The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It

by John W. Dean

  At 1:45 P.M. Ehrlichman met with Attorney General Dick Kleindienst, who was in a mild state of panic. On Sunday, June 18, 1972, after he played in a golf tournament at Burning Tree Country Club in Maryland, Liddy had interrupted his lunch. He caught Kleindienst’s eye, signaling that he needed to speak with him, and then told him he had a personal message from John Mitchell, and they needed privacy. They went to the men’s locker room, where Liddy asked if he’d heard about the arrests the night before at the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate. Kleindienst said that Henry Petersen, the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, had called him about it that morning. Liddy then told Kleindienst that the break-in was an operation of the Nixon reelection committee and that the men arrested were people working under his direction. He said they would keep their mouths shut, but one of the men, James McCord, was an employee at the CRP. “Jesus Christ!” Kleindienst responded, and Liddy proceeded to explain that he wanted to get McCord out of jail right away, before he was identified. Kleindienst said that that would be impossible, that he had no such authority, and that it would be terrible for the president for him to even try. Kleindienst concluded the conversation by telling Liddy to tell Mitchell that if he wanted to call him, he knew where to reach him, and ended the visit. Neither Ehrlichman nor Kleindienst has ever testified about this June 19, 1972, meeting. I do not know if Kleindienst also told Ehrlichman what he told me about his meeting with Liddy and his reaction to what Liddy had told him: As long as he was attorney general he would never prosecute John Mitchell.

  After the president completed his meeting with Haldeman on June 19, he headed out for a relaxing afternoon in the sun, starting with a cruise on the Coco Lobo III, Rebozo’s houseboat. Nixon found it pleasurable to simply motor around Biscayne Bay reading or simply thinking.29 This excursion was followed by a swim at their favorite beach, to which a crew of strong Secret Service swimmers drove them and then watched over them as lifeguards. After dinner with Rebozo, the president took a short helicopter ride from his compound to Homestead Air Force Base, and got on Air Force One for the trip back to Washington. During the last half hour of the flight the president met with Haldeman, which, Nixon later noted in his diary (contradicting Colson’s testimony), was when he first received “the disturbing news from Bob Haldeman that the break-in of the Democratic National Committee involved someone who is on the payroll of the committee to reelect the president.”30

  More important, during this June 19, 1972, meeting on Air Force One the president agreed with the feelings of Ehrlichman and Haldeman, and the advice of John Mitchell, that the White House, if possible, must stay away from Watergate. Nixon wrote in his diary: “Mitchell had told Bob on the phone enigmatically not to get involved in it, and I told Bob that I simply hoped that none of our people were involved for two reasons—one, because it was stupid in the way it was handled; and two, because I could see no reason whatever for trying to bug the national committee.” Nixon added, “I also urged Bob to keep Colson and Ehrlichman from getting obsessed with the thing so they were unable to spend their time on other jobs. Looking back, the fact that Colson got so deeply involved in the ITT was a mistake because it kept him from doing other things that in retrospect were more important to do. The best thing probably to have done with ITT was just to let it run its course without having the whole staff in constant uproar about it. I hope we can handle this one in that way.”31

  The International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) scandal had erupted in March 1972 and gone on for months. It was triggered by a story on leap-year day, February 29, 1972, by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson claiming that ITT, a multinational conglomerate, had settled a major antitrust lawsuit filed by Nixon’s Department of Justice in exchange for a four-hundred-thousand-dollar, quid pro quo pledge to the city of San Diego, where the 1972 GOP convention was scheduled although later moved to Miami. More specifically, Anderson claimed that ITT’s Washington lobbyist, the “crusty, capable Dita Beard, [had] acknowledged the secret deal after we obtained a highly incriminating memo, written by her, from ITT’s files.” Anderson’s column detailed how Dita Beard and Attorney General John Mitchell had negotiated the terms of the settlement during a lengthy conversation at a dinner party following the Kentucky Derby, given by Kentucky governor Louie Nunn, in May 1971.32

