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

by John W. Dean

  When Haldeman arrived in the Oval Office later that morning, Watergate was discussed only briefly, when the president suggested that they might request Colson remain at the White House for a few additional months.5 Haldeman, having just learned new information from Magruder about Colson, said he thought Colson should go. “I found out some things,” he told the president, without revealing his source. “Even though he’s going to be missed,” Haldeman warned, “there’s more to his involvement in some of the stuff than I realized.” Nixon was not happy to hear this, for he saw Colson as a direct link to himself. Haldeman explained that not only was Colson aware of Watergate, but he had advocated it through Liddy and Magruder.6 Nixon asked if Colson was aware of Haldeman’s knowledge, to which Haldeman responded that he did not think so, and then the president inquired if Colson was involved through Hunt.

  “Yeah, through Hunt—and Liddy,” Haldeman added with emphasis. “And if Liddy decides to pull the cork, Colson could be in some real soup.” The reason, Haldeman explained, was that “Colson is in a position of having perjured himself. Colson and Mitchell have both perjured themselves under oath already.” “You mean Colson was aware of Watergate?” Nixon asked. Before Haldeman could answer, the president said, “That’s hard for me to believe.” Haldeman continued, “Not only was he aware of it, but he was pushing very hard for results from it, and it’s very specifically that and—” Nixon interrupted again, “Who was he pushing?” “Magruder and Liddy, and that’s why we got to be awful careful to take—” Haldeman stopped, backtracking to clarify, “Liddy we’re taking care of in one way,” he said, without mentioning money, and then picked up where he left off. “And we got to be very careful they’re taking care of Magruder the right way, in the other way.” The president seemed to understand the distinction and asked, “How do you think, how are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I just . . .” Haldeman began, and was apparently about to say that he had just met with Magruder but checked his words. He had clearly decided not to reveal that conversation, possibly because he was uncertain how the president might react to his assurances to Magruder that he would be taken care of if he continued perjuring himself. Rather he told Nixon, “I’m going to make sure he has the feeling that he’s—” But Haldeman declined to finish this sentence, either. While not an attorney, he understood that what he was doing with Magruder was criminal, so he changed the subject. “John Dean’s been doing a superb job of just having, you know, getting all the facets together—”

  But the president, well aware of Magruder’s earlier perjury, wanted to know more: “What does he need, a job of some sort, or what?” “Well,” Haldeman answered, “either a job or ample recognition, so he can go out into something outside. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He doesn’t know what he should do. And this partly depends on how [it] bounces this year. But the main thing is, he’s got to feel in his own mind, in his own heart, that we’re on his side.” Nixon agreed, and, Haldeman further reported, without mentioning the president’s blessing, that he had, in fact, assured Magruder he would support and assist him. The president asked, “He’s working on inauguration?” “Oh yes, he’s the director of the inaugural,” Haldeman assured him, “and he’s running that thing, so that gives him an ongoing base through the twentieth.”

  The president returned to Colson. “Does Mitchell know that Colson was involved? Does Colson know that Mitchell was involved?” “I think the answer is yes to both of those,” Haldeman answered. “Although I’m sure Colson assumes that Mitchell is involved if he doesn’t know it directly as a fact, and I’m not positive that Mitchell knows that Colson was involved. See, Mitchell’s involvement was early, and then he backed out, and—”

  The president was having trouble believing this information, apparently suspecting it was another instance of Haldeman’s occasional efforts to dilute Colson’s influence, while Haldeman’s account was in fact accurate. “I can see Mitchell doing it, but I can’t see Colson getting into the Democratic [Committee],” Nixon said, as they talked over each other. And then he asked, as he had before, “What the Christ was he looking for?”

