The Wars of Watergate

by Stanley I. Kutler

  42. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:285–92; Nixon, Six Crises, 416. Hubert Humphrey had the same opportunity to announce Nixon’s election in January 1969, but Johnson sent him to Norway to represent the United States at the funeral of former UN Secretary General Trygve Lie.

  43. Years later, Nixon revealed that Whittaker Chambers had been among the most persuasive of those who favored his candidacy. “I do not believe for a moment that because you have been cruelly checked in the employment of what is best in you, what is most yourself, that that check is final. It cannot be,” Chambers said. He conceded that the Democrats probably would control the White House for some time. If so, he observed, “that changes your routing and precise destination. It does not change the nature of your journey. You have years in which to serve. Service is your life. You must serve. You must, therefore, have a base from which to serve.” Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 11.

  44. Haldeman, Ends of Power, 76.

  45. NYT, December 22, 1963.

  46. Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374 (1966); Garment Interview, May 29, 1985; NYT, April 28, 1966; Leonard Garment, “The Hill Case,” New Yorker, April 17, 1989, 104.

  47. Nixon’s remark on Ike reported by William Ewald, an Eisenhower speechwriter, quoted in Brendon, Ike, 409. In the extraordinary post-mortem rambling on the Hiss case that Nixon offered in 1985, he also noted that if he had not run for governor in 1962, he “very possibly” would have run for the presidency in 1964, been defeated, and permanently condemned as a two-time loser. Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 12. Nixon to Johnson, November 5, 1964; Johnson to Nixon, November 12, 1964, LBJ Library, “Famous Names File.”

  III: “BRING US TOGETHER”: 1965–1968

  1. Mike Wallace, Close Encounters (New York, 1984), 101–02.

  2. Memorandum, Fred Panzer to Jake Jacobsen, November 6, 1966; Jake Jacobsen to George Christian, November 4, 1966, LBJ Library, “Famous Names File.”

  3. Washington Star, October 30, 1966; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York, 1984), 666–67.

  4. WP, April 1, 1968.

  5. Harry McPherson, Political Education (Boston, 1972), 449–50; Louis Heren, No Hail, No Farewell (New York, 1970), 254; Alexander Bickel, “Watergate and the Legal Order,” in Lawrence M. Friedman and Stewart Macauley (eds.), Law and Behavioral Sciences (New York, 1977), 221.

  6. Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag: A Republican’s Challenge to His Party (Boston, 1972), 8, 43, has some perceptive observations on this development.

  7. NYT, May 9, 1968.

  8. Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, 148–49. The near-contemporary accounts of the 1968 campaign are quite good, especially Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1969 (Dell ed., New York, 1969); Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1968 (New York, 1969), is far less satisfactory.

  9. Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Dirksen of Illinois (Urbana, IL, 1985), 214; Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, 671–72.

  10. Robert Dallek, Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism (Cambridge, 1984); Lou Cannon, Reagan (New York, 1982).

  11. Robert Finch, “Remarks at Monticello” (1986), transcript; Finch Interview, March 4, 1987.

  12. See Chester, et al., An American Melodrama, 477–560, for a superb account of the convention’s proceedings. Harry Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power (New York, 1978), 82, 207, 93. Dent’s account of the “Southern Strategy,” admittedly self-serving, is nevertheless the most complete account of the idea and generally is very perceptive about the political scene. Dent Interview, October 31, 1986.

  13. Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York, 1984), 323; Solberg’s chapters 30–34 describe Humphrey’s problems with Johnson.

  14. Chester, et al., An American Melodrama; Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley, 1980); William O’Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s (Chicago, 1971); Stephen Whitfield, “Richard Nixon as a Comic Figure,” American Quarterly, Spring 1985, 37:116.

  15. Hart Interview, September 18, 1986.

  16. WP, Editorials, August 9, 10, 1968.

  17. John C. Whitaker to John D. Ehrlichman, June 14, 1971, Ehrlichman Papers, Box 57, NP; Joseph C. Spear, Presidents and the Press (Cambridge, 1984), 60; Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York, 1964), 330–31.

  18. Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968 (paperback ed., New York, 1970), 78, 117, 27–28, 30–32, et passim; Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus (paperback ed., New York, 1974), 185–88. McGinniss noted that television and Humphrey were incompatible. The medium magnified his excesses of lengthy and too-fervent rhetoric. For television, McGinniss said, the “performer” comes into the living room as a guest. “It is improper for him to shout. Humphrey vomited on the rug.” Selling of the President, 66–67. McGinniss’s revelations later upset Nixon tremendously. He wanted the “full story” on McGinniss, he told White House aides, and John Ehrlichman assigned his personal investigators to the task. The investigator described McGinniss as “cunning, deceitful and disarming,” words that Ehrlichman passed to Nixon. Butterfield to Ehrlichman, July 21, 1969, Caulfield to Ehrlichman, c. August 7, 1969, Ehrlichman to the President, September 3, 1969, Ehrlichman Papers, Box 30, NP.

