The Wars of Watergate

by Stanley I. Kutler

  The committee had approached the point of diminishing returns. Mann originally had included the subpoena issue in his draft of Article I, but contended that Doar insisted the topic be treated separately. Perhaps Doar reasoned that it might be best to have another article in reserve for a House vote—even one for members to oppose, in order to appear more fair-minded. But Mann and the other conservatives had exposed themselves enough on two votes; now, it seemed, it was time to demonstrate mercy. William Cohen refused to support Article III because the entire House had not voted the President in contempt, and he did not think it fair to raise the issue to an impeachable charge. Fish at first agreed with Cohen, but later events caused him to regret his action.6

  Except for the final votes, the remainder of the day belonged to the Democratic liberals. First, John Conyers introduced an article condemning the President for his taking “unilateral” military actions against Cambodia without informing Congress and for insisting that he had not done so. Edward Mezvinsky then submitted a fifth article, charging the President with willfully evading income taxes and with receiving compensation in the form of excessive government expenditures for his estates. Both articles failed, 26–12.

  Mann thought that he had an agreement with Peter Rodino that these articles would not be introduced, but he realized that the liberals “had to do it.” Later, he graciously said that Conyers and others had restrained themselves so as not to overstate the committee’s case against the President. In the first vote, Rodino and seven other Democrats joined a solid Republican opposition; in the second, such liberal stalwarts as Hungate, Waldie, and Drinan refused to support the motion. On the Cambodian issue, Cohen pointed out that the President’s action followed congressional “sloth and default”; correctly, he noted that far too many members of Congress knew about the bombing and both explicitly and implicitly supported it. The tax issue presented complications of factual interpretations and the expiration of the statutes of limitation, as well as sensitive matters that touched closely on the members’ own behavior. Cohen saw the charge as “blatant partisanship,” while Jack Brooks considered it an issue of “fairness,” understandable to all Americans. This time, Charles Sandman may have won some sympathy for the President when he complained that “any least little thing that Richard does is a crime.”7

  In the wake of the votes, unfounded reports circulated of an impending kamikaze attack on the Capitol by military units loyal to the President. Rodino and other Democrats supposedly reacted tearfully to the results of the final voting. Cohen, who had courageously exposed himself for months, found such emotions “disgusting,” and thought some of the “hired partisans” were feigning their sadness. He knew there “wasn’t too much room for sympathy or empathy or anything else for Richard Nixon.” Politics was on the minds of some. After the vote, Flowers retreated to his office and discussed the ramifications of his votes with his staff. “Let’s figure out how we are not going to get burned in the next election based upon this,” he told them. Party feeling in his native Maine left Cohen somewhat embittered. Shortly after the vote, he appeared in the state, and a hostile questioner reminded him of Maine’s great Civil War senator, William Pitt Fessenden, who had opposed the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Cohen cleverly reminded her that Fessenden had broken party ranks to do so. Mann castigated the Republican loyalists for their partisanship, blaming them for inspiring a flood of hostile mail and telegrams from his district.

  At this point, Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott told Vice President Ford that he considered the case lost, with impeachment and conviction virtual certainties. But Nixon loyalist Senator Carl Curtis (R–NB) urged Hutchinson to “drive home the point over and over again” that no hard evidence existed for “a legal basis for impeachment.” On the other side, Congressman Wright Patman had a long memory and now understood, he thought, how and why his committee had blocked his proposed Watergate inquiry in October 1972. He urged Judiciary Committee members to cite the event as further obstruction of justice on the part of the President.8

  The President had not only lost in the Judiciary Committee, but his public support had plummeted. Whatever one’s sentiments about impeachment, the prevailing view was that the televised proceedings had conveyed an image of congressional conscientiousness, intelligence, and fair-mindedness. Those images nourished a public confidence that lent some legitimacy and calm to the eventual outcome of events.9

  Television ratings services gave the White House advance information on their findings. On July 30, as the committee debate ended, the Nielsen Company informed White House aides that the debate had an estimated audience of 35–40 million—extraordinarily high numbers. A few days later, Nielsen reported that the average household watched 1.9 days of a possible four of the debates, for an average of 3 hours and 43 minutes. The viewing audience translated into double the American population of 1868, the year the House impeached Andrew Johnson. Only 10 percent of U.S. adults heard none of the House committee proceedings on television or radio. A Louis Harris poll taken on August 2, a week after the first vote, showed public opinion favoring impeachment 66–27 percent. Pro-impeachment sentiment had risen 13 percent in one week.10

  Public opinion in the Watergate affair amounted to an extraconstitutional check and balance not envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Little could they imagine an impeachment process in full view of the American population—“live,” to use an ahistorical term. Perhaps public opinion eventually perceived the blatant and petty partisanship on both sides that characterized the Andrew Johnson affair, but its influence in 1868 is hard to measure. In 1974, on the other hand, the committee members went to great lengths to make sure that the public understood how and why they acted as they did. That was not a formal constitutional check, but it fulfilled James Madison’s anticipation of the “second sense of the community” as a restraining and validating influence on government.

