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

by John W. Dean

  Later that evening the president called Chuck Colson.14 During the course of this conversation, when the president mentioned in passing that I had done a superb job of keeping all the fires out, Colson warned Nixon, “Yeah, well, Dean has a problem also, Mr. President. I didn’t want to say this to you Monday night when you mentioned him to me. Dean has done a spectacular job. I don’t think anybody could do as good a job as John has done,” Colson began. “The thing that worries me is the possibility of somebody charging an obstruction of justice problem. In other words, the subsequent actions would worry me more than anything, and that’s where John has, you know, he’s done all the things that had to be done, but that makes him a little more of a participant than you would like. He’s the fellow that has to coordinate it all.” Colson noted that I had a double privilege, but still he was concerned. “The subsequent developments would be the only ones that would worry me. I don’t worry about how Watergate came about.” Notwithstanding the fact that I had already acknowledged to the president that I could go to jail, he dismissed Colson’s concern. “Of course, that was what had to be done,” he said. “Hell, yes,” Colson agreed. He laughed lightly, as he said, “I know, I know. No second thoughts. That’s not the point.” Colson was also trying to warn him that someone new from outside should be brought in to handle the mess.

  That evening the president dictated a long entry to his diary: “As far as the day was concerned it was relatively uneventful except for the talk with Dean, who really, in effect, let it all hang out when he said there was a cancerous growth around the president [that] is simply going to continue to grow and that we had probably to cut it out now rather than let it grow and destroy us later. He obviously is very depressed and doesn’t really see anything, other course of action, but to move to let the facts out.” Nixon concluded that “Hunt seems to be a real problem” and added, “I don’t think that certainly Haldeman or Ehrlichman had any idea about bugging. I, of course, know Dean didn’t. He, in fact, pointed out that when Liddy first presented this scheme, it was so wild Mitchell sat puffing on his pipe chuckling all the while. Then came the real cruncher. Apparently what happened is that Colson, with Liddy and Hunt in his office, called Magruder and told him in February to get off his ass and start doing something about setting up some kind of operation.” He acknowledged, however, that Colson may not have known that what he was urging would result in an illegal operation.

  Nixon added, “I learned for the first time that Ehrlichman apparently sent Hunt and his crew out to check into Ellsberg, to see something about his psychiatric problem with his doctor or something like that. That seemed to me to be a very curious junket for Ehrlichman to be involved in. Ehrlichman says that he was three or four steps away from it, but apparently Krogh has a problem here because Krogh did answer one question to the effect he did not know the Cubans which, of course, puts him in a straight position of perjury. This, of course, would be a terrible tragedy because Krogh was involved in national security work at the time that had nothing whatsoever to do with Watergate and the whole Ellsberg business.” As for my concern about Haldeman’s role with the $350,000 being sent back to the reelection committee and used to pay Hunt and others, which I described as an obstruction of justice, the president noted, “I don’t think that this is the problem that Dean seems to think it is, but of course he has to warn against every loose end might come out, particularly in view of some of the things that have come up to this point. They’re going to meet with Mitchell in the morning and I hope that Mitchell will really put his mind to this thing and perhaps part of it all can come some sort of course of action we can follow. It seems to me just to hunker down without making any kind of statement is really too dangerous,” the president added, and then he fell silent for fifty-nine seconds, with his cassette recorder continuing to run, before he dictated, “I got to go over to the house, it’s quite late.” 15

  March 22, 1973, the White House

  The president arrived at the fourth-floor EOB auditorium at 8:44 A.M. to make an appearance at the foreign and domestic policy briefing for his subcabinet and all commissioned White House staff members. Haldeman, Ehrlichman and all the key staff were present, including me, but I departed with Haldeman after the president made some brief remarks. Haldeman said that Mitchell was on his way to Washington, and we would meet in his office when Mitchell arrived. Haldeman then accompanied the president to his first-floor EOB office for another Watergate-related conversation.16 When the president asked who was advising Pat Gray, Haldeman said no one, since he refused to take advice, and reported, “I think that we’ve just got a loose gun that rolls back and forth on the deck there.”