  19. Wallace, Close Encounters, 104, 106; Crouse, Boys on the Bus, 271–72; McLuhan, Understanding Media, 309; Whitfield, “Comic Figure,” 118; O’Neill, Coming Apart, 380; McGinniss, Selling of the President, 66–67.

  20. Phillips Statement, July 30, 1974; McGinniss, Selling of the President, 192–93.

  21. NYT, March 6, 1968; Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, 137–38. The speech is printed in Whalen’s book, 283–94. Whalen hardly disguised his distaste for Nixon’s obvious cynicism. He thought that Nixon in effect had signalled the White House that he would make no trouble for the President. “Thus was laid the groundwork for a nonaggression pact between incumbent and challenger that would become increasingly apparent in the months ahead.” Ibid., 143–44. Also see Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America (New York, 1984), 402.

  22. NYT, August 9, September 30, 20, 1968; Solberg, Humphrey, 387–88.

  23. Hart Interview, September 18, 1986; Jules Witcover, The Resurrection of Richard Nixon (New York, 1970), 151–52. Hart remembered that Nixon aide Ron Ziegler got angry at him when Hart failed to attend a party aboard a yacht in Key Biscayne. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (paperback ed., New York, 1979), 1:369. Nixon Statement, ABC News, “45/85.” September 18, 1985.

  24. NYT, October 1, 1968; Solberg, Humphrey, 380–85; Transcript, Face the Nation, October 27, 1968; Kathryn J. Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War: Vietnam and the Press (Chicago, 1985), 251. Also see Terry Dietz, Republicans and Vietnam, 1961–1968 (Westport, CT, 1986), 138–41.

  25. Billy Graham Notes, in “Transition File,” LBJ Library.

  26. PPPUS: LBJ, 1963–1964, October 27, 1964, 2:1477; Solberg, Humphrey, 407; Joseph Alsop, “Oral History,” May 28, 1969, for LBJ Library, in Alsop MS, LC.

  27. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 438–39.

  28. White, Making of the President, 1968, 396, and Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House (New York, 1971), 33–34, tell the contemporary story of Nixon’s talk. But see Chester, et al., An American Melodrama, 746–47, for a deeper probe.

  29. John Bartlow Martin, It Seems Like Only Yesterday (New York, 1986), 309; Chester, et al., An American Melodrama, 858.

  IV: “THE MAN ON TOP”: 1965–1968

  1. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (paperback ed., New York, 1979), 1:447–48. Ehrlichman Notes, June 27, 1972, Box 12, Ehrlichman Papers, NP; Alexander M. Bickel, “Watergate and the Legal Order,” in Lawrence M. Friedman and Stewart Macauley (eds.), Law and Behavioral Sciences (New York, 1971), 223.

  2. Ehrlichman Testimony, Presidential Campaign Activities of 1972, Hearings, Select Committee on
Presidential Campaign Activities, U.S. Senate, 93 Cong., 1 Sess., 6:2512–13. Hereafter cited as SSC, Hearings; Magruder’s testimony in ibid., 2:854–55; Moorer Interview, June 25, 1985, Nixon in Newsweek, April 16, 1984, 37; Ruckelshaus Interview, August 21, 1986.

  3. U.S. News & World Report, August 13, 1984, 56–59, including remarks by historians; Newsweek, May 19, 1986, cover story.

  4. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, December 13, 1971; Charles A. Moser, Promise and Hope: The Ashbrook Presidential Campaign of 1972 (Washington, D.C., 1985), 11–13; Nixon, Memoirs, 1:541, 527–30, 638–47.

  5. Nixon Remarks, Chinese Embassy, Washington, February 27, 1987, Transcript courtesy of Mr. Nixon. See Hung Nguyen Tien and Jerrold L. Schecter, The Palace File (New York, 1986); Frank Snepp, Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End (New York, 1977); and Arnold R. Isaacs, Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia (Baltimore, 1983).

  6. J. Anthony Lukas’s Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (New York, 1976; new ed., 1988) was the first systematic attempt to understand the Watergate story as a persistent thread of the Nixon Administration.

  7. George Reedy, The Twilight of the Presidency (New York, 1970), 18, et passim. Harry Dent characterized Haldeman’s aides as the “Beaver Patrol.” Harry Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power (New York, 1978), 239.

  8. Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Dirksen of Illinois (Urbana, IL, 1985), 222; Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York, 1979), 88, 150.