  “They were looking for stuff on two things. One on financial stuff, and the other on stuff that they thought they had on what they were going to do at Miami, to screw us up, which apparently was, ah—” and as Haldeman paused to gather his thoughts, Nixon injected, “Democratic plot,” to which Haldeman then added, “—that they thought they had uncovered.”* “Colson was salivating with glee at the thought of what he might be able to do with it,” Haldeman explained. “And the investigator types were reluctant to go in there; they were put under tremendous pressure [that] they had to get this stuff.” When the president replied with a skeptical, “Hmm,” Haldeman pulled back a little, saying, “None of this, I don’t know any of this firsthand. I can’t prove any of it. Really, I don’t want to know, because if I ever get involved in it, I want to be ignorant, which I am.” “But,” he continued, not only was Liddy a potential problem for Colson, but by implication Magruder and Mitchell might be problems for Colson as well. He further noted that “Hunt also knows. See, on Hunt’s side of it, he could really screw Colson, but apparently there’s no real danger of that.” Nixon remarked, “There doesn’t appear to be any great danger of Liddy [either].” Haldeman agreed, and he resumed, “And I think we’re okay on Magruder. The other one that’s a problem is Sloan, and he doesn’t know enough, apparently, to matter, although he suspects a lot.”

  “What can we do to take care of him?” the president inquired. While giving no specifics, Haldeman indicated that they were already trying. After a pause to absorb this, Nixon asked, “What is Magruder going to do?” As Nixon was posing this, Haldeman was telling him again, “Give John Dean a lot of credit for being a damn effective operator on this one without bothering anybody with the details, just sort of living with it hour by hour—” Nixon, speaking sotto voce, agreed, “Very appreciative, we’ll remember, we’ll remember.” Haldeman then vaguely shared a concern I had mentioned on the flight back to Washington: I had unwittingly gotten myself on the wrong side of the law, though I was not certain if I was in trouble. “Now he’s got interest in it, he’s in it in a sense himself because of what he’s trying to do about it,” Haldeman explained.

  Nixon, his mind elsewhere, asked, “What about [doing something] with Magruder? What can we do there? Is there anything?” Haldeman reported that Magruder was interested in the Bicentennial Commission, but the problem was that it was a very “politically visible spot,” which prompted the president to immediately reject it. Haldeman said that Magruder did not really want anything, a fact that surprised and pleased Nixon, “And wouldn’t consider anything until after the trial. He doesn’t want to be thought of for anything.”

  “What’s the present plan for the trial?” Nixon asked, wanting to know “whether they’re going to plead guilty or go to trial or what?” Haldeman said some would plead, but they were still making motions. Nixon wanted them all to plead guilty. They discussed whether Congress would go forward with the trial under way (Nixon thought not), and Haldeman reported that Kennedy’s staff investigation of Segretti had largely faded away. Then, thinking of the toll this had taken so far, Haldeman added, it was “too damn bad,” because Colson was “a substantial loss, there’s no question.” So, too, was Chapin “a substantial loss.”

  Colson, Nixon said, would “find a way to be back in and out of the White House. He said that there’s only one thing he’s asking for is, at the end, he would like to take a trip, a little trade fair or something.” Haldeman knew about this and indicated that they were looking for a nice junket for him.

  Nixon said he recognized that “these fellows” involved in Watergate had thought they were part of “a good cause,” but he was still not clear on who had been pushing whom and said he “thought it was Mitchell” who had pushed.

  “Mitchell did not push them, apparently,” Haldeman said, and then offered hi
s interpretation, employing somewhat obtuse metaphors and descriptions that Nixon apparently understood: “Mitchell’s thing really was an awareness of machinery rather than an initiative. Mitchell, at the point that was going on, Mitchell was not taking a very active role at all.” After a long pause the president asked, “But Colson was? Colson’s pushing Magruder, is that what it was?” Haldeman answered, “And Liddy,” a fact the president was not pleased to hear. Haldeman continued, “Yeah, and it gets down to undeniable specifics. I mean, there’s specific needs, times and places and that sort of thing, and—” The president, thinking like the lawyer he was, raised an important distinction: “Yet the point is whether he was pushing to receive information on that, the question of perjury and so forth, whether he was pushing to get information, or whether he was pushing to get information through bugging, you know?” Haldeman reported that Colson’s push was “very specific” and a “venture” known to “the committee.”