  Nixon said that, following our meeting with Mitchell, he wanted to see all of us, as well as have a private talk with Mitchell. Haldeman advised, “It wouldn’t hurt for you to express to Mitchell some concern that Kleindienst doesn’t seem to be stepping up and running things here.” When Nixon indicated that he was troubled by my telling him that I felt I had participated in obstruction of justice when I passed messages about taking care of the defendants, Haldeman replied, “We, John and I, worked on that with him. Perhaps he thinks I’m tied into that, too, because of this, in a sense, was my fund that he was taking.” Haldeman seemed to be testing the president, for he was well aware that I thought he had a problem, which we had discussed as recently as the day before in front of the president. Haldeman explained in some detail how Mitchell and LaRue had needed money to pay the Watergate defendants and requested that I ask Haldeman for money from his $350,000 fund. He said it had been after the election, and rather than continue to take “X thousand” dollars each time, he sent all the money back to LaRue. He told the president that Strachan had handled the money, but “Strachan had no knowledge of what that was for. He was carrying out Dean’s instructions, that Dean was carrying out instructions from me, and he got approval from me.”

  While Haldeman and Ehrlichman did not like my analysis, the president noted, “Dean is very good this way. He saw how the next question would be, quack, quack, quack, quack.” But Haldeman thought my quacks overwrought and told the president I was “inordinately worried about” obstruction because I was involved. He said that I had suggested placing “wagons around the White House, [since] the White House literally doesn’t have any problem prior to the Watergate break-in.” When I made this statement to Haldeman I was not aware of Ehrlichman’s personal approval of the Ellsberg break-in, so the only place the White House was culpable on a criminal basis, as I saw it, was “the potential charge of obstruction of justice after the fact, that we have no problem with the crime itself.” But Haldeman protested, “Why is that obstruction of justice, anyway?” The president did not have an answer, but said, “Well, particularly when it’s not to sip champagne.”

  Nixon began examining the “weak reeds in the situation,” with Magruder topping everyone’s list, but he noted that Ehrlichman’s weak reed was Hunt, on the Ellsberg matter. Haldeman thought David Young was a weaker reed than Bud Krogh for Ehrlichman. Nixon raised the matter of Krogh’s perjury: “Now how does he get out of that? Has anybody thought of that?” Haldeman answered, “Well, Ehrlichman’s view of it—which kind of surprises me—is to be cold-blooded.* Yesterday he said, ‘When Krogh gets finished with his lying.’” Ehrlichman apparently wasn’t worried about what Krogh might say about him. They moved on to discuss potential obstructions of justice, and both the president and Haldeman rejected this as a salient concern. “I don’t think Dean had anything to do with the obstruction,” the president said emphatically. “He didn’t deliver the money. That’s the point. I think what really set him off was when Hunt’s lawyer said Hunt needs a $120,000. Well, that was a shot across the bow,” the president correctly perceived. Soon they turned to Magruder, who, I had told the president, had committed perjury, which certainly was not news. The president did not want Magruder appointed to anything in government, and Haldeman explained that that was why they had gone the route they h
ad taken, to keep Magruder on an even keel. “He’s not a Liddy type. He’s exactly the opposite,” Haldeman explained. The president wanted to know what would happen if they “decided to throw him to the wolves”—whom would Magruder hurt? The president worried that it might be Colson. Then they both remembered Strachan. But Haldeman was not concerned. “Gordon [Strachan] is a guy I wouldn’t worry about, but Magruder is a guy I would, because Magruder is loaded with ego, personal pride [and] political ambition.”

