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

by John W. Dean

  After Ziegler left the Oval Office, the president asked Haldeman if this latest story could have had an FBI source or whether it came from Chuck Colson, since it had information about the inner workings of his office. Haldeman thought the FBI was more likely, and although he had only been able to quickly scan the lengthy account, he had noticed that much of the detail was from the lawyers whom this “guy named Spaghetti, or something” had tried to recruit. The Post had also charged that Ken Clawson, a former Post reporter who now worked for Colson, had boasted to Post reporter Marilyn Berger that he had written the so-called Canuck letter that had been published by the Manchester (NH) Guardian during the Democratic primaries; it alleged that Senator Edmund Muskie condoned a racial slur on Americans of French Canadian descent by calling them “Canucks.” The letter had caused Muskie to cry, which in turn marked the beginning of his failed effort to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Because Haldeman could not answer a number of the president’s questions, Colson was summoned to the Oval Office.

  “Let me ask this question,” the president asked Colson when he arrived. “With regard to that story in the Post this morning, the only thing that concerned me was whether or not there’s a leak in your office. I just wondered if all that crap—” At which point Haldeman clarified: “Maybe Clawson had something to do with it.” “Well, Clawson’s explanation of that, Mr. President,” Colson reported, “is that he jokingly said to Marilyn Berger, ‘That was such an effective letter, I wish I could take credit for having written it.’ And she misquoted him and said he’d said he had written it.* I don’t believe there’s a leak in the office, because there was nothing—”

  “I don’t mean the Canuck letter,” the president clarified. “I am speaking of the fact that he said [what] we were doing, you know, various things, writing letters, and all that sort of thing.” Colson protested. “No, I never heard of this guy, Segretti. I don’t know who the hell he is.” By now Haldeman was beginning to recall the details of the situation and confirmed, “Yeah, he isn’t one of your people, is he?”

  “Oh, hell no, I’ve never heard of the guy!” Colson stated emphatically. “Well, when the FBI took my statement, they asked me if I’d ever seen the guy. I said, ‘No, I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know who he is.’ I don’t know where that story could—” And he again remonstrated, “It could never come out of my office, you understand.”

  Nixon was still angry. “I don’t give one God damn about it, except to be sure your own people are always”—a thought he did not finish, but instead he began sputtering—“I mean, of course, of course, if we were out of our minds, unless we have adequate, such a way that thing’s handled with regard to, to, to handling hecklers and counterhecklers. But for Christ sakes, don’t have some asshole in your office go brag about it!” Colson began to explain, “The thing is, Mr. President—” but the president cut him off to continue: “That’s what I worry about. They’re all the same. Advance men, you know, there’s, everybody wants to prove he’s a big shot.”

  Haldeman agreed, and Nixon added, “Everybody wants to prove to you we did great, ah, and we’re, ah, we’re organized in all the states, and we’re going to mail out eighteen million pieces of literature.” “The thing about my office,” Colson replied, “nothing in that article this morning has anything to do with my office. The things that I have done that could be explosive in the newspaper will never come out, because nobody knows about them. I don’t trust anybody in my office.” This explanation satisfied both Nixon and Haldeman, with Haldeman and Colson soon agreeing that this had to have been connected to “Liddy’s operation” and the same funding that had underwritten him.

  October 12–15, 1972, the White House

  The Washington Post, joined by Time magazine, the New York Times and other publications, as well as by network television news programs on a periodic basis, had found a new angle on Watergate. On October 12 a Post editorial declared the break-in itself incidental, albeit significant as one element of a larger pattern of electoral misconduct it called “as deeply inimitable to the rights and the interest of a free people as anything we can think of.”23 It said that, given Deep Throat/Mark Felt’s characterization of Segretti’s activities as part of a “massive campaign of political espionage and sabotage” and the assertion that “Ken Clawson of the White House staff was the author of a letter bearing a fictitious signature and falsely accusing Sen. Muskie of a slur on an ethic group, [that the] burglary at the Democratic national headquarters last June was nothing compared with what we now are told was being done to prevent the people from making a free choice about who is to govern us during the next four years.”