  After the final committee vote, the President spent a restless night. Early the next morning, he wrote out his options: resign immediately; resign if the full House voted impeachment; or fight through the Senate trial. Nixon’s “natural instinct” prevailed over any reasoned approach to the options, for at the end of his notes, he wrote: “End career as a fighter.” The only other real alternative was to set a precedent for resignation—and that was “far worse,” he thought. But hours later, according to Nixon, Haig read the June 23, 1972, tape transcript “for the first time” and agreed with Buzhardt and St. Clair: “I just don’t see how we can survive this one,” Haig told the President. The next day, August 1, Nixon told Haig that he intended to resign.11

  Life went on around the President, however. He still had the power to do favors for friends, although White House aides recommended that in the light of the Chinese “internal situation,” Ambassador George Bush not ask the Peking government to allow comedian Bob Hope to tape a television special there. More important, Nixon’s political and public-relations advisers carried on the resistance. As he and Haig discussed the most incriminating tape transcripts, an aide told the General that the White House must not concede the outcome of an ultimate vote on impeachment in the House. He urged that House Republicans get the message that they had “no easy loophole,” that impeachment was bad for the country and destructive of the presidency. “We should say flatly,” the aide wrote, “that no politician is going to get off the hook or shirk his duty in this matter.” Meanwhile, other advisers offered recommendations to St. Clair of lawyers to assist him in the Senate trial, including Wiggins and Senator John Sherman Cooper (R–KY).12

  Dean Burch, the former Federal Communications Commission Chairman, had come to the White House in March 1974 to coordinate political and public-relations defenses. Burch suspected he had been chosen because the President and Haig believed that Burch could “tame” his friend Barry Goldwater. That prospect was rather unlikely; nevertheless, Burch could not resist the offer. Burch, his chief aide, Charles Lichenstein, and others met daily to decide on ta
ctics and strategy. Like St. Clair, Burch and his group suffered a great handicap in having no direct access to their “client.” Haig had absolute control over their activities; moreover, unlike similar groups who had worked with Haldeman, they did not have the benefit of even indirect presidential orders. The result was a vacuum, as Haig orchestrated efforts of which the President had no knowledge, and which, if he had known of them, he would have realized the futility of pursuing. Meanwhile, Haig prepared Nixon’s “talking papers” for meetings with Burch and other counselors. The defense effort also suffered from faulty intelligence. In June Burch informed the President that House Republican leader John Rhodes assured him that no Republicans would vote to impeach.

  Burch’s group coordinated Watergate strategy; it did not formulate it. Lichenstein particularly remembered the frustration of dealing with Buzhardt, who seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the President’s problems. Even after the ominous questions St. Clair encountered at the Supreme Court hearing on July 8, Buzhardt told the Burch group that he expected a unanimous opinion in the President’s favor. The group, in fact, believed that St. Clair had performed dreadfully. Burch and Lichenstein also could not understand why Buzhardt did nothing to enhance the quality of his tape machine after Burch heard one tape and said that he could understand nothing. Similarly, they thought Buzhardt responsible for the inaccurate transcriptions and the consequent embarrassment they suffered from facing corrections by the Judiciary Committee. Distrust between Burch and his aides on the one hand, and between Haig and Buzhardt on the other, extended back to the President’s release of the tapes in late April. Burch told Lichenstein that Haig and Buzhardt had assured him that Watergate would be resolved in the President’s favor, a statement which Burch incorporated in a speech he was to make—much to his later embarrassment and regret.13

  In the aftermath of the House committee vote, Nixon and his supporters struggled to maintain an outward calm. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler gamely told reporters that the President was “confident” that the charges had no substance and that he would not be impeached. Ziegler added that Nixon knew he had “committed no impeachable offense.” Haig typically covered all contingencies, admitting that the President had suffered “very severe losses,” but asserting that he remained certain Nixon would be “vindicated.” Meanwhile, Wiggins and Rhodes talked about the forthcoming battle in the House, thereby dousing a suggestion by Pat Buchanan that the House quickly and unanimously vote impeachment in order to get on with a Senate trial. Ford dutifully echoed his former House colleagues when he complained about the lack of specificity in the charges; he, too, remained convinced of the President’s innocence. For Ford, the Democrats’ unanimity only proved the partisanship of the affair; as for the six Republicans who joined them, he said only that he was “disappointed.”

  Nixon’s traditional support eroded. On July 29 Howard Phillips called for the President’s removal, either by resignation or impeachment. He announced the creation of “CREEP 2”—Conservatives for the Removal of the President. Phillips expressed a growing fear on the part of conservatives that Nixon would sacrifice any policy to remain in power. Just after the impeachment vote, Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell sentenced John Ehrlichman to a twenty-month-to-five-year jail term for his role in the Fielding break-in, and two days later, John Dean received a one-to-four-year sentence for obstructing justice. The emergence of new enemies and painful reminders of “White House horrors” only reinforced the image of a totally discredited Administration.14

  Ford’s enduring faith must have shattered on August 1 when Haig told him that the situation had so deteriorated that “the ball game” might be over, and Ford should start “thinking about a change” in his life. New transcripts, he said, would refute the President’s story of his role in the cover-up and demonstrate his culpability. Ford remembered that both he and Haig were “angry” at the President’s deceit.15 In fact, Haig had known for some time about that June 23 tape; it was, however, time for him to build new bridges.