  The president returned to Ehrlichman and the Ellsberg break-in. “How does John answer the Ellsberg thing?” the president asked. Haldeman reported, “He says, ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’” The president pressed him on the matter, and Haldeman again emphasized Ehrlichman’s lack of knowledge of it, but when Nixon said he was “rather curious” to know what this operation had been all about, Haldeman responded, “Well, you better ask John, because I don’t really know.”17 Haldeman did, however, explain what he did know: Hunt and the Cubans had broken into Ellsberg’s “psychiatrist’s office to get a report on Ellsberg’s mental analysis or something, and they bungled the break-in. They didn’t get what they were supposed to get, and then they came back and said could they go back again, and that request got to Ehrlichman, and he said, ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, and they didn’t, apparently.” The president asked what had been the purpose. “To discredit Ellsberg, make a spy out of him,” Haldeman explained. With this information, the president and Haldeman concocted a “national security” explanation to deal with the fact that neither the CIA nor FBI had been employed, because they couldn’t be trusted not to leak. “I don’t know whether that’ll hold up,” Haldeman admitted.

  They discussed what would happen if my advice to not pay Hunt was followed, and neither knew the answer nor liked the implications. The president also rejected my recommendation regarding a Dean statement, as he clearly wanted something he could release publicly. “It’s better to have something rather than nothing,” he told Haldeman. Later in this lengthy conversation Haldeman reported, “Dean feels very strongly, and John Ehrlichman seems to concur, that we do need the advice of somebody who knows more about the criminal [law] than we do.” The president said, “We can’t go to Henry Petersen,” and Haldeman responded that there had been a discussion of my going to Petersen on “a totally confidential, outside-of-school” basis. But that was dismissed as unrealistic.

  When the discussion turned to my cancer analogy, and to cutting it out, the president said, “The question is whether we really can.” Wondering if the patient could survive, he admitted he did not know, but he was concerned about the institution of the presidency. “I don’t think it’s as bad as John [Dean] is concerned that it is,” Haldeman offered. “On the other side of the cancer analogy is that you go in and cut out all of what you think is cancerous and discover that it wasn’t malignant.” So Haldeman advised caution lest the president cut off body parts that were critical. My suggestion that people be fired raised the question of who, and Haldeman stated, “There’s nobody in the White House that’s fireable.”

  Haldeman departed for his office and the meeting with Mitchell, Ehrlichman and me. About all that resulted from what I thought would be a Mitchell-versus-Ehrlichman showdown was a coded report that Howard Hunt’s demands had been taken care of by Mitchell.18 Following that meeting and lunch (for which each went his own way), we gathered at the president’s EOB office, shortly before two o’clock, to report that effectively nothing had transpired, nor been resolved. That meeting, with all the players holding their cards close to their chests and wearing their best poker faces, lasted almost two hours and included a remarkable private session between Mitchell and Nixon.19

  I arrived at the meeting annoyed because I had just come from the press office, where I learned that Pat Gray, ever the loose cannon, had implicated me yet again, when Senator Byrd took him through a series of leading questions based on misinformation. Haldeman, aware of the problem, explained it to the president: “Gray is the symbol of wisdom. Today, he accused your counsel of being a liar.” I observed, “He may be dead, because I may shoot him,” which caused everyone to laugh. “How is that?” the president asked. Haldeman continued, “[Gray] said, ‘Yes,’ he thinks John Dean did lie to the FBI when he said he wasn’t sure whether Howard Hunt had an office in the White House.” As I explained, “When the agents asked me if they could see [Hunt’s] office, the way it occurred was right after [Colson’s FBI] interview. And I said I would have to check that out. And now it’s been interpreted that I was lying to the FBI about the fact of whether he had an office or didn’t have an office here.” Haldeman noted, “It wasn’t the question.”* Haldeman also correctly noted that tomorrow’s headline would undoubtedly be: “Gray Says Dean Lied.”

