next 465 days mostly fending off his “enemies,” themselves once pursued, now the pursuers. To be sure, he had a few triumphs left to savor, but these would be in foreign lands, not his own. The President and Kissinger still worked for diplomatic glory, for the United States, and for themselves. But there was no Haldeman, no Ehrlichman, no Mitchell, no Dean to fend off Nixon’s demons and antagonists and to cover the mistakes and misdeeds of his Administration. Indeed, several days after Nixon dismissed his aides, John Dean began to speak to the prosecutors in the Justice Department about the activities of “Mr. P” himself.55 The President’s personal fate had to be played out, but one suspects he knew what it would be long before others. Richard Nixon stood alone, naked to his enemies.
BOOK FOUR
THE
WATERGATE WAR
DISARRAY AND DISGRACE MAY 1973–AUGUST 1974
XIII
NEW ENEMIES
THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR AND THE SENATE COMMITTEE: MAY 1973
The April explosions gave no sign of abating as the calendar turned to May. The President’s April 30 speech fueled charges of wider scandal and stimulated pressures for a wider investigation. Nixon’s credibility was at stake. If Haldeman and Ehrlichman were among the “finest public servants” he had ever known, as he had said on the air, then why fire them?
The President now confronted the need to replace his staff, a need that required him to find loyal retainers, yet ones who would inspire public confidence. Having no alternative, Nixon also had to accept the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to plumb Watergate. Meanwhile, the Senate Select Committee prepared for a midmonth opening of its hearings, and its investigators pursued many witnesses already questioned by the U.S. Attorney, some of whom were now prepared to offer greater cooperation.
Nixon’s position was deteriorating rapidly, and a sharp erosion of his public support undermined him even more. The Silent Majority or Square America—however he characterized it—had begun to question the President’s behavior. In early April, a Gallup poll showed that the President had a nearly two-to-one approval rating, standing at 59 percent of respondents approving of his performance, 33 percent disapproving. The surveys for May 1–3 demonstrated a striking change, recorded at 48–40 percent approval/disapproval, with 12 percent now undecided. Ten days later, Gallup discovered the truly dramatic shift: 44 percent of respondents now approved of the President, while 45 percent disapproved. Reflecting the national erosion of confidence, Egil Krogh, under intense pressure for his role in the Fielding break-in, found the President’s speech “unpersuasive.” Krogh told Ehrlichman that Nixon was “on darn thin ice,” and “in a helluva spot” for not having investigated matters “vigorously.”
Pat Buchanan pleaded with Nixon not to appease his opponents. This was not the time, Buchanan warned, “to surrender all claim to the positions we have held in the past”; instead it was a time for a “low profile and quiet rearmament in this worthwhile struggle.” He urged Nixon to take the offensive and not passively “suffer the death of a thousand cuts.” Nixon responded that it would be useful to unleash Spiro Agnew or John Connally to say that the President had been right in his handling of the Watergate affair.
But would the President have the credibility and the public support that Buchanan claimed for him? In early May, conservative political strategist Kevin Phillips wrote in the newsletter he published that the “wheels of government [had] ground to a substantial halt.” Washington, he said, now confronted the central questions: “1. Is the scandal going to get worse? and 2. Is Richard Nixon himself going to be involved? More and more people believe that the answer to both is ‘yes.’ ” President Richard Nixon had moved into uncharted, dangerous territory.1
The President was demoralized, confused, and increasingly reclusive. A year later, he recalled April 1973 as “about as rugged a period as anybody could be through.” At a Cabinet meeting on May 2, Nixon upbraided outgoing Attorney General Kleindienst because the FBI had sealed the office files of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Nixon had apparently forgotten that he had directed that action. Frustrated and angry himself, Kleindienst defended the move and left the meeting. Meanwhile, Seymour Hersh of the New York Times reported that six leading White House and CREEP officials—Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, Magruder, and LaRue—would be indicted.