  Anger was a mild word to describe the feelings of presidential supporters four days later when the President released the June 23, 1972 tape transcript, destined to be known as the “smoking gun.” At the President’s first meeting that day, more than two years earlier, Haldeman told the President that “we’re back in the problem area,” because Pat Gray did not have the FBI under control. The FBI’s investigation had led into some “productive areas,” where “we don’t want it to go,” he said. Haldeman had talked to Mitchell and Dean, who agreed on the need to maintain a cover-up of the Administration’s role in the Watergate break-in. Mitchell’s recommendation that Deputy CIA Director Vernon Walters call Gray and tell him to “stay the hell out of this” was the fateful instruction. Didn’t Gray want to stay out of it? the President asked. Yes, Haldeman responded, but he needed a reason, and the CIA could provide him with one. Haldeman thought the story might be plausible, because the FBI investigation allegedly had been tracing money to some CIA connections.

  The tape revealed more of the seamy side of the White House. Did Mitchell know? the President asked. “I think so,” Haldeman responded. Had Mitchell pressured that “asshole” Liddy—Liddy who “must be a little nuts!” Nixon rambled. Than, rather cryptically: “Thank God it wasn’t Colson.” Regarding FBI questioning of White House people, the President ordered: “Play it tough. That’s the way they play it and that’s the way we are going to play it.” The conversation shifted to various legislative and policy matters. But abruptly, Nixon returned to the Watergate problem. Call in the CIA people, he said, and tell them that further inquiry might lead to “the whole Bay of Pigs thing”; “don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is a comedy of errors,” Nixon said. The CIA should call in the FBI and say, ‘Don’t go further into this case[,] period’!”

  Again, the President shifted the talk, now to politics, then to aides (Herbert Klein “just doesn’t have his head screwed on.… He’s not our guy at all[,] is he?”), then to his own book, Six Crises (“damned good book, and the [unintelligible] story reads like a novel”), and finally, to baseball.

  When the two men resumed their conversation later that afternoon, the President urged caution lest the CIA and FBI leaders have “any ideas we’re doing it because our concern is political.” Instead, he underlined an anxiety that any revelations might “blow the whole, uh, Bay of Pigs thing.” Haldeman informed Nixon that he had spoken to Walters and that Gray had informed CIA Director Richard Helms that the FBI had run into a CIA operation. Walters had agreed to call Gray, as Haldeman had suggested, but apparently he told Haldeman that Helms did not understand Gray’s call. At this point, Haldeman and the President engaged in a bitter discussion of the Bay of Pigs and an alleged slight to Nixon by former Director Allen Dulles. Perilous moments generally seemed to arouse Nixon’s various festering resentments.16

  The June 23 tape offered a definitive answer to Howard Baker’s question, put just over a year earlier: the President knew. He knew that he had instigated a cover-up and thus had participated in an obstruction of justice almost from the outset of events.

  When Nixon surrendered this evidence, he no longer had the ability to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in his own cause; now, he stood alone as the accused, self-anointed, as it were. Even at this painful moment of confronting the truth of his involvement, however, the President could not be wholly forthcoming. He told the nation that the subject of the June 23 tape related to government business as distinguished from politics, a fiction that must have taxed the imagination of his most devoted speechwriters. He took “full responsibility” for not providing complete information to those arguing his case, an act “which I deeply regret,” he said. He admitted that he had known of the taped conversation for some time (though he never acknowledged remembering the actual conversation), and he “recognized that [it] presented problems.” Still, Nixon insisted that he “did not realize the extent of the implications which these
conversations might now appear to have.” In his defense, he pointed to other statements and actions that embodied the “basic truth”: he had insisted “on a full investigation and prosecution of those guilty.”17

  Haig and St. Clair promptly called Leon Jaworski, insisting that they had not known of the existence of the June 23 tape. Haig, it must be remembered, had provided the President with that particular tape in May 1974. Given Haig’s temperament, it is almost unimaginable that he did not know the contents of the tape at that time. Furthermore, Fred Buzhardt undoubtedly gave Haig the tape, but Buzhardt carefully covered his tracks by telling interviewers later that he did not handle the June 23 tape until the day of the Supreme Court decision respecting subpoenaed materials in July 1974. “No way” that Haig alone was aware of that tape, recalled St. Clair. Leonard Garment regarded Buzhardt as a careful lawyer and would have been “surprised” if he had not known the contents of the June 23 tape for some time. Melvin Laird claimed that Buzhardt told him about the particular tape as early as June 1974. When Jaworski described Haig’s protestations of ignorance, he interestingly connected their conversation to an observation that “Deep Throat,” the alleged source of information on the White House for Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, was, according to Jaworski, “somebody who was trying to cover his own tracks in the White House and wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to be under suspicion.”