The Wars of Watergate

by Stanley I. Kutler

  The White House thought that attacks on Dash might intimidate or delay the proceedings. Ehrlichman asked Gray to have the FBI check Dash’s background. When Dash hired a chief investigator—a man distinguished for inventing a “bug” designed to simulate a martini olive—White House staff workers publicly complained that Dash had “compromised” the entire investigative process, despite the fact that the man had already been relieved. They also discovered that Dash had criticized Mitchell and that a Select Committee staff lawyer had criticized the Administration when he had been fired as head of legal services at the Office of Economic Opportunity. White House aide Ken Khachigian told Larry Higby that with enough pressure, they could force Dash’s resignation and “throw the Ervin Hearings into chaos.” But Khachigian was operating amid chaos—and did not know it. He gave his memo to John Dean, requesting approval and action; at the same time, Dean was negotiating with the prosecutors and preparing to talk to Dash.34

  The most elaborate White House plans for coping with the Senate Select Committee involved its arrangements with Howard Baker. Baker had led the Republican opposition when the Senate authorized the committee in February. Despite senatorial courtesy, Baker’s readily transparent attempts to narrow the scope of the investigation fooled few people. In the months prior to the public hearings, Baker regularly consulted with Nixon’s chief aides, fought to contain the investigation, and argued in behalf of the President’s tactics within the committee. He failed, notwithstanding his thinly disguised appeals for “fairness.”

  According to Dean, Baker requested an off-the-record meeting with the President in late February or early March, just after he selected Fred Thompson, a Tennessee campaign aide and a former U.S. Attorney, as the Senate Committee’s Minority Counsel. White House congressional-liaison men had suggested other names to Baker, but Baker went his own way. Dean thought that Baker wanted to assure Nixon of his good intentions. The President’s briefing paper—prepared by Dean or his aides—suggested that Baker prevent the hearings from becoming a “political circus” and that they be concluded quickly because they were nothing more than a “witch hunt.” The President could assure the Senator that the White House had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in, and he could inform Baker that the Democrats had bugged Nixon’s own offices in 1968. The paper also stressed that Dash was partisan and urged that the minority members of the committee treat him roughly. Finally, it was suggested that Baker meet with Dean to discuss committee matters, a ploy that would reinforce claims for executive privilege for Dean should he be called as a witness.

  When Dean and Baker later clashed over this meeting in an executive session of the committee, Dean admitted that Baker had urged the President to waive executive privilege. But he insisted that Nixon believed he had Baker’s commitment to aid the White House. Colson told the President on March 21 that Baker was eager to cooperate and that the Senator had signalled the President to ignore his public statements, as they were for “political” consumption. Baker met Kleindienst for secret consultations, and a Baker aide informed Colson that Baker hoped to “control” Ervin. Ehrlichman assured Nixon that Baker was “protecting us” regarding executive-session testimony by White House aides. Baker and Ehrlichman held lengthy discussions regarding television coverage of the hearings. They talked several times in late March and early April, and on several occasions, Baker spoke to the President.35

  Baker and Thompson labored to ensure that the hearings would end by June and to keep them confined to the Watergate break-in, dirty tricks, and campaign financing. At a crucial May 8 executive session of the committee, Baker argued that the burglars (excepting McCord) and the arresting police officers should appear first, followed by Mitchell, Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman. Dean would be last, thus enabling the others to avoid responding to his accusations. Baker also wanted senators to question witnesses before the committee counsels had their turn. Ervin would have none of it: “Well, my daddy used to say that if you hire a lawyer, you should either take his advice or fire him. Since we’re not planning to fire Sam Dash, I suggest we take his advice.”

  Baker tenaciously opposed granting immunity to Dean, as requested by Dash. He faithfully echoed the emerging White House line: “I believe he is probably the most culpable and dangerous person in the Watergate affair.” He complained that Dean and his lawyer had intimidated the committee. Again: “From what I hear, Dean is the principal culprit in this Watergate affair.” Gurney readily supported him, but Weicker backed Dash’s position, leaving Baker no choice but to go along rather than isolate himself. He asked that the record show his “grave concern.” Senator Ervin, always mindful of senatorial courtesies, “suspected” that the White House tried, but unsuccessfully, to influence Baker.36

  In the wake of the departure of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, with possible indictments facing them and other White House staffers, Pat Buchanan fretted over the forthcoming hearings, with “the Great Constitutionalist putting on his daily television show.” He suggested that if the President revealed “all” the campaign’s dirty tricks on both sides, and if he advocated campaign-financing legislation, he might abort the proceedings or at least defuse the revelations of what Buchanan called “a trick-a-day.” By now, however, events and revelations had far outstripped the Administration’s capacity for defensive, let alone counteroffensive, measures.37

  On February 21, at the initial meeting of the newly formed Senate Select Committee, Baker offered what was to become a familiar homily on nonpartisanship. The inquiry, he said, should be a “Committee undertaking and not a Republican-Democratic undertaking.” He urged his colleagues “to act as much as possible as a judicial body.” The group approved Ervin’s selection of the committee’s Counsel, Sam Dash.38

