At times, Nixon himself wondered about “strange alliances” surrounding him. John Connally called him in May to relay a message from Jaworski: “The President has no friends in the White House” was Nixon’s memory of the Special Prosecutor’s warning. Mitchell had no doubts about the lack of loyalty in the President’s house, and in time became convinced that Haig and Buzhardt served not the President, but the interests of the military and perhaps the CIA.18
Nixon’s announcement and release of the “smoking gun” tape produced another “firestorm.” One television commentator said, “Let him go.” Let the President have his pension, his secretaries, and his office; “give him amnesty,” he added, “and draw a curtain over this scene, not for his sake—for ours.” For months, Nixon had resisted pressures that he leave office. As far back as the aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre, in November 1973, he cautioned House Republicans against demands for his impeachment or resignation. “If you cut off the legs of the President, America is going to lose,” he said. He invoked a variation of a familiar threat: American allies, he warned, would consider “leaning toward the Soviet Union if domestic issues diminished the authority of the Presidency.” After repeated remarks that he would not resign, White House aides counseled that reiteration would “only be counter-productive.”19
But after they learned of the June 23 tape, Republicans, like cuckolded mates, refused to accept Nixon’s expressions of regret for withholding the information. Some wanted him simply to resign; others wished to vent their fury on him. As the news spread through Washington, House Republicans reacted with dismay, sorrow, or anger; whether by impeachment or by resignation, they concluded, the President had to go. Democrat Don Edwards of the Judiciary Committee had anticipated some trouble in the House and Senate on the impeachment issue, but “this thunderbolt,” he realized, meant “we had him cold.”
One Republican House member urged Edward Hutchinson to move for immediate action on the first impeachment article. The tape revelation had “exacerbated the Executive leadership crisis,” he said. He thought that resignation might be in the best interest of the nation, but Congress nevertheless should immediately proceed to fulfill its legal and constitutional responsibilities. Congressman Barber Conable (R–NY) angrily charged that the President had abused the trust given to him. Conable had slowly, but painfully, realized how Nixon had deceived his supporters. Earlier, he privately chided himself for accompanying the President on a Potomac cruise, feeling as though he had been “a party to jury-tampering.” The only issue remaining, Conable said, was how to effect an orderly transition of power to Gerald Ford.
Charles Wiggins would have one more moment in the limelight. St. Clair invited him to the White House on August 2 to read the June 23, 1972 transcript. At first, Wiggins persisted in his faith. The words provided “some evidence of obstruction,” he admitted, but “the words as used in their context [did] not drive you inevitably to that conclusion.” Wiggins felt no sense of betrayal by the President, only sadness. But after the release of the tape, Wiggins sensed the political winds and announced that he would support Article I. He, too, wanted the process to run: the “magnificent public career of Richard Nixon must be terminated involuntarily,” Wiggins said.
The President desperately tried to insert exculpatory material into his August 5 statement on his release of the tape. At the last moment, he drafted a notation that he had told Pat Gray to press forward two weeks after the June 23 conversation, once he had determined that there was no national-security matter at stake. But the statement would have to wait for his memoirs. Haig told him that St. Clair and the lawyers would leave unless the prepared statement remained intact. “The hell with it,” Nixon said. “Let them put out anything they want. My decision has already been made.” He knew that Washington had been “whipped into a frenzy”; Haig reported further desertions. “[F]ew, if any,” Nixon realized, “would want to be found standing with me.”20
Et tu, Brute. That evening Gerald Ford also announced that he could better contribute to the orderly conduct of government by “not involving myself daily in the impeachment debate, in which I have no constitutional role.” At last, Ford’s staff prevailed in their advice that he distance himself from the President. The Vice President’s words must have been the unkindest cut of all for Richard Nixon: “I have come to the conclusion,” Ford stated, “that the public interest is no longer served by repetition of my previously expressed belief that on the basis of all the evidence known to me and to the American people, the President is not guilty of an impeachable offense.”21 However convoluted the statement, Ford was saying nothing less than that the President was guilty.