  9. Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968 (paperback ed., New York, 1970); Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith (paperback ed., New York, 1978), 128.

  10. H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (New York, 1978); Current Biography (1978), 185–89; John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York, 1982).

  11. n.d., Haldeman Notes, Box 48, NP; WP, August 24, 1972; Lou Cannon, “The Siege Psychology and How It Grew,” WP, July 29, 1973; Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag: A Republican’s Challenge to His Party (Boston, 1972), 197, 213, 255–57, 277–78; Herbert G. Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear (New York, 1980), 320ff; Helms Interview, July 14, 1988.

  12. Haldeman, quoted in Newsday, November 20, 1987; Finch Interview, March 4, 1987; Dent Telephone Interview, August 31, 1986; Krogh Interview, August 20, 1986; Lichenstein Interview, February 7, 1986. Lichenstein expressed the contempt of older Nixon aides, noting that he would not have asked for the advice of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, convinced as he was that it would have been either wrong or self-serving. William Safire, Before the Fall (Paperback ed., New York, 1975), 283–85; Haldeman Memo, “Presidential Objectives Planning Group,” October 10, 1969, Dent Papers, Box 1, NP; Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Pat Nixon: The Untold Story (New York, 1986), 361–62; Alsop Interview with Nixon, undated, cited in Michael R. Beschloss, Mayday: The U-2 Affair (New York, 1986), 154; Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (New York, 1974), 61; Samuel Kernell and Samuel Popkin, Chief of Staff: Twenty-five Years of Managing the Presidency (Berkeley, 1986), 52.

  13. Haldeman Notes, September 19, 1971; Haldeman Memo, September 20, 1971, Haldeman Papers, Box 44, NP.

  14. Nixon to Haldeman, June 16, 1969, NPF, Box 1, NP: ibid., Box 3, March 31, 1971.

  15. HJC, Testimony of Witnesses (July 2, 1974), 1:28–66. Butterfield to SSC Staff, July 13, 1973, Butterfield Papers, FL.

  16. Nixon to Rose Mary Woods, March 31, 1971, NPF, Box 3, NP; Nixon to Ehrlichman, July 9, 1969, and Nixon to Haldeman, July 9, 1969, NPF, Box 1, NP; Nixon to Butterfield, April 16, 1972, Haldeman Papers, Box 161, NP; Nixon to Haldeman, April 17, 1972, ibid.; Nixon to Haldeman, August 6, 1971, NPF, Box 3, NP; Nixon to Chapin, June 16, 1969, NPF, Box 1, NP; Nixon to Haldeman, November 24, 1969, NPF, Box 1, and Nixon to Price, December 28, 1971, NPF, Box 4, NP; Nixon to Haldeman, May 13, 1972, Haldeman Papers, Box 161, NP; Haldeman to Chapin, May 15, 1971, ibid.

  17. Dent Interview, October 31, 1986; Dent, Prodigal South, 238–39. In Dent’s book, the secretary is described as male.

  18. HJC, Testimony of Witnesses, 1:69–70; Butterfield to SSC Staff, July 13, 1973, Butterfield Papers, FL; Eisenhower, Pat Nixon, 361; Lichenstein Interview, February 7, 1986; Agnew Interview, January 14, 1989; Keane Interview, August 14, 1985; Dent Interview, October 31, 1986; Bull Interview, May 7, 1987; Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear, 335; Kernell and Popkins, Chief of Staff, 21–23.

  19. Haldeman, Ends of Power, 61; Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 342; John Dean, Blind Ambition (New York, 1976), 22–23; Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 808; Dent Interview, October 31, 1986.

  20. Garment to Kissinger, March 21, 1971, Garment MS, LC; Garment Interview, June 26, 1985; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 73–74.

  21. NYT, December 12, 1968; Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 297; Carl Brauer, Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower to Reagan (New York, 1986), 143–44, 147; Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency (Boston, 1975), 187.

  22. Dent to Ehrlichman, January 23, 1969, Box 1, Dent Papers, NP; Aaron Wildavsky, a political scientist, suggested in 1966 that the United States has “two presidencies,” one for foreign and defense policy, the other for domestic affairs. Godfrey Hodgson, All Things to All Men: The False Promise of the Modern American Presidency (New York, 1980), 73–74. Rowland Evans, Jr., and Robert Novak, Nixon in the White House (New York, 1974), 11; Magruder, An American Life, 110; Cronin, State of the Presidency, 169.

  23. Walter Hickel, Who Owns America? (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), 221–22; Magruder, An American Life, 11; Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 100–01; Finch Interview, March 4, 1987. John Dean’s memo of October 3, 1970, has reference to an internal investigation of Hickel. Dean Papers, Box 39, NP.