  After everyone but Mitchell had departed, he and Nixon had a private conversation in which they soon got to the heart of the matter. “Now let me make this clear,” Nixon said. He was not going to proceed with his staff the way Eisenhower had with his chief of staff, Sherman Adams.* “I don’t want it to happen with Watergate,” the president said emphatically. Nixon felt Eisenhower had made a mistake with Adams, who should not have been sacked. “And for that reason, I am perfectly willing to—” he started to say, but then decided to state it much more bluntly to his friend: “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it’ll save it, save the plan. That’s the whole point.” But Nixon had to be realistic, too, so he gave the other side. “And I would particularly prefer to do it that other way, if it’s going to come out that way anyway. And that’s my view, that with the number of jackass people that they’ve got that they can call, they’re going to—” The president rephrased his thought. “The story they’ll get out, through leaks, charges, and so forth, innuendo, will be a hell of a lot worse than the story they’re going to get out by just letting it out there.”

  “Well—” Mitchell began, but the president continued. “I don’t know. But up to this point, the whole theory has been containment, as you know, John. And now we’re shifting. As far as I’m concerned, actually, from a personal standpoint, if you weren’t making a personal sacrifice, it’s unfair.” He referred again to Eisenhower’s handling not only of Adams but of Nixon himself, when he was accused during their 1956 reelection campaign of having a secret slush fund from wealthy businessmen. Eisenhower was concerned that he was “clean,” Nixon said, “but I don’t look at it that way. That’s the thing I am really concerned with: We’re going to protect our people, if we can.” While this was probably comforting to Mitchell, who was a realist and a staunch believer in the Nixon presidency, he also said, “Well, the important thing is to get you up above it for this first operation,” referring to Watergate. “And then to see where the chips fall and get through this grand jury thing up here, then the committee is another question.”

  March 23, 1973, Key Biscayne

  As anticipated, I again made the Post’s headline: GRAY CONCEDES DEAN “PROBABLY” LIED TO FBI. Local and national television producers were now staking out key Watergate figures, so a sizable cluster of reporters had gathered outside my home in the early morning hours. With the president and Haldeman in Florida, and Ehrlichman departing for the West Coast at noon, I decided to work at home. Judge Sirica was sentencing the Watergate seven that morning, which meant I would be doing a great deal of telephoning, which could be handled from home.

  I was not surprised to learn that morning that James McCord had sent a letter to Judge Sirica claiming: Political pressure had been applied to the Watergate defendants to plead guilty and remain silent (not true); perjury had occurred during the Watergate break-in trial (true, but not related to McCord); others involved in the Watergate operation had not been identified during the trial and should have testified (true, but again not related to McCord); and the Watergate operation was not a CIA operation, which McCord claimed the Cubans had been misled to believe w
as the case (no one had claimed it was a CIA operation, including the Cubans).20 Judge Sirica accordingly delayed sentencing McCord but gave all the others the maximum: Liddy was given twenty years and a forty-thousand-dollar fine; the Cubans were each sentenced to forty years; and Hunt was given thirty-five years. Sirica told all the defendants except Liddy that their sentences were provisional, and he would review them in three months, based on their cooperation with the Senate’s Watergate investigation and the grand jury. To this day Sirica’s sentencing remains a hallmark of judicial extortion.21

  Ehrlichman had already learned of Sirica’s decision from the press office, and when Haldeman called, I told him I was stuck at home. The president called to ask my reaction to the events in Sirica’s courtroom. He recalled that I had warned him someone would break, and he thought McCord was a hell of a lot better than Hunt. I agreed and explained that, while McCord could create a lot of bad publicity, he would have little foreseeable legal impact. We had long expected McCord to break and had determined he only knew what hearsay he had from Liddy. The president suggested I go up to Camp David, where I could escape the press and take a little vacation. I declined the offer, but then agreed and headed for the presidential retreat after the press surrounding the house departed. Had I known Haldeman would call after I arrived to instruct me to write a Dean report, I would have gone to my office to work. But as it turned out, both the brief vacation away from the chaos and McCord’s letter proved to a blessing, although not for the president.