  While Haldeman was meeting with the president I received an urgent call from Paul O’Brien. Hunt was at the breaking point, I was told, as his criminal trial was about to begin. Colson was refusing to take calls from Bittman, who wanted to discuss executive clemency for Hunt. Soon after my discussion with O’Brien, Colson called me to ask if I had seen the letter from Hunt. I had not, but fished it out of my inbox and told Colson I wanted to speak to Ehrlichman about the situation, which I did at noon. Ehrlichman felt that Colson should listen to Bittman’s proposal.7

  That evening I joined Ehrlichman in his office to meet with Colson after his conversation with Bittman. Colson arrived uncharacteristically shaken; whatever Bittman had told him obviously troubled him, and he now said he felt it was imperative that Hunt be given an assurance of clemency. Ehrlichman said he wanted to think about the situation and instructed Colson to not discuss the matter with the president. Two days later, with no word from Ehrlichman, Colson ignored his injunction.

  January 5, 1973, the White House

  Neither Ehrlichman nor Colson mentioned the Hunt situation when they spoke with Nixon on January 4, but when Colson met with the president on the following day in his EOB office, he raised it. The audio on this recording is extremely poor, virtually impossible to transcribe,8 but the National Archives Subject Log indicates, as did I, that they also heard the discussion of clemency during this exchange.9 The president made a contemporaneous note in his diary: “Colson told me on Friday [January 5] that he had tried to do everything he could to keep Hunt from turning state’s evidence. After what happened to Hunt’s wife, etc., I think we have a very good case for showing some clemency.”10

  Although Nixon also interpreted the information from Colson during their January 5 conversation as more finger-pointing among his subordinates, the truth was that his staff was slowly (and finally) giving him the basic facts about what had actually occurred—while not really explaining their own roles in the affair. On this point, Nixon recorded in his diary: “It was Colson’s view apparently that either Haldeman or Ehrlichman or both might have been more deeply involved than has been indicated. Of course, it is all hearsay. Colson’s point is that Magruder is a name dropper and that Magruder may have mentioned the names of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and telling the Watergate people to get information. Apparently, according to Colson, too, some of the meetings took place in Mitchell’s office at the Justice Department (since he would not move to the CRP until March 1972). This would be hard for me to believe but then again during the campaign people are not as rational or responsible as they normally would be. This, I know, must be a great burden for Haldeman and Ehrlichman during this past tough week and I could see that something was eating them without knowing what.”11

  January 7, 1973, Camp David

  The president met at Birch Lodge with Haldeman, on January 7, which Haldeman later reported involved in part “fill[ing] him in on all the [Watergate] coverage in the paper today, and the fact that it’s building up.”12 The New York Times had a story—7 GO TO TRIAL TOMORROW IN BREAK-IN AT DEMOCRATIC OFFICES—that identified the defendants and noted that Judge Sirica had “repeatedly prodded the Government to take up the reasons behind the break-in.” The Washington Post had two front-page stories: WATERGATE JURORS FACE GUARDED LIFE, which described the Spartan living conditions the jurors would encounter while being sequestered for an estimated “six weeks to three months” during the trial, and MANSFIELD ASKS PROBE OF WATERGATE, which reported that Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) had sent a letter to Senator Sam J. Ervin (D-NC) requesting he undertake an investigation of Watergate and “other insidious campaign practices.” It appears this news resulted in a discussion about how those associated with the president should handle their testimony, for as Haldeman noted in his diary, the president felt “our people should take the Fifth Amendment rather than getting trapped into testifying.”13