  Democrats had jumped on the charge, led by DNC chairman Larry O’Brien and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who made the ITT settlement central to the Senate’s approval of the pending confirmation of Richard Kleindienst to be attorney general. Although Kleindienst’s nomination had cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, he insisted the hearings be reopened so he could clear his name. It proved a disaster, for he lied when he said the White House had no input into the decision to settle the ITT case, as did John Mitchell on the same matter. Nixon had personally called Kleindienst on April 19, 1971, to tell him to settle the case because the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department was taking a position contrary to his philosophy on antitrust law, not to mention contrary to the positions candidate Nixon had taken during his 1968 presidential campaign. He certainly had no knowledge of ITT’s pledge to San Diego (it was actually only one hundred thousand dollars), for it was made after the president’s call, as was Dita Beard’s purported deal with Mitchell.33 Dita Beard told many different stories about why, or if, she had written her infamous memo.34 In fact, it appears that she did, but she was trying to take credit for something she had not actually accomplished, and when her faux boasting became public, she disowned it, but lost her job anyway, and then lied about it all.

  At the time, no one took more effective political advantage of the Anderson charges than Larry O’Brien, which particularly angered Nixon because they effectively removed the luster from the aftermath of his historic trip to China, replacing it with a sleazy government corruption sandal. Even more frustrating, the charges were unfounded.35 Notwithstanding considerable efforts by Nixon’s staff, we were unable to knock down the ITT scandal. Behind closed doors, however, Nixon renewed calls for the head of his longtime foe, hoping to expose O’Brien’s hypocrisy when he learned in early 1972 that O’Brien was on the payroll of billionaire Howard Hughes.36 The president protested to Haldeman, in words to the effect that O’Brien’s not going to get away with it, certain that they were going to get proof (O’Brien’s tax returns) of this relationship with Hughes.37 Nixon had been after O’Brien since at least March 1970, when O’Brien became chairman of the DNC and the president began worrying about O’Brien’s political skills; he created something he called “Operation O’Brien” to discredit him. But nothing had been done.38 The ITT attacks on the Nixon administration renewed his interest in discrediting O’Brien, for, as Haldeman later described it, Nixon was convinced O’Brien was somehow breaking the law with a “fantastically large ($180,000-a-year) Howard Hughes retainer for a part-time job.”39 Nixon had Ehrlichman personally reviewing O’Brien’s tax returns and pushing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to audit him.40

  When in prison because of Watergate, Haldeman opined that Nixon had provoked the DNC break-in because of his orders to nail O’Brien, “to get the goods on O’Brien’s connection with Hughes,” and because he was “infuriated with O’Brien’s success in using the ITT case against them.” Haldeman speculated that Nixon had told Colson, who in turn instructed Hunt, to get information on O’Brien. Although I did not find a recorded conversation corroborating Haldeman’s conclusion, this is not to say that the widespread efforts in the White House “to nail” O’Brien was not a significant factor leading up to the Watergate break-in, for I believe Nixon’s demands for information were clearly the catalyst that resulted in seeking information at the DNC offices in the Watergate. There are clear clues in the recorded conversations as to why they broke in and bugged the DNC, for those who mistakenly believe this remains a significant mystery.*

  An overreaction to the ITT scandal would result in an underreaction to the unfolding Watergate scandal.
By the time the president returned to the White House from his extended weekend in the Bahamas and Florida, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were fully aware of the problems. Ehrlichman was certainly aware of Hunt and Liddy’s activities when they were working for the Special Investigations Unit, of which he was the titular head. Haldeman had been aware of the development of a campaign-intelligence operation from the start.41 He knew the Watergate break-in was the work of the Liddy campaign political-intelligence operation, which had a budget of three hundred thousand dollars that he had accepted, after being informed by Gordon Strachan in a written memorandum in early April 1972 that Mitchell had approved it. Indeed, Haldeman had instructed Strachan to tell Liddy in early April 1972 to transfer his intelligence capabilities from Senator Edmund Muskie, who had been the Democratic front-runner, to George McGovern when McGovern appeared to become the leading candidate. (Had Liddy’s team not been arrested at the Watergate they had planned to proceed that night to McGovern’s headquarters on Capitol Hill.42 Should they have been arrested in McGovern’s offices, their orders would have been traceable as follows: Nixon → Haldeman → Strachan → Liddy → Hunt, McCord and the Miami burglary team. Although when Nixon called for moving the “plant” from Muskie to McGovern, it is not clear that he was referring to the planting of an electronic listening device; that was precisely the kind of order Liddy would have twisted, so the responsibility would have come back to Nixon.43

