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

by John W. Dean

  Haldeman now questioned the wisdom of destroying everything, as well as closing down the system itself. He reminded Nixon that they had historically important material relating to the decision to go to China, as well as other key national security decisions, where often Kissinger was the only other person discussing matters with the president. They both knew that Kissinger made notes of his conversations and worried that Henry might recount this history from his point of view. The president agreed they must not destroy the key national security conversations, and liked Haldeman’s suggestion of having a little hidden switch he could use to record select conversations, which was what Ehrlichman did in his own office. Accordingly, they decided they would go through the president’s daily schedule to decide what to record. “Rather than maintaining a full record,” Haldeman repeated to clarify his instructions, they would maintain only a select one. “I will feel much better about it if we do that,” the president said, adding, “I don’t want to have in the record the discussions we’ve had in this room about Watergate.” Nor did he want to keep recordings with his often negative comments on Kissinger and Bill Rogers. When the president asked if Haldeman agreed, Haldeman reminded him, “Those are supervaluable, in some ways.” Nixon acknowledged that fact but noted that they could not use them, saying, “And we’ll remember enough.”*

  At 2:05 P.M. Haldeman returned to the president’s EOB office and, before Ehrlichman arrived, reviewed their policy on the secret taping system.35 Haldeman explained how the system worked: The Secret Service locator signal, which tracked the president’s whereabouts in the White House, activated the recording system. “So that it only works in this office when you’re in it, or in another office when you’re in it.” The president’s telephones in his EOB and Oval offices, and maybe the Lincoln Sitting Room as well, all recorded automatically. Haldeman reminded Nixon that there was a similar system at Camp David and assured him that nobody was monitoring his calls: “This is all done automatically.” Haldeman noted again that others in the White House—Colson, Ehrlichman and himself—had devices that enabled them to record telephone calls selectively, which, he noted, was “perfectly legal.” Nixon, however, remained uncertain about what he wanted to do regarding the recording of his telephone conversations, and the matter was not resolved.

  When Ehrlichman joined the conversation he had just returned from a lunch with Kleindienst, who was about to testify before Congress on executive privilege. “Basically what he will testify to is that this is entirely up to the president, and if you don’t like it, lump it.” Ehrlichman reported that he had also spoken with me, but I had not talked with Mitchell, because I wanted to meet face-to-face to explain the situation. This prompted the president to wonder if he was having enough contact with Mitchell, “in terms of reassuring him,” and then asked, “Who the hell is Mitchell talking to?” Ehrlichman reported that he was talking with Paul O’Brien and Dick Moore. “Well, I’ll get back to John,” the president said, for he did not want his former partner to feel he was deserting him. Nixon assured Ehrlichman that, if necessary, he would take care of Mitchell, so long as the president came out unscathed. Ehrlichman recommended that Nixon give Mitchell a general reassurance of his undying friendship, but not become more involved, or discuss the details of the case.

  Len Garment, a former law partner of Nixon’s and White House staff member from the outset of the Nixon presidency, who was working with Ehrlichman to establish the rules of the Senate’s Watergate hearings, was asked to join the meeting. The president told Garment he did not want him getting deeply involved, and as regards John Mitchell, a former partner of both of them, Nixon explained, “Let me say this: I have never asked him about it. I don’t ever want to be in a position that John tells me [something that isn’t true].” The president said, “I do not know.” Nixon continued, saying that, based on what he had learned from me and others, no one at the White House had approved the Watergate operation. “Not from Colson, not from Haldeman, that I know. That’s one of the reasons we were all God damn surprised when it came out.” He added, “That’s why Ziegler called it a third-rate burglary.” Nixon claimed I had checked it out and learned it had been hatched at the reelection committee. Then, putting “the most favorable light on it,” Nixon said he thought Mitchell had approved a “security operation,” but “he did not have knowledge of or approve the Watergate operation. That’s what I get. Where his vulnerability is, whether or not he’s gone overboard in [what he told the grand jury],” which Nixon said he did not know. He added, “You and I, at this point, have to believe John.” But he again cautioned Garment not to get involved in trying to figure out who did what; rather, he should let the grand jury take care of that.

