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

by John W. Dean

  “Well, there’s been a change in the mood,” I noted for Haldeman and the president, and I was talking not only about Capitol Hill, the anti-Nixon media and the president’s legions of detractors, but about Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Magruder and everyone else involved in the Watergate affair, including myself. I was willing to soldier on, for I still believed the president and my colleagues would do the right thing, although I was beginning to have my doubts. “John’s point is exactly right,” Haldeman noted, and explained to the president “that the erosion here now is going to you, and that is the thing that we’ve got to turn off at whatever the cost. We’ve got to figure out where to turn it off at the lowest cost we can, but at whatever cost it takes.” I agreed, “That’s what we have to do.” The president observed, “Well, the erosion is inevitably going to come here, apart from anything, you know, people saying that Watergate isn’t a major concern. It isn’t. But it will be. It’s bound to be.” I volunteered, “We cannot let you be tarnished by that situation,” still believing I had laid the basic diagnosis before the president before the prognosis became terminal. And the meeting ended.

  The president had a full schedule that morning, but when back in his office that afternoon he asked Rose Woods to come in.10 About three minutes into this meeting the president said, “Let me ask you something. I’m just doing a little checking. We, at the present time, may have the need for some substantial cash for personal purposes for some things that are outside, political things and so forth and so on. Approximately how much do you have at this point?” he asked, regarding a secret fund she maintained. Rose was not exactly sure but said, “I know we still have that four hundred.” She reported that nobody was aware of this four hundred thousand dollars other than the president.

  Shortly after 3:00 P.M. the president asked Haldeman to come to his EOB Office.11 When Haldeman arrived he reported that he would be meeting with Ehrlichman and me, and the president said the first matter that needed to be considered was “what we’re going to do about Hunt. I think we’ve obviously overloaded Dean, who’s been carrying this thing. Everybody says, ‘Well, that’s Dean’s job,’ you know.” But the president said it was time for others to step in.

  “Well, we’ve been backing him up pretty well,” Haldeman explained, but he noted the difficulty of keeping everything together. As for dealing with Hunt, the president saw the problem as the lack of available funds. Haldeman pointed out that it was not only Hunt, but “it’s Liddy and that other guy, McCord, and the Cubans.” He reported that Fred LaRue had been trying to raise money but was not very good at it: “LaRue isn’t a very dynamic guy.” Haldeman said this had resulted in the need to go back to Mitchell with the money problem, explaining that “guys in the White House” couldn’t handle this. Kalmbach had withdrawn from this risky money-raising business. The president acknowledged the problem, pointing out, “It’s a dangerous thing they’re going to do, going around getting money.” Haldeman said that I should be the one to convince Mitchell to do this, observing, “You can’t have a fund-raising drive and give everybody certificates and gold pens.”

  When Nixon mentioned my concern that this activity involved an obstruction of justice, Haldeman responded, “Well, see, I hadn’t really thought of that.” The president said, “I hadn’t thought of it, either,” and added that he was not sure if that was actually the case. As the conversation continued the president revealed that he did in fact have access to money, and they would have to risk using it, if necessary. Haldeman warned, “It better be washed,” and then explained that there were ways to do it, referring to what I had been told about taking the money to Vegas or going through a bookmaker in New York. When Haldeman said that Mitchell and LaRue should still have some of the $350,000, the president remarked it “could take a hell of a lot more than that.”