  Frankly, the actual story, as revealed in Nixon’s recorded conversations, of the way the events unfolded in the first two weeks following the break-in, and then in the months that followed, surprised me. While I knew the gist of the story from information that has long been available, what actually happened behind closed doors was often not as I had thought. But I am getting ahead of myself. This story speaks for itself.

  PART I

  COVERING UP

  June 20 to July 1, 1972

  June 20, 1972 (Tuesday)

  Before and After the 18½-Minute Gap

  On June 20 President Nixon’s day began as did most throughout his presidency. He had breakfast in the residence, on this morning at 8:40 A.M., where he scanned The Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which had front-page headlines on the Watergate incident: The Times’s was EX-G.O.P. AIDE LINKED TO POLITICAL RAID, by Tad Szulc, and the Post had WHITE HOUSE CONSULTANT TIED TO BUGGING FIGURE, by Bob Woodward and E. J. Bachinski. Both reported Hunt’s connection to the break-in, the Times connecting him through his ties with the Miami Cubans and the Post reporting that Hunt’s name and White House phone number had been found in the address books of two of the arrested men. Both stories reported that Hunt had been a consultant to Chuck Colson and that White House spokesman Ron Ziegler had said from Florida that he would not comment on “a third-rate burglary attempt.” But Ken Clawson, a former Washington Post reporter who now worked for Colson, told the Post that Hunt had left the White House and Colson had no knowledge of his Watergate-related activities. The Post account also noted that Larry O’Brien said the Democrats were considering a lawsuit.

  When the president arrived in the Oval Office at 9:00 A.M., he signed a few documents and then scanned his news summary, a document prepared every weekday by White House aides containing highlights of the coverage of the Nixon administration by network television news, wire services and newsmagazines, with occasional special issues on media coverage of issues of interest to the president, who was not a television viewer. The document summarized a vast amount of information from the preceding twenty-four-hour news cycle (or for forty-eight hours over weekends) and served as both an information and a management tool. When the president finished reading it, the staff secretary reviewed his marginal notes and directives and prepared an “administratively confidential” memorandum to inform various staffers of the president’s requests or directives. Because the summary could become voluminous, Haldeman often reviewed it beforehand, underlining with a blue felt-tipped pen the material that he thought might be of particular interest to Nixon.

  Watergate was a lead item in that day’s summary (with Haldeman’s underlining reproduced here): “3-4 minutes on all nets on what [NBC’s John] Chancellor called ‘1 of the most fascinating and exotic stories ever out of DC.’ The GOP, said Chancellor, is ‘scandalized and fit to be tied.’ McG[overn] and [the Republican National Committee chairman, Senator Robert] Dole on all nets; O’Brien on 2 shows w/HHH [former vice president and again senator Hubert Humphrey (D-MN)] and [Senator Edmund] Muskie [D-ME] getting in their licks as well on CBS. Dems will file a court suit Tues.”

  On page 16, under the heading POLITICS and the subheading “DNC Break-In,” the following item caught the president’s attention: “On CBS Hubert Humphrey said RN and cabinet ‘owed country an apology and explanation for this incredible act’ although he had no evidence GOP behind the incident. Humphrey acknowledged such things can happen in US politics, he discounted a Democratic investigation because it would be politically motivated and said the Department of Justice would have to be trusted.”