Five months earlier, Nixon himself had stated that “the crime of obstruction of justice is a serious crime and would be an impeachable offense, and I do not expect that the House Committee will find that the President is guilty of any of these crimes.” But when he released the June 23 transcript, he argued that the information itself did not warrant impeachment. He urged congressmen to consider his comments in the larger perspective of his demands for a full investigation. St. Clair thought it a pity that the transcript had not come out earlier. He believed that if it had been considered along with Nixon’s March 21 conversation with Dean, “you could live with those [together] in my view.” It “would have been just another difficult tape for the President.” Coming as it did, however, the inflamed environment of August following the House committee vote “enhanced its individual importance,” St. Clair acknowledged.22
When the Judiciary Committee Republicans attached their supplemental views to the committee’s report to the full House later in August, they took the President at his word and held him impeachable for the “serious crime” of obstruction of justice. The President, they said, had “effectively admitted guilt of one impeachable offense.” Led by Hutchinson, ten Republicans reluctantly, even grudgingly, conceded that Nixon—by his own words—stood guilty under Article I. Hutchinson, however, was not too far from St. Clair. In a separate statement, he contended that the “timing of the disclosure,” not the contents itself, damaged the President beyond repair. “Those who had been defending the President were left without a defense and without time to build a new defense,” said Hutchinson—a lament for the defenders, hardly for their client. Hutchinson, an aide remembered, remained unconvinced that Nixon was guilty.
Wiley Mayne most vividly displayed the Republicans’ dismay. Mayne had been a devoted Nixon admirer for years. As the evidence of the last several months accumulated, a law school friend called Mayne, telling him that people in Iowa no longer believed the President and urging Mayne to reconsider his steadfast loyalty. But Mayne persisted in his allegiance. When he filed his supplemental views, however, the Iowan must have heard footsteps in his district, for he went beyond his Republican colleagues and declared he would vote impeachment under Article II. Nixon’s August 5 statement gave him no choice on Article I, he declared; but now he thought the evidence also sufficiently proved the President’s abuse of powers with his uses of the IRS, the CIA, and the FBI. Somehow, Mayne thought that the June 23 tape amplified the existing evidence.23
Dean Burch knew that he could no longer defend the President. He could only hope to assist Nixon in finding the right resolution of the crisis. On August 5, Burch called Senator Goldwater and told him that the President had been lying. Burch had shown him what was to be the explanation of the June 23 tape transcript. Goldwater was furious: “It was the same old Nixon, confessing ambiguously, in enigmatic language, still refusing to accept accountability. It was, above all, an insincere statement, as duplicitous as the man himself.” The Senator’s contempt was boundless, for Nixon again had tried to blame others, even his friends.24
William Timmons, the White House congressional liaison, reported that Republican congressmen had suggested that the President ask Goldwater for a frank assessment of the political reality. At a meeting of Senate Republican leaders on August 6, Goldwater admitted that h
e “blew my top” when he learned that Ford had informed colleagues that more disclosures would magnify Nixon’s deception. The President, with some urging from Burch, called in the Republican leaders on August 7. Goldwater’s presence was a measure of his untitled stature within the Republican Party and the nation. Burch knew his friend would be blunt and honest. Given the Senator’s significant national constituency, and the growing respect of old adversaries, Burch also realized that Nixon could not lightly reject any counsel Goldwater gave him.25
Ford had already had what he called Goldwater’s “characteristically blunt” advice. The Senator thought the situation “totally out of hand.” The President’s supporters had been “lied to” repeatedly. “The best thing he [Nixon] can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House, and get out this afternoon,” Goldwater told his Senate colleagues. Accompanied by Hugh Scott and John Rhodes, Goldwater met the President. According to several accounts, including his own, he never directly told Nixon to resign, indicating instead that he had no significant support in Congress. He informed Nixon that he had at most ten supporters in the Senate, six of whom really were undecided, including himself. Goldwater left the meeting with no doubt as to the outcome: the President “would resign.”