  The Democrats appointed Senate veterans to their four places on the Select Committee. They were low-profile legislators who did not project the fiery partisanship of an Edward Kennedy, and their publicity mills largely pointed to their home constituencies. Herman Talmadge, like his father before him, had long commanded the loyalties of his fellow Georgians. As Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he had important connections to conservative Midwestern Republicans. He retained only a few vestiges of Georgia populism, and he and his wife had social links to the Nixons. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii had been a risk-taker as a young Army combat soldier in Italy during World War II, but he had evolved into a cautious, discreet Senator whose caution and discretion had served his career quite well. Inouye’s bland demeanor barely masked his contempt for the Nixon White House, however. Joseph Montoya was an amiable veteran of New Mexico politics. Throughout the proceedings, Montoya’s staff prepared superb questions for him, many of which opened unexplored ground. But the Senator had neither the wit nor the energy to lead witnesses; instead, he preferred to squeeze vague moral advice to the young from those accused of wrongdoing. Whatever their differences in background and temperament, all three Democrats joined in unswerving support of Sam Ervin. His authority in the committee was never in jeopardy.39

  The Republicans lacked the Democrats’ cohesiveness. They also had different reasons for serving on the committee. Howard Baker had both Senate and national ambitions. Edward Gurney and Lowell Weicker actively campaigned to be on the committee. According to the Minority Counsel, Gurney considered television his medium and argued that he would project a favorable image for the party. A Republican from a traditionally Democratic state, Gurney had little modesty about his partisanship. He also had a problem with a political slush fund of his own. Of the three Republicans, only Gurney never indicated by appearance or substance anything less than absolute loyalty to Richard Nixon.

  Weicker reportedly had been prepared to denounce the Republican leadership if he were denied a seat on the Senate Watergate Committee. During the months of preparation for the hearings, the White House correctly perceived the Connecticut Republican as an adversary. The Senator’s motives are not easily discerned. He was a loose cannon, as the Administration h
ad feared. Dash never decided whether Weicker merely sought publicity, whether he was conducting a personal vendetta against the White House, or whether he pursued the investigation altruistically. Weicker immediately sensed that the Minority Counsel was Baker’s boy; he had a similar disdain for Dash. Both Ervin and Baker had difficulty keeping Weicker from marching off the reservation. With Weicker on their side, the outnumbered Republicans had no chance for unity.

  Throughout March and April Weicker became a familiar television figure, particularly for his spirited defense of Pat Gray and then for his equally spirited assault on the White House for its manipulation of Gray. But for many, much of that anger appeared contrived to boost the political stock of a first-term Senator who had captured only 38 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Whatever Weicker’s motives, however, his behavior to some extent forced the Ervin Committee to operate more openly than the Administration and Baker would have liked. The President’s supporters, with some justification, condemned the steady stream of leaks and the committee’s skillful use of television as an ordeal, not as an investigative tool necessarily characterized by fair play. Weicker, however, insisted on openness. At the outset he challenged his colleagues: “The most refreshing thing we can do is open the doors and let the press come in so that even our meetings would be public.” Secrecy and concealment, he contended, had been the hallmarks of the Watergate affair; he saw no reason for the investigators to operate in the same manner.40

  If Weicker’s actions were complex, Baker’s were nothing less than Byzantine. He developed back-channel lines to the White House, constantly sending word that Nixon was not to be misled by his public statements. Yet those statements were devastating, particularly Baker’s relentless—but largely misunderstood—line: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” Baker rarely sought to pursue the circumstantial evidence that he elicited from witnesses, and as a former prosecutor noted, he interfered when others tried to do so.41 He projected extremely well on television, combining a boyish smile with the appearance of a diffident, nonpartisan pursuit of the truth. In the end, Baker served himself well: a Republican, he nonetheless emerged from a Democratic-dominated show with his reputation substantially enhanced. He subsequently parlayed that performance into the position of Senate Republican leader and gained national visibility as a presidential contender.

  The Watergate hearings developed into a blend of education and extravaganza, and Sam Ervin was the undisputed impresario of both. When his White House critics called him the “Great Constitutionalist,” they both mocked and honored his reputation. Ervin’s constitutional views on some of the great issues of the day—on race, most notably—made him an unlikely paladin for any anti-Nixon venture. But the Administration’s views on wiretapping, executive privilege, and separation of powers deeply offended Ervin’s traditional, at times literal, understanding of the American Constitution. Whatever the depth of his constitutional knowledge or the extent of his commitments (and both were far greater than Ehrlichman and Buchanan would concede), Ervin unquestionably gave the lie to the Administration’s litany that the Senate proceedings merely masked a vicious, determined effort of Democrats and liberals to destroy their archenemy, Richard Nixon. Ervin hardly qualified as a member of any New York–Washington axis. Any notion that he fronted for Edward Kennedy or liberals, or that he sought to destroy Richard Nixon’s presidency, bordered on the absurd.