  That evening Colson offered the president, who was seething at this turn of events, his counsel: “I think we should stonewall it and try to play it cool.”24 Nixon was not sure whether he should “stir it up or not yet. The God damn story is a phony.” But confident he would win the presidency, he decided he could bide his time, and after the election take down the Post and the New York Times “brick by brick.”

  On October 13 the Post headline reported MUSKIE DETAILS “SABOTAGE” INCIDENTS. The senator had given Woodward and Bernstein details of earlier incidents directed at his campaign seeking the Democratic nomination a week before they had first reported Segretti’s sabotage efforts. Much of this harassment of Muskie was also Segretti’s work: sending liquor, floral arrangements, pastries and pizza collect to a Muskie fund-raiser in Washington and inviting African diplomats (who were picked up in limos billed to the Muskie campaign) along with two magicians; distributing a flyer in Florida on Muskie stationery accusing his Democratic opponents Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson of illicit sexual activity; and sending Democratic contributors in California a letter on Muskie stationery saying he did not want wealthy donors. Other such actions may have been Chuck Colson’s work, as Haldeman revealed during the following conversation with Nixon on Friday, October 13.25

  Haldeman told the president he felt that Ziegler should continue to “not answer” questions about the matter while he tried to figure out how much more such information might surface, and its source, which he assumed was the grand jury and the FBI. However, as damaging as these revelations might be, he explained, “in a way [this reporting] is pretty good.” Though he did not spell it out, there was even worse information that could surface: “It’s a better string to be running out than some other strings that could come out of that [that] apparently were turned off.” As usual, when he mentioned such dark matters, he remained vague, which Nixon appeared to understand. “Because it would be running out to people playing these kinds of games, so I don’t think it’s going to make much difference. [But] if they ran it into one of Colson’s operations, you know, then it could be harmful. [And] I’m [pretty sure] this Muskie stuff is a Colson operation.”

  Although everyone was aware that the president privately gave Colson unsavory assignments, Nixon protested innocence: “Bob, I never knew about it.” To which Haldeman replied, “Well, I didn’t, either.” The president explained that this was why he wanted “a white paper on it,” a report that would lay out the facts but would not cause anyone problems.

  At the end of that day Haldeman and Ziegler had great fun keeping me on the telephone to make me late for my wedding, since I had requested two weeks off to get married, believing, as I had told the president on September 15, that nothing was going to come crashing down before the election. Although Woodward and Bernstein had informed Ziegler that they had a story about Dwight Chapin, the president’s appointment secretary—that he was a contact for Segretti, and that he and Howard Hunt had allegedly met with Segretti in Miami—I knew it was false, and no one was truly concerned about it. As I explained to Haldeman, the Segretti situation was a public relations matter that others were far more able to handle than me.

  On October 15 the Post broke it as another banner headline front-page story, KEY NIXON AIDE NAMED AS “SABOTAGE” CONTACT, reporting that Dwight Chapin was
“the person in charge of Mr. Nixon’s schedule and appointments, including overall coordination of trips. Chapin is one of a handful of White House staff members with easy access to the President.” The Post’s description of Chapin’s role was in fact one of Haldeman’s key activities, for Chapin seldom met with the president but learned of his schedule only after Haldeman and the president had decided upon it. But given that Woodward and Bernstein had uncovered Chapin’s involvement with his former USC classmate Segretti, they needed to make him, a middle-level staffer, much closer to Nixon than he actually was. While they initially had gotten the Hunt connection wrong, they corrected it before publication. Chapin had given them a statement, through Ziegler: It said that the story was based on hearsay, denied that he knew Hunt and acknowledged his knowing Segretti only from their USC days and denied meeting with him in Florida. He refused to comment further.26 The rest of the story was based on information Segretti had given a friend of his, a California attorney named Lawrence Young to whom Segretti had confided when seeking legal advice, believing the information protected by attorney-client privilege. Young, however, thought otherwise and gave the Post a sworn affidavit revealing what Segretti had told him, namely that “Dwight Chapin was a person I reported to in Washington” and outlining Segretti’s activities since he had been discovered by the FBI.