When the three met reporters late in the afternoon of August 7, Goldwater told them that no decision had been made and that they had visited the President to describe the situation in Congress. Rhodes said that “four old friends” discussed a “painful situation.” Scott admitted that they told Nixon that the outlook was “very gloomy” and “distressing.” Goldwater denied that the men had discussed immunity for the President if he resigned. Nixon remembered Goldwater’s telling him that he leaned toward voting for Article II. He also recalled saying to Scott as they ended their discussion: “Now that old Harry Truman is gone, I won’t have anybody to pal around with.” Truman had had monumental contempt for Nixon, and the President knew it. Nixon’s remarks to Scott displayed his typical awkwardness and perhaps offered some indication of a momentary flight from reality.
Reporters finally came to the question the leaders obviously wanted to answer. When asked to assess the possibilities for impeachment and conviction, they were a bit circular, but clear. Rhodes said that impeachment “is really a foregone conclusion”; Scott simply said that there had been “some erosion of support in the Senate.” The leaders had told that to Nixon; clearly, they had a public purpose to fulfill as well. Dealing with the media must have entailed its measure of exasperation at such a moment. One reporter actually asked if the House would forgo impeachment, and the Senate similarly forgo a trial, if Nixon resigned. Rhodes seemed stunned; still the reporter persisted: did the President ask that question? Private Citizen Richard Nixon, of course, could not be impeached.26
Life in the Nixon White House was winding down. The President told his private secretary that he had decided to resign, and he began to work out notes for a speech. He had some reminder of his latent power, however. Haig informed him that Haldeman had called, urging pardons for all involved and amnesty for Vietnam war draft resisters. Later, Haldeman personally pleaded with the President.27
Gerald Ford had had more than Goldwater’s advice to prepare him for his new role. For more than three months, some of his staff and old confidants had begun to prepare for his transition to the presidency. As early as May, a reporter asked Ford whether rumors to that effect were true. Ford denied them, saying if anyone were doing so, it was without his knowledge or consent. For Ford’s people that remark translated to an expression of the Vice President’s hope that “somebody was doing it but he didn’t want to know about it.” Philip Buchen, a Ford adviser for more than a quarter-century, along with Clay Whitehead, who had served as head of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy for Nixon, formed a team to develop transition plans. The group became known as “The Ford Foundation.” According to Ford, Buchen never told him about the activities until Nixon indicated he would resign—“a real surprise,” Ford called it. Had he known, he claimed, he would have asked the group to cease. “It was,” he said, “a dangerous and questionable undertaking.” The last thing Ford wanted was any accusation of disloyalty.28
“Loyalty” by itself inadequately described Ford’s behavior as Vice President. Some would have added “dogged”; others would have called it “blind.” But Ford had built a career on the principle of not offending anyone. It seemed that he did nothing as Vice President except to travel the land in defense of Nixon. “Somebody ought to do Jerry Ford a favor and take his airplane away from him,” a Wall Street Journal reporter remarked in June. Time called him the “zigzagging missionary,” while Newsweek labeled him the “zigzag Veep.” After a North Carolina speech in which he lamented the “expletives deleted” of the presidential tapes, he added that he thought the President had not lost his sense of morality. “A zigzagger makes touchdowns,” he later told reporters. But a conservative Michigan newspaper said he had fumbled the ball.