  That evening Ehrlichman reported to Nixon by telephone about his off-the-record meeting with Senate Watergate committee chairman Sam Ervin and vice chairman Howard Baker at the Blair House, the residence across the street from the White House for guests of the president.36 The visit was “very cordial, very friendly. Ervin’s attitude was very, very good.” They would meet again Wednesday, April 11. Ehrlichman noted, “We spent most of our time talking about John Dean,” which did not surprise the president. Garment and the committee’s counsel would get together “and try and work out a system by which Dean’s information can be taken without violating executive privilege.” Ehrlichman had assured Ervin and Baker that, contrary to press reports, I had not “showed FBI reports to Segretti,” so they could get such information by written interrogatories, and the charges against me were hearsay twice removed, which would be the equlivant to my giving sworn testimony without my having to appear before the committee. Ehrlichman said the hearings would begin “right after the recess” in late April, and “McCord is locked in as the first witness.” He further reported, “And television [coverage], interestingly enough, is discretionary.” If a witness objected, “then it will be in the discretion of the committee.”

  Shortly after this telephone conversation ended, the president called Ehrlichman back to be sure he had told Garment to take a very hard line, “that we cannot give on Dean going down” to testify at the hearings.37 “In other words, we’ve got to hold on something, and so I think we should hold on Dean. That we will answer anything on him in written interrogatories.” Ehrlichman agreed.

  April 10, 1973, the White House

  During an early morning Oval Office conversation, when discussing the payments to the Watergate defendants, Haldeman explained how I had become involved in passing messages from Mitchell to Haldeman and Ehrlichman: I had not volunteered but had been drafted by necessity, for “no one else would do it.” Haldeman said, “Mitchell just kind of laughed and said, ‘You got to start doing something,’” and reminded the president, “I mentioned this to you at the time.”38 In the early afternoon Ehrlichman came to the Oval Office and reported that Mitchell was in town, and that Haldeman and I were going to meet separately with him.39 Ehrlichman said I would tell Mitchell I was talking to the prosecutors and would not lie for Mitchell and Magruder, and Haldeman would tell Mitchell he could not support his contention that he was not running the president’s campaign operation—as Mitchell had testified under oath—while he was still attorney general. Ehrlichman further reported I had informed him that I expected to be asked about the “hush money” to the defendants when I appeared before the grand jury. The president responded, “Well, they’ve got to go into that, because, because we’ve got Hersh,” referring to the series of stories in the New York Times by Seymour Hersh regarding payments to the Watergate defendants.40

  This prompted a conversation about the money paid to the defendants and speculation about who might say what and how. They rehearsed potential testimony for Mitchell, Haldeman and me, until Nixon asked, “What in the name of God is [Mitchell] going to say about the money, then?” If Mitchell was pressed, and confronted with the true testimony of others, Ehrlichman said, he did not know what Mitchell would say. Ehrlichman then admitted that the reelection committ
ee “sent me a message through Dean that they needed help in raising money for these poor souls. And I sent word back through Dean that I just did not know how to go about it.” The president asked, “But you did have such a conversation?” Ehrlichman affirmed he had.

  “He had that conversation with Haldeman, too?” the president continued. “Yep,” Ehrlichman replied, adding that Haldeman had said he did not know how to help, either. “So then they sent a message to Kalmbach through Dean, whether that’ll come out or not, I don’t know.” After passing over Kalmbach, they discussed the $350,000 cash fund that Haldeman controlled being sent back to the CRP for payments to the defendants. Ehrlichman reported that he was working with Haldeman to make him a better witness, because “he tends to be very intellectual in his answers,” and Ehrlichman felt he could be selling his position better. “And I asked Kleindienst, when