  After reading this, the president wrote questions for White House aide Pat Buchanan: “Haven’t there been some other break-ins in political and government offices? Where were the cries of anguish when the [New York] Times and [Jack] Anderson got [Pulitzer] prizes for publicizing stolen top-secret government documents [referring to the Pentagon Papers]?”

  As Nixon was reading the summary, Bob Haldeman and John Mitchell were joining John Ehrlichman in his office, on the second floor of the West Wing, directly over the Oval Office. I was asked to join this meeting, which was in progress when I arrived. I was told that Attorney General Richard Kleindienst was in the West Wing lobby and would soon be joining us.1 Kleindienst would later adamantly claim that he had never attended this meeting, and Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman would later claim that they could not recall what had transpired during the forty-five minutes before I arrived, although they did not dispute my recollections, or that Kleindienst had attended as well. As I later summarized:

  I expected some weighty decisions to be made in this company. Wrong. All parties were guarded. The White House faction did not trust the Justice Department faction, and, moreover, no one wanted to acknowledge how serious the problem might be. . . . Ehrlichman raised the only matters of substance, and even they were marginal. He told Mitchell that the White House would steer all Watergate press inquiries to the Re-election Committee. Mitchell nodded, not happy, not objecting. Then Ehrlichman asked Kleindienst about the Watergate leaks. Kleindienst replied that they were coming from the Metropolitan Police. He said the problem would soon be solved, since the FBI was assuming jurisdiction over the investigation.2

  Haldeman, however, did record in his diary that evening: “I had a long meeting with Ehrlichman and Mitchell. We added Kleindienst for a little while and John Dean for quite a while. The conclusion was that we’ve got to hope the FBI doesn’t go beyond what’s necessary in developing evidence and that we can keep a lid on that, as well as keeping all the characters involved from getting carried away with any unnecessary testimony.”3

  Ehrlichman went from our meeting to the president’s EOB office, where they talked from 10:25 until 11:20 A.M. Honoring the president’s request, Ehrlichman did not mention Watergate, but just as they were parting, the president made the point to Ehrlichman that he had noted on his news summary that the press was all excited about the Watergate break-in but that they passed out Pulitzer Prizes to the Times and Anderson for stealing documents.4 He would repeat that complaint in later conversations throughout the day.

  After Ehrlichman departed the EOB office, the president ordered a bowl of soup for lunch and complained to a Secret Service agent about the dictating equipment he had used in the Bahamas and on Air Force One over the weekend. From 11:26 A.M. until 12:45 P.M. the president met with Haldeman.5 While Watergate was not the focus of their discussion, the subject did arise in passing early on and again at the end. But this June 20, 1972, conversation lives in infamy
because when the recording of it was later subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, it contained an 18½-minute gap consisting of a buzzing sound that experts determined had been caused by five to nine deliberate erasures of the tape. This gap created a media frenzy when it was revealed, and it was the basis for a mystery that has lasted to this day.*

  The conversation began with talk of the good weather they had left behind in Florida, followed by a discussion of the president’s schedule. Because Nixon expected poor weather in July, when they were to be in California, he told Haldeman he would return to the Bahamas in August. After going over routine matters, Haldeman mentioned that the Republican governor of South Dakota was having some political trouble, and the president began to dictate the outline of a letter. South Dakota was, of course, the home base of his likely reelection opponent, Senator George McGovern. It was while discussing this letter to the governor, some seven minutes into the conversation, that the 18½-minute buzzing begins.

  The fact that they next spoke about Watergate can be determined by notes Haldeman made during the meeting; read as a record of the meeting they do not reveal anything of particular importance.6 Haldeman’s note-taking procedures have been misunderstood; he did not make a record of or even cite the highlights of what was said at any given session but instead recorded only matters that called for further attention and follow-up. It was in his diary he made an effort to record the actual gist of meetings and events, or of matters he thought of importance on any given day. Haldeman made his diary entries at the end of each day with uncanny discipline and regularity, and given the often highly incriminating information they contain, it does not appear he filtered information if he remembered it. Accordingly, Haldeman’s diary entry is often more revealing but adds little to his notes for June 20, 1972.