Meanwhile, Ford delivered Agnew-style speeches—written in the White House—assailing the President’s critics and blithely assuring his audience of Nixon’s innocence. “Throughout my political life, I always believed what I was told,” Ford later wrote. And he believed that Nixon had told him the truth. When he saw the experts’ report on the 18 1/2-minute tape gap, he began to suspect he was being used, yet he dutifully continued to defend the President for months to come. The day before the Judiciary Committee voted the first article of impeachment, Ford told an Indiana crowd: “I can say from the bottom of my heart that the President of the United States is innocent.… He is right!”29
Ford had his troubles. Nixon’s staff, from Haig down, reflected the President’s well-known disdain for the Vice President. After Ford told a national television audience in January 1974 that he thought a compromise possible on the tapes, he perceived a “chill” in his relations with the White House. Ford’s staff resented the White House’s self-serving use of the Vice President and its intrusions on their own efforts. At times, Ford revealed that he “damn near blew my stack.” After Ford had assured an Ohio Republican audience in June that “the preponderance of the evidence” demonstrated Nixon’s innocence, the news flashed that the President had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Ford’s press secretary later wrote that Ford never for-gave Nixon for lying to him. Ford always described other presidents he had known by their first names or nicknames; when he mentioned his predecessor, it simply was “Nixon.”30
The days between the Judiciary Committee votes and the release of the “smoking gun” transcripts witnessed steadily growing pressure on the President. Ford, of course, was not oblivious to this. Ford’s close friend and political ally Senator Robert Griffin warned Nixon that unless he resigned, he would be impeached and convicted, and that Griffin expected to vote against him. After delivering the letter, Griffin reached Ford in Mississippi through a White House operator. St. Clair gave the Vice President advance information of the June 23 transcript, but the President’s lawyer did not yet know whether Nixon would resign or fight. Significantly, St. Clair denied any knowledge whether Nixon was considering granting pardons, a subject that Haig had raised with Ford that same day. Now, in these crucial days, Ford studiously avoided any direct dealings with the President or comments on his course.31
President Nixon appeared for his last Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, August 6. As usual, the staff prepared “talking points” for him. Whatever decisions had been reached—tentatively or firmly—the President dealt with the group as he always had: as subordinates whom he needed to exhort to do their best in behalf of the Administration. He had, nevertheless, to confront the impeachment issue and give the Cabinet officers some indication of his course. He reminded his lieutenants that the presidency had experienced enormous trauma in the past decade, with the assassination of Kennedy and with Johnson “literally hounded from office.” The institution, he said, must not sustain another “hammer blow” without a de
fense. Consequently, he would not resign, and would let the constitutional process run. This, he insisted, would be in the “best interests of the Nation”; he would not “desert the principles which give our government legitimacy.” To do otherwise, he continued, “would be a regrettable departure from American historical principles.” He offered nothing in the way of personal defense aside from past diplomatic triumphs; instead, he wrapped himself in the mantle of the presidency—claiming that he had no choice but to continue the route designed in the Constitution.
With that, Nixon turned to a discussion of economic problems, projecting policies for six months in the future. Attorney General William Saxbe was dumbfounded by Nixon’s bravado. “Mr. President, don’t you think we should be talking about next week, not next year?” he asked. According to Saxbe, Nixon looked around the table, no one said a word, and with that he picked up his papers and left the room.32
The President’s line was familiar. He had said in his January 1974 State of the Union message that he never would resign. He had told himself on numerous occasions that resignation could only be equated with guilt. In an interview with columnist James Kilpatrick in May, Nixon vehemently denied any intention of resigning. To do so, he said, would be to fatally weaken the presidency. Future presidents, he warned, would constantly be looking over their shoulders at Congress. Resignation or impeachment, he continued, would destabilize the nation and the world. Either path “would have the traumatic effect of destroying that sense of stability and leadership. And as far as this particular President is concerned, I will not be a party under any circumstances to any action which would set that kind of precedent.”
Nixon thought then that he must let the impeachment process run its course because it would be “best for the country, our system of government, and the constitutional process.” Two months later, Representative Caldwell Butler came to the same conclusion. Resignation offered only short-term benefits, Butler thought; more important, he did not want to establish a precedent “for harassment out of office, which is what would be claimed.” He, too, wanted to follow the constitutional process: “It’s a pretty good system.” The President at that time gave every appearance of continuing in office. He asked an old friend to “leisurely” prepare a speech on world law and peace. Nixon wanted it as a radio address but then proposed a wide mail distribution. He planned the talk for August or September, and he emphasized there was no need for urgency.33
The Wars of Watergate Page 80