  Again trying to assess whom Hunt might cause problems for, the president suggested that Colson might be able to deal with him regarding his threat against Ehrlichman. “Ehrlichman said he didn’t seem a bit concerned about it,” Haldeman said, which surprised Nixon; Haldeman added, “He thinks he’s three times removed. That there’s no problem, but I don’t know where that leaves John.”* Even Haldeman suspected that Ehrlichman was more vulnerable than he was admitting.12 The president, however, recognized the seriousness of Ehrlichman’s position and asked next, “What about Krogh?” for Krogh posed a potential problem for Ehrlichman. Haldeman said he was still making inquiries about Krogh and had spoken with me about his perjury problem. The president also remained concerned about Colson, not only regarding Hunt, but as he told Haldeman, “You had indicated the pressures [that were put] on Magruder. Dean said that all came from Colson. With Hunt and Liddy in his office, he called Magruder and said, ‘Now, look, get off your ass and start working. We’ve got to get [intelligence on] this or that.’” The president said I had concluded that Colson’s call probably caused Mitchell and Magruder to take action, and Nixon was concerned that he might have provoked Colson’s actions. “Yeah, I know that there was a scheme,” Haldeman conceded, now that I was not present. “With bugging, kidnapping and [mugging],” the president noted. “There was all kinds of stuff,” Haldeman agreed. The president noted, “Now, the point that I make is if, for example, Liddy and Hunt were in the office when Colson called Magruder, then Colson directed it. He knows God damn well what it was about.”

  Haldeman volunteered that he might have, inadvertently, been responsible for Magruder’s decisions. “It’s another implication thing,” he said, “I had horrendous pressure on Magruder, at one point, on the basis that [he] didn’t have people covering the Democratic candidates and taping their speeches. And their press conferences, and their Q and As. Remember, you got into it. You asked for some stuff on it. And I thought Buchanan had the stuff, and he wasn’t getting anything.” The president recalled, and thought it innocuous. Haldeman continued, “Alright, but see, Magruder could say he was under enormous pressure from me to cover on that. He was. It wasn’t to bug anybody. It was to carry a tape recorder openly. I mean, I didn’t give a shit what they did with it, I just wanted the tape. So we could prove that Humphrey said what he said about McGovern.” The president added they had also pushed for “their schedules” as well, adding, “all that’s perfectly legitimate.” This discussion of Watergate ended with the president, pursuing my suggestion, asking Haldeman to discuss, when he met with Ehrlichman and me, White House staff going to the grand jury. Haldeman liked the idea of the grand jury as well, because unlike the Senate, where there would be “no limitation,” there were rules—although Haldeman did not yet realize that those rules did not particularly favor those testifying before it.

  At 5:20 P.M. on the afternoon of March 21, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and I were asked to come to the president’s EOB office, following our meeting in Ehrlichman’s office at 3:45. The president was anxious to hear what we had to report, and Ehrlichman took the lead in explaining. “Well, you go round and round and you come up with all questions and no answers,” he reported, in short. “Back up where you were at when you started.”13 We had considered both the grand jury and a special investigative-type panel, which might immunize from prosecution all involved to get to the truth, but neither alternative was realistic to provide everyone protection. “Well, let’s take the grand jury without immunity, what about that?” the president asked. “Yeah, well, I think that is still a possibility,” Ehrlichman replied. “It leads to some very drastic results. Counsel over here reads the statutes,” he said, referring to me, “and there are awful opportunities for indictment, and so you end up with people in and out of the White House indicted for various offenses.” I had in our meeting earlier that day in Ehrlichman’s office raised the fact that it appeared we had been violating Sections 371 (the federal conspiracy statute) and 1503 (the federal obstruction of justice statute) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. While I conceded that I was not a criminal lawyer, based on the cases annotating those statutes, I thought Mitchell a
nd Magruder had potential criminal liability both for the Watergate break-in and bugging and for their activities following the June 17, 1972, arrests, as did Dean, Haldeman and Ehrlichman for our post–June 17 activities. When I first raised these criminal issues, months earlier, Ehrlichman had rejected them out of hand. When I brought them up again during our meeting earlier that afternoon, and was more explicit about their ramifications, Ehrlichman had tried again to dismiss them. But now, while speaking to the president, he seemed to acknowledge the problems were real.

  Given the disadvantages of the grand jury option, Ehrlichman continued, “the other route would be two papers, or possibly three, and these papers would say, ‘Mr. President, you asked me about this thing. Here’s my review of the facts.’ And I think we disagree as to whether or not that’s a viable option or not. I think you could get out a fairly credible document that would stand up, and that will have the effect of trimming the scope, and would have the effect of maybe becoming the battleground on a reduced scope, which I think is important.” Ehrlichman said he felt the “big danger in the Ervin hearings” would be their running out “leads into areas that it would be better not to have to get into.”