  January 8, 1973, the White House

  In an Oval Office conversation Ron Ziegler raised the fact that the Watergate trial was starting, and Nixon instructed that there should be no comment from the White House during the proceedings.14 Ziegler agreed, and it was understood that the Justice Department would handle all responses and reactions. Nixon was pleased to learn that Clifton Daniel* was coming to Washington to head the New York Times bureau. Ziegler believed they could develop a good working relationship with him; the president observed that their doing so was a good way to stick it to the Post. Haldeman arrived as Ziegler departed, followed shortly by Ehrlichman.15

  Ehrlichman relayed the details of his appearance the previous day on Meet the Press, where he had been questioned about Watergate by Time magazine columnist Hugh Sidey: Did he know the facts of Watergate? No. Did the president know? No. Sidey asked why the White House had not investigated, and Ehrlichman replied that the FBI had conducted the biggest investigation since the Kennedy assassination, and literally dozens of witnesses would be called in the forthcoming trial. He added that the White House had conducted its own investigation, and no one in the administration was found to be involved. Anything beyond that, Ehrlichman told Sidey, he was not prepared to discuss, nor did he know the motive behind Watergate or the inception of the plan.

  Haldeman reported that “the way it appears now, Hunt is going to take a guilty plea on three counts,” after the opening statement. “They will ask him, presumably, whether there were any higher-ups involved, after he takes his guilty plea, and he’ll say no.” Rothblatt, the lawyer representing the Cubans, was a zealot who wanted to fight; Liddy was not going to plead but rather go to trial hoping for a reversible error by the judge or prosecutors; he believed he could “screw something up somewhere.” Haldeman assured the president, “They all will sit mute. None of them will testify, none of them will take the stand, except McCord, who does intend to take the stand, but McCord has no firsthand knowledge of any involvement of other people. Therefore, Dean’s not too worried about his taking the stand.” Haldeman added that, if convicted, which he presumed they would be, they could be immunized by Congress, but they would “take contempt of Congress charges rather than testifying before Congress. At least, that’s their present position.” Ehrlichman explained that both the grand jury and Congress could immunize them to obtain their testimony.

  A little later Ehrlichman asked, “Did you see the Marty Schram story over the weekend?” The Post had run a story from Newsday that reported: “The Watergate burglary and espionage mission at Democratic Party headquarters was part of a widespread project in which documents were photographed in the Embassy of Chile and several liberal Democratic senators were kept under electronic surveillance, according to a source close to the defendants.”16 Neither the president nor Haldeman had seen the piece, so Ehrlichman offered his own version of it: “There’s a story to the effect that a CIA agent has bagged a lot of embassies here, including the Chilean embassy. That’s been kicking around now for two or three weeks. Newsday finally ran it as a story, and they assert that there is a CIA project officer who is around this unit,
and they’ve been in existence for some time.” Haldeman thought this account might be part of the defense the Watergate burglars were developing.

  After a brief discussion of the bugging of the Nixon campaign plane in 1968, Ehrlichman returned to the Watergate trial and shared new information he had picked up: “I was going to say, one of the witnesses in the Watergate case is going to be a kid that Hunt recruited who was in the Muskie headquarters and then in the McGovern headquarters.* And—” The president interrupted to ask, “Worked for Hunt?” Ehrlichman confirmed he did and continued, “Was paid thirty-five hundred dollars, and finally broke off with Hunt because he refused to bug Gary Hart’s telephone over at the McGovern headquarters. That’s going to reopen and re-escalate this whole political sabotage business, I would guess. And that would come fairly early in the trial, I would think, because it’s part of the conspiracy.” Ehrlichman began speculating, “Now, if Hunt pleads and is sentenced maybe they won’t call that guy. I don’t know whether Liddy—”

  “But what about the Congress, though?” the president asked. Nixon said he did not have a problem with this kid’s having been planted in a candidate’s headquarters: “That, believe me, doesn’t bother me too much. Good God, there are people planted in headquarters all the time.” “And bugging,” Haldeman added. “So they can say that he was in the headquarters, and that Hunt recruited him, he was in the Muskie headquarters.” Nixon later continued, “What did the guy do in the headquarters? I mean, he just worked there?”