  The president was at Camp David when this Post story broke, and he observed to Haldeman when they met early that day, “I think that’s really a shocking God damn story on Chapin this morning.”27 While the president noted that it was all hearsay, it was nevertheless not good for the White House. “Did, is Segretti, what, is he rabid? What, did he get mad about something?” the president asked, wondering why Segretti had revealed all this information to Lawrence Young, who the story acknowledged called himself “a liberal Democrat.”

  Haldeman explained how it had all unfolded, about the mistaken trust Segretti had placed in Young, and noted that while the facts of the piece were largely correct, it was not the entire story. The Post had not reported that Herb Kalmbach had been paying Segretti both a salary and the expenses for his operation. “But what does Kalmbach say? Is he tied in there as attorney for the president? How does he handle it?” Nixon asked. Haldeman was certain that Kalmbach had already explained his role to the FBI, which meant that this information might leak at any time. “I think you better get, pretty quickly, the story ready on Kalmbach, as to what funds he was using,” the president instructed. Nixon wanted Kalmbach portrayed not as a private attorney who did work for the president but rather as a fund-raiser for the reelection committee, given that this was already public. (Within hours, however, Kalmbach would be identified and thrust into the sabotage story by Time magazine as “the president’s personal attorney”—which would be his moniker throughout Watergate.) Haldeman believed the Post had gone after Chapin because McGovern was giving a big speech on corruption in the Nixon White House and this provided new and timely material. He said the timing could not be worse for Chapin, who had just been informed he had been selected by the Chamber of Commerce as one of the ten outstanding young men in America—a selection likely to be withdrawn because of this story. Haldeman added that Chapin had offered to resign, but the president rejected it out of hand.

  “John Dean just got married Friday night,” Haldeman reported, as the conversation was coming to a close. The president wanted to know whom I had married, and Haldeman said the girl I had been living with. Then, still laughing about it, Haldeman said, “He was getting married at seven-thirty, and at seven-ten we were still talking to him on the phone about this, and I said, ‘Jeez, John, don’t you think you better go get ready for your wedding?’” Haldeman did not mention his order to me that morning to cut short my honeymoon and return to Washington, and that as he was talking with the president, I was heading back to Washington. That afternoon I went to the White House to prepare Ziegler to take on the Post on Monday, a meeting that also included Ehrlichman, Chapin, Pat Buchanan and Richard “Dick” Moore.28

  October 16, 1972, the White House

  On Monday, back at the White House, when the president asked what Ziegler’s approach would be at the press conference, Haldeman said that he would “go out with a very strong personal reaction today, of indignity and disgust, really.”29 Nixon had read the latest charges made by the Post and observed that what “they’re trying to do is tie it to me, personally.” The paper wanted “to indicate that I was not telling the truth when I said that nobody in the White House was involved in it, correct?” Haldeman acknowledged that they were trying “to link the Spaghetti thing with the Watergate.”

  “Are they linked?” Nixon pressed. “No,” Haldeman answered. “Under no circumstances?” Nixon pressed. “Nobody, nobody knew about it, huh?” Haldeman responded emphatically, “Nobody’s God damn lying,” and to be clear, he added, “on the Watergate, no.” Then he said, “And they are not linked, except in the sense that Howard Hunt—” Nixon now injected, clear that he understood, “—worked on both.” Haldeman repeated, “Worked on both, and I guess, because he apparently was in contact with Segretti,” reporting something he had discovered in the Post story, for he had earlier thought it was Liddy who had been the contact. “I just want to know whether Chapin or any of your guys were involved in Watergate,” the president asked. Haldeman was unequivocal: “No, sir.”