  “But does anybody really think we should do nothing?” Nixon asked. “That’s the other option, period. Keep fighting it out on this ground, if it takes all summer?” Haldeman assured everyone it would indeed take all summer. “That’s the other thing, whether we’re going to contain the thing,” Ehrlichman noted, and reported that we had considered all these possibilities, including “playing the odds, keep trying to put out fires here and there. The problem of the Hunt thing, and possibly McCord, and some of these other people breaking, there is no sign-off ever. It just goes on and on and on.” Then the president asked Ehrlichman, “Well, if that’s the case, then what is your view as to what we should do now about Hunt, and so forth?” “Well, my view is that Hunt’s interests lie in getting a pardon if he can. That ought to be, somehow or another, one of the options that he is most particularly concerned about. His indirect contacts with John,” referring to the blackmail demands, “don’t contemplate it at all.” Ehrlichman surmised that “they think that that’s already understood.”

  “I mean, he’s got to get that by Christmastime,” the president added, referring to Hunt’s clemency. The president asked me how Hunt’s confessing everything could help him, wondering if he could “get clemency from the court.” I explained how Hunt might appeal to Judge Sirica, saying he would cooperate with the government, and the judge might respond to the plea for leniency. The discussion turned to paying off Hunt, and I reported that, while I had not spoken to either Mitchell or LaRue, I understood they were “in a position to do something.” This information caused the president to lament to us all, “It’s a long road, isn’t it?” I then raised more vulnerabilities that I had touched on only lightly during my morning session with the president, like the remarkable number of secretaries who had varying degrees of knowledge. I reported that the DNC’s legal team was planning a rather “intense civil discovery” in the coming weeks and appeared to be coordinating with the Senate’s inquiry. And finally, while discussing the matter in general terms (though the fact that I was speaking to the president with Ehrlichman present did not escape my notice), I added, “And the other thing I must say I’ve noticed is, there is an attitude that has grown amongst all the people that have been involved in this thing to protect their own behinds. And they’re going to start hiring counsel. Dwight [Chapin], for example, now wants a lawyer. Kalmbach has hired himself a lawyer. Colson has retained a lawyer.”

  Picking the right moment in our circular conversation, Ehrlichman asked, “Or is there another way? Like the Dean statements, where the president then makes a full disclosure of everything which he then has. And [then the president] is in a position, if it does collapse at a later time, to say, ‘Jesus, I had the FBI, and the grand jury, and I had my own counsel. I turned over every rock I could find. And I rested my confidence in these people in good faith, and it’s obvious now . . .” Ehrlichman trailed off, having made his point. He was flat-out stating that I should write a bogus report behind which the president could hide, and when it fell apart he could blame me. Ehrlichman was effectively volunteering me to fall on my sword, an offer I declined to take.

  Slowly the president reembraced the scheme he had formulated when he first thrust me forward on August 29, 1972, with my nonexistent investigation clearing everyone. I listened as he explained how we had been around and around on this matter, and he finally said, “If you, as White House counsel, John, on direction, I asked for a written report, which is very general, understand.” He nervously chucked as he continued, now knowing what I knew, “I don’t want to get all that God damned specific. I’m thinking now in far more general terms, having in mind the fact that the problem with a specific report is that this proves this one and that one and that one, and you just prove something that you didn’t do at all.” I did not have a clue what he was saying, but I listened. “But if you make it quite general in terms of your investigation, [which] indicates this man did not do it, this man did not do it, this man did do that.” Then he added that he wanted me to address the Segretti-Chapin thing, which I answered with a noncommittal, “Um hmm.” When the president asked if this was possible, Ehrlichman jumped back into the discussion and suggested, “To give some weight to that, could you attach as an appendix a list of the FBI reports to which you had access: interview with Kalmbach; interview with Segretti; interview with Chapin; and Magruder; and whoever; Dean; the whole business. So that the president at some later time is in a position to say, ‘I relied—’”