  Nixon’s aides only reflected his own attitudes toward Ervin. Shortly after his re-election, the President had Ervin on his mind, suggesting to Ehrlichman that some move be made to embarrass Ervin for the benefit of Jesse Helms, the Republican junior Senator from North Carolina. When Ervin asked Ehrlichman to waive a retirement-age requirement for an FCC commissioner, Ehrlichman coolly ignored him. After the creation of the Senate Select Committee, Nixon called Ervin one of four jackasses. In May 1973, North Carolina Republican officials confirmed that Haldeman had requested them to “dig up something to discredit Ervin and blast him with it.” Ervin responded to a reporter that the statute of limitations had expired on his past indiscretions, and he no longer had the capacity to commit others.42

  Sam Ervin had been a prime force in establishing the committee, and he easily dominated it. His Democratic colleagues gave him free rein. He hired Dash, a man with a considerable background in criminal law as a prosecutor and professor, who in turn assembled a formidable staff of lawyers and investigators. Dash, at forty-eight, was eighteen years older than Fred Thompson, his Republican counterpart. His experience in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, and his prominence in academic circles, dwarfed Thompson’s brief tenure as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Tennessee with a few years in private practice. Ervin, Dash, and the majority staff simply overwhelmed the lesser—and divided—Republican forces. Ervin himself was splendid media copy; he used some of his own staff for the committee’s work, and they skillfully leaked tantalizing and explosive information. From the start, the Senate Select Committee had the best of the White House when it came to public relations.

  Congressional hearings in television’s early days had attracted considerable attention. They did so both because their subject matter was dramatic—witness the Kefauver Crime Hearings and the Army-McCarthy Hearings—and because of skimpy competition from daytime network commercial programming. By 1973, however, daytime television was big business. Was Watergate of such compelling public interest as to justify coverage by the networks, entailing huge revenue losses? After the dramatic April 30 White House resignations, the television networks indicated a growing interest in the forthcoming proceedings. Broadcast executives pressed Dash for his schedule of witnesses. He disappointed them when he outlined his plan for building his case from lower-level officials before turning to the big names.43

  A week before the hearings began on May 17, public television committed itself to live coverage, but the three commercial networks remained undecided. At the last moment, they chose to cover the first day’s proceedings but to remain flexible thereafter. Network executives offered their own self-fulfilling prophecies. A CBS official feared that after a few days, the network would hear from “200,000 nice little old ladies whose favorite soap opera had been pre-empted by something called Watergate.” By the second day of the hearings, the networks’ lament was predictable. They complained that the hearings had attracted only 9.5 million viewers, down more than 4 million from their normal audiences. By the end of the first week, ABC and CBS revealed that their callers were speaking ten to one against live coverage. Most were angry: “We’re sick of nothing but Watergate, Watergate.” “Watergate is being shoved down our throats.” “You’re hurting the President.” By the beginning of the second week, the networks reached an unprecedented agreement among themselves to rotate live coverage, ostensibly to satisfy “viewer discontent.” The real discontent was in the boardrooms, since each hour of pre-empted programming lost the networks an estimated $120,000 in advertising revenues.44

  The networks did gain the sensational interest necessary to lure audiences when James McCord testified on the second day of the hearings that the cover-up could be linked to “the very highest levels of the White House.” On May 21, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released memoranda written by Vernon Walters of the CIA, including one quoting Haldeman as saying several days after the break-in that it was “the President’s wish” for Walters to talk to Gray regarding the investigation. Haldeman heatedly denied the allegation: “I can flatly say the President was not involved in any cover-up of anything at any time.”

  Nixon spoke for himself the next day. In a lengthy statement, he maintained that he had no prior knowledge of the break-in; that he had “no part in, nor was I aware of, subsequent efforts that may have been made to cover up Watergate”; that he knew of no offers of executive clemency; that his directive to Walters was meant only to protect covert CIA operations and that he never intende
d or attempted to involve the CIA in Watergate; that not until his own investigation had he learned of the break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office; and that he “specifically authorized” furnishing that information to Judge Byrne in California. While Nixon said he knew of the Plumbers, he denied approving or having knowledge of their illegal activities. “It now appears,” he added, that some persons had “gone beyond” his directives and used national security as an excuse “to cover up any involvement they or certain others might have had in Watergate.” Excessive zeal in behalf of the President and national security had become Nixon’s basic defense line. But now the President’s men were on their own. To underscore that point, the President reversed himself on executive privilege. He would not sanction such claims whenever testimony involved possible criminal conduct. A month earlier, on April 17, when the President publicly acknowledged his recognition of “serious charges” about the Watergate case, he had insisted emphatically that he “reserved” executive privilege and that it might be asserted regarding any questions raised during the hearings.45

  The President’s reversal on May 22 dramatically underscored his eroding position; nothing declined more sharply than his ability to challenge Congress. The irony of his situation must have tormented him. He repeatedly pressed his aides on President Truman’s behavior, insisting that Truman had improperly asserted executive privilege both in the Hiss case and following allegations of corruption among his aides. While claiming that Truman had behaved wrongly, President Nixon had seemed intent on following that course. Did he remember Congressman Richard Nixon of California, who had challenged a presidential order on executive privilege in 1948, contending that it was wrong “from a constitutional standpoint or on the basis of the merits”? To allow such power, Nixon then argued—as Senator Ervin had contended for years—would prevent Congress from excercising its proper investigative authority.