Ron Ziegler offered an olive branch to the press. He contritely apologized to the Washington Post and its reporters, who had pursued the Watergate story most diligently. “In thinking of it all at this point in time, yes, I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to [reporters] Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein.” Ziegler pleaded that he had been “overenthusiastic” in his earlier remarks.2
Haldeman, however, had some good news. The dismissed aide continued to work in the White House, using his files (by then unsealed) to prepare for his defense. Haldeman also listened to some Oval Office tapes and prepared summaries for Nixon. In early June, he informed the President that Dean had left no written records of the fateful March 21 meeting. Ziegler told Nixon on June 4 that Haldeman’s summaries did not indicat
e any presidential cover-up. Nixon himself had signed out twenty-six tapes that day and then listened to them on earphones for ten to twelve hours some days. Somewhat reassured, the President returned to familiar topics: the failures and culpability of John Mitchell; and leaks, including those by “our Jewish friends—even on our White House staff.” Meanwhile, Nixon widened the circle of those with knowledge of the secret tapes, apprising his new Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig (who informed Kissinger), his recently appointed Counsel, J. Fred Buzhardt, and Stephen Bull, a young aide who had assumed many of Alexander Butterfield’s duties.3
On May 4, Nixon announced that General Haig would assume Haldeman’s duties on an “interim” basis. Haig already had moved into the post before the announcement. The “interim” designation served only to mark time before Haig could “retire” from the Army and assume his civilian position. Some congressmen futilely challenged the legality of the appointment, since Haig would serve the President while on active military duty. John Connally was brought to the White House as an unpaid adviser, but his duties were ill-defined, and he left soon thereafter. Buzhardt, General Counsel at the Department of Defense, came to the White House on a “temporary” basis as special counsel for Watergate affairs, supposedly with direct access to the President. Buzhardt and Haig had been together at West Point and were good friends. Buzhardt remained at the White House for the next fifteen months, and he served as Haig’s closest confidant.
Circumstances gave Haig more influence with the President and far more authority of his own than Haldeman had enjoyed, though Haig seems to have performed less efficiently. Haldeman had rarely imposed his personal beliefs on his job or acted on his own authority, but the times—and the President’s preoccupation with his own problems—had changed conditions, and Haig did not hesitate to do so. Haig probably reduced the President’s affinity for compartmentalization of his affairs, more as a result of circumstances than of design. When Haig moved into his post, most of his potential rivals had departed. After May 1, no Haldemans, Ehrlichmans, or Colsons remained to serve the President in their special, independent ways. When such rivals did emerge, as for example, the parade of various lawyers who conducted the President’s defense—Leonard Garment, J. Fred Buzhardt, Charles Alan Wright, and finally, James St. Clair—they operated under the shadow of Alexander Haig. St. Clair served the President during the darkest hours of the impeachment crisis, yet he rarely saw Nixon alone. “It was my responsibility,” St. Clair recalled, “to keep General Haig fully informed. To keep him fully informed was thus keeping the President fully informed.… [O]n occasion I reported directly to the President. Almost in every case, General Haig was there.”4
Vice President Spiro Agnew considered Haig “the de facto President” after he became White House Chief of Staff. Haig had cultivated extensive connections within the CIA, the FBI, and numerous other agencies throughout the government, Agnew wrote. More tellingly, he described Haig as “self-centered, ambitious, and ruthless”—in no other way could a man so quickly move from lieutenant colonel to four-star general and become the President’s most important aide. Perhaps Nixon believed that Haig would serve in gratitude for his rapid promotion. Haig was a man who knew how to ingratiate himself for his own gain, however petty. In a lengthy “personal and confidential” memo to Haldeman in April 1971, Haig, then Kissinger’s deputy on the National Security Council, pleaded for a place on the “A List” for the White House Motor Pool. Marshaling his arguments as if contending for a significant policy shift, Haig cited his long hours, his need to be on call “to put out one fire or another,” his surrender of Army privileges (living quarters, car, personal aide, and a servant), and his family’s need for a car (“so that family management can progress alongside White House management”)—all this, Haig said, “would more than justif[y]” an automobile privilege.5
Haig’s rise had been meteoric and had not been achieved without doubt and distaste on the part of his fellow military officers. He had graduated 214th in a class of 310 at West Point in 1947. He served on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff for two years and subsequently experienced combat in Korea and Vietnam. The Army initially nominated several more-experienced colonels when Kissinger requested a deputy for himself as National Security Council adviser, but Kissinger insisted on Haig as a result of a recommendation by one of his own patrons. By the end of 1972, Haig had his four stars as a general “without the benefit of a single day in a military job since his command of a battalion … in 1967,” as General Bruce Palmer wrote, and he had been jumped over 240 senior officers. In January 1973, Nixon nominated Haig to be the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff to replace Palmer, although Haig’s selection went against the recommendations of both outgoing Chief of Staff William Westmoreland and his successor, Creighton Abrams. After Haig moved to the Pentagon, the President provided him with a secure phone link to the White House, and Haig remained “deeply involved” in Administration affairs. Haig’s connection only fueled resentment in the Pentagon.6
Until the Watergate crisis, Haig was a shadowy figure, yet one Nixon trusted in a special way. In the wake of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s spying on Kissinger and the National Security Council in 1971, the President directed that nothing be done to harm Haig. Haig was then Kissinger’s deputy, although many suspected that he kept both White House and Pentagon officials apprised of Kissinger’s activities. By early 1973, Nixon and his aides used Haig as a counterweight to Kissinger. When General Brent Scowcroft moved into the National Security Council on January 1973, Haldeman told Haig to brief his fellow general and “totally level with him on the Kissinger problem,” meaning the difficulty of working with Kissinger.7
White House staffers knew that Haldeman was the President’s alter ego, but so was Haig in his way. Agnew found him “servile to those in the President’s favor, overbearing to those outside the loop.” He usefully served Nixon, a man who liked to “achieve results through indirection,” Agnew added.