  Nixon favored Ziegler and MacGregor both launching frontal attacks on The Washington Post, a tactic that could be carried out at the press conference. Ziegler called the Chapin story “malicious” but refused to take questions. Similarly, MacGregor read a statement saying that the Post was “using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, [and] huge scare headlines [to try] to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate,” which it knew was false. The orchestrated attack on the paper led executive editor Benjamin Bradlee to issue a statement: “Time will judge between Clark MacGregor’s press releases and The Washington Post’s reporting of the various activities of the Committee for the Re-election of the President. For now it is enough to say that not a single fact contained in the investigative reporting of this newspaper about these activities has been successfully challenged.”30

  October 17–20, 1972, the White House

  John Connally dropped by the White House to hold a brief press conference on October 17, which Haldeman attended. Afterward Connally reported to the president on his Democrats for Nixon organization, more specifically about their ongoing fund-raising efforts, and they had their first conversation about Watergate—largely a rehash of the Watergate and Segretti stories, which the president and Haldeman protested were the efforts of The Washington Post and not real problems.31

  The following morning the Post reported that Chief U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica, brushing aside the objections of defense lawyers, ordered that the trial of the seven men charged with the Watergate bugging incident begin on November 15, 1972. But the Post added, “Lawyers for the defendants indicated after the two-hour hearing that they would seek a postponement from the U.S. Court of Appeals.”32 That afternoon, in a meeting that included Ehrlichman, Haldeman reported to Nixon that Teddy Kennedy had changed his mind and was now going to investigate Segretti’s activities. This led to a discussion of a New York Times story reporting that twenty-eight phone calls had been made by Segretti to the White House, meaning either to Chapin or to Hunt, but because the recipients of the calls had not been identified, the piece was heavy on innuendo.33 Ehrlichman noted that the Post was “equating Chapin with Ellsberg,” which was beyond a stretch by both Ehrlichman, if he could justify his conclusion, which I cannot, and the Post. He added that the Times was busy building up Chapin’s authority, making him responsible for “key decisions.” Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman remarked that the Times had him dealing with the president on a daily basis, although Haldeman had checked and found that “he was in here [the president’s office] once, but I think it was over a year ago.�
� The president could recall only a single visit in the previous four years.

  While Haldeman and Ehrlichman were with the president, I was meeting with Henry Petersen at the Department of Justice to discuss the congressional investigations of Watergate. During that visit Petersen told me in the strictest confidence—because he believed the White House should know—that Mark Felt was the source of any number of FBI leaks. Petersen said he had not informed Pat Gray or Dick Kleindienst because he feared they might overreact, and Felt on the loose could cause even more serious problems. Petersen, who had once been an FBI agent, had known Felt for years and did not hold him in high esteem; he told me that Felt was known by his colleagues as “the white rat” because of his prematurely white hair and his inclination to talk to the press. When I asked Petersen how he knew Felt was leaking, he assured me that he had rock-solid evidence. An attorney whom Petersen had promised not to name represented one of the publications to which Felt had been leaking, and he had confided in Petersen because he was worried that they were receiving grand jury information and wanted to protect his client.34

  Because of Haldeman’s schedule, I did not meet with him until the following afternoon, October 19, in his office, and shortly after our session ended the president called him to his EOB office. Their conversation began with a discussion of Nixon’s planned reorganization of the executive branch during his second term, and only when the president raised the possibility of a leak at the FBI did Haldeman reveal that he had learned who the leaker was.35 “You know, if there is a leak down at the FBI, why the hell can’t Gray tell us?” Nixon asked. “What the hell is left? You know what I mean?” Haldeman commented, “We know what’s left. And we know what’s leaked, and we know who leaked it. The FBI doesn’t know they have a leak. Gray doesn’t know who’s leaking, and it’s pretty high up.”