  24. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 47.

  25. James Keogh to the President, March 31, 1969, Buchanan to the President, April 1, 1969, both FG-6–11–1, NCF, NP; Cole to Ehrlichman, March 31, 1969, JL-3–1, NP.

  26. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:435–38; Safire, Before the Fall, 284; Evans and Novak, Nixon, 35; Safire to Nixon, November 11, 1970, copy in Garment MS, LC.

  27. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:447–48, 423; Moynihan to Nixon, January 3, 1969, Box 163, Haldeman Papers, NP; Magruder, An American Life, 78–81; Kenneth Cole to White House Staff, July 11, 1969, Krogh Papers, Box 63, NP; Nixon to Haldeman, June 16, 1969, Box 1, NPF, NP.

  28. Butterfield to Klein and Bryce Harlow, June 11, 1969, Krogh Papers, Box 63, NP.

  29. John C. Whitaker to Ehrlichman, June 14, 1971; Ken Cole to Ehrlichman, June 15, 1971; Ehrlichman to Haldeman, July 8, 1971, Ehrlichman Papers, Box 57, NP.

  30. Safire, Before the Fall, 219–20.

  31. Haldeman Notes, October 6, 1971, Haldeman Papers, Box 44, NP. Memos in NPF, NP: Nixon to Haldeman, January 18, 1971, Box 3; ibid., June 28, 1971, Box 3; ibid., March 2, 1970, Box 2; memos of January 14, 1971, to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Box 3; Nixon to Haldeman, November 24, 1969, Box 1; ibid., December 1, 1970, Box 2; Nixon to Ehrlichman, February 4, 1969, Box 1; ibid., January 14, 1971, Box 3; Nixon to Haldeman, January 18, 1971, Box 3; ibid., June 1, 1971, Box 3.

  32. Nixon to Haldeman, March 1, 1971, NPF, Box 3, NP; Colson to Haldeman, March 8, 1971, Haldeman Papers, Box 169, NP; President’s Staff Dinner, Blair House, March 8, 1971, Audio Tape, White House Communications Agency Collection, NP.

  33. Garment to Ehrlichman, April 1, 1971, Garment MS, LC.

  34. Haldeman Notes, October 5, 1971, Haldeman Papers, Box 44, NP; TT, the President, Ehrlichman, and Shultz, April 19, 1971, (3:03 P.M.–3:34 P.M.), Statement of Information, Hearings, Committee on the Judiciary, H.R., 93 Cong., 2 Sess. (May-June 1974), 5:330–31. Hereafter cited as HJC, Statement of Information. Ehrlichman Notes, March 9, 1973, Box 14, Ehrlichman Papers, NP; Earl Mazo, Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait (New York, 1959), 36; Nixon, Memoirs, 1:31–33; William Costello, The Facts About Nixon: An Unauthorized Biography (New York, 1960), 30. In his 1973 conversation with Ehrlich
man, Nixon was speaking of a Small Business Administration official who had mishandled a project and subsequently was demoted. But the remarks also occurred in the context of the President’s determination to thwart the policies of the Anti-Trust Division for his own political purposes.

  35. Dent, The Prodigal South, 188–89; Richard Nathan, The Plot That Failed (New York, 1975), 83; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1966), 413, 415, 431, 681, 683.

  36. Washington Star-News, August 2, 1973; Haig to John Brown, May 13, 1970, Clark Mollenhoff to Nixon, May 8, 1970, Box 116, SSF, NP; Nixon to Haldeman, Kissinger, Ehrlichman, and Shultz, February 8, 1971, NPF, Box 3, NP.

  37. Ehrlichman to Nixon, February 16, 1972, NPF, Box 3, NP.

  38. Hodgson, All Things to All Men, 103–04, 106–07.

  39. The basic story of the Huston Plan is in Intelligence Activities, Volume 2, Huston Plan, Hearings, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S.S., 94 Cong., 1 Sess. (September 23–25, 1975). Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1986), Ch. 13, has an excellent account of the Nixon-Hoover relationship, and specifically discusses the Huston Plan, 450–64, as do Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia, 1988), 417–22. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:583–89; Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 156–67; Dean, Blind Ambition, 37.

  40. Helms Interview, July 14, 1988; Huston to Krogh, February 20, 1970; Krogh to Haldeman, February 23, 1970; Huston to Krogh, March 25, April 2, 3, 1970, Krogh Papers, Box 14, NP; Huston Interview, September 2, 1988.

  41. SSC, Hearings, 3:937; Huston Interview, September 1, 1988; Helms Interview, July 14, 1988.