Yet Haig always seemed uncertain of his authority. According to Stephen Bull, Haig often would say, “I am the Chief of Staff” whenever challenged, “and I make all the decisions in the White House,” repeating himself five or six times in the same situation. Bull, who served under both Haldeman and Haig, deeply believed that Haig served himself rather than the President. When, as Secretary of State in 1981, Haig appeared at the White House following the attempted assassination of President Reagan and proclaimed, “I am in charge here,” many observers found him displaying a familiar pattern of behavior—characterized by Bull as a “very serious personality disorder.” Haldeman, Bull recalled, never had to remind others of his authority, and Haig often expressed insecurity about himself vis-à-vis Haldeman. But then, one often was uncertain as to which Haig he encountered. The General was, recalled one official, “an improvisateur of a persona.”
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu remembered his meetings with Haig similarly: “When he is a general, Haig thinks like me,” said Thieu. “When he is a special envoy of President Nixon, he does the job of a special envoy.” Haig had a way of making himself indispensable, like Thomas Cromwell, who in a famous play described his role for Henry VIII: “I do things.” Kissinger praised his deputy as a man who “disciplined my anarchic tendencies and established coherence and prudence” in the staff of “talented prima donnas.” But Kissinger also recognized that Haig was ruthless; Haig, he remembered, “was implacable in squeezing to the sidelines potential competitors for my attention.” Altogether, Kissinger concluded, a “formidable” man.8
Repairing staff damage, of course, had a high priority for the President. It was imperative that he appoint a new Attorney General who could command respect across the political spectrum. William Rogers pressed for Elliot Richardson, a man with proven skills and versatility with experience in both the Nixon and Eisenhower administrations. The President had anticipated Rogers’s suggestion nearly a year earlier. One day before the Watergate break-in, Nixon told Ehrlichman to info
rm Richardson, then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, that he would be one of the few Cabinet officials retained; in fact, the President told Ehrlichman, he might name Richardson as Attorney General.9
A Harvard Law School graduate, a former law clerk to Judge Learned Hand and Justice Felix Frankfurter, and a quintessential Boston Brahmin in appearance, manner, and commitment, Richardson epitomized all that the President despised, distrusted—and envied. But that same background, coupled with a respect for his integrity, now offered an irresistible appeal to the beleaguered President. Richardson had assumed the leadership of the Defense Department just three months earlier, after his stint directing HEW. He had no desire to leave the Pentagon, for he regarded his Cabinet job as equal in importance to that of Secretary of State. The President, Richardson claimed uneasily, had promised him that he would be a “counterweight” to Kissinger in mapping the Administration’s geopolitical strategy. Furthermore, the prospect of an ongoing Watergate investigation promised much unpleasantness. But Elliot Richardson was widely regarded as a “good soldier,” and the request to head the Department of Justice gave him an opportunity to add to his already substantial reputation as cooperative and reliable. When Richardson took the Pentagon post, for example, he literally begged the President to allow him to retain his longtime personal aide, conceding, however, that he would respect the President’s wishes. Meanwhile, concerning the Watergate scandals, Nixon assured Richardson on April 29: “You’ve got to believe I didn’t know anything.”10
The Wars of Watergate Page 48