  “Not on Dean alone but on corroborated evidence,” I said, interrupting. “That’s right,” Ehrlichman added, and he elaborated further on using the FBI reports, with the president largely repeating Ehrlichman’s argument. Looking for a way out of this conspicuous deception, I said that because of the Gray hearings, which had called into question my credibility, I might not be the best party to undertake this task, and that someone else should assume responsibility for it. In response, Ehrlichman made the absurd claim: “This will rehabilitate you, though.” The president added that he did not believe my credibility was in question but rather that they merely wanted me to testify. This discussion went on for some time, with Ehrlichman even suggesting I simply whitewash the Ellsberg break-in. I said nothing until I finally pointed out the obvious: “Well, I still see in this conversation the things that we’ve thought of before, we’ve talked about before, but they do not ultimately solve what I see as the grave problem of a cancer growing around the presidency, and that cancer is going to continue to grow. This is just another thing that gives a problem. It does not clean the problem out.”

  Ehrlichman asked, “Doesn’t it permit the president to clean it out at such time as it does come up, by saying, I relied on it. And now, this later thing turns up, and I don’t condone that. And if I’d known about that before, obviously I wouldn’t have done it. And I’m going to move on it now.” The president turned to me, and asked, “Your point is, you really think you’ve got to clean the cancer out now, right?” I answered, “Yes, sir.” He then asked, “And how would you do that?” clearly wanting an answer that did not result in a breakdown of executive privilege. “You have to do it to get the credit for it,” I explained, “that gets you above it. As I see it, I see people getting hurt, and I hope we can find an answer to that problem.” I was, in effect, telling the president to take action on the information he now possessed.

  Ehrlichman again jumped in with an idea. “Alright, suppose we did this? Supposing you tender a report to the president on everything you know about this. And the president then fires some people, step one. Step two, send the report over to the Justice Department that says, ‘I’ve been diligently at work on this. My counsel’s been diligently at work. Here are his findings.’” While I said nothing, I thought Ehrlichman’s idea had merit, for at least now we were discussing
an honest Dean report, much as I had outlined to the president that morning. The president immediately recognized the problem with this approach, however, and asked, “Where would you stop it?” “Christ,” Ehrlichman responded, “I don’t know where it stops.” Again, no agreement could be reached about where to stop, because once you did so, it became a further cover-up. At one point I facetiously suggested that the president could draw names from a hat to decide “who gets hurt and who doesn’t,” which would be about as fair a process as any. Once again, an honest report to the Justice Department by me was ultimately dismissed, because it would hurt too many people. Consideration was given, but rejected, to confiding in Henry Petersen. And when the conversation came back to me writing some sort of statement, I said, “The idea was a temporary answer,” with which the president agreed but said he would settle for a temporary answer.

  I raised the very real problem looming over our conversation: namely, that when Sirica sentenced the convicted Watergate defendants on Friday, it would likely change the dimensions of everything. Although I had no special knowledge other than what I had read in news accounts and gathered from conversations with the CRP lawyers, it did not take much foresight to imagine what was likely to occur in the coming days and weeks.* “I think [it] will prompt new problems,” I said, and added, “I think he will charge that he cannot believe the trial was conducted by the government presenting a limited case, that he is not convinced the case represents the full situation.” I noted that, if that happened, “It’ll have a dramatic impact on the day of sentence with Sirica from the bench, because he’ll charge that there are higher-ups involved in this. He may take some dramatic action, like appointing a special prosecutor. Who knows?” When Nixon asked if he could do that, I answered, “Sure, I think he could.”* I explained that the prosecutors were going to take all the people who had been sentenced back before the grand jury and question them. “Sirica may, you know, give them provisional sentences. And say if they are helpful to the government back before the grand jury, he’ll reconsider the sentences.” And I suspected, as I said, that he would give them “horrendous sentences.” (This, of course, was exactly what happened.) The meeting again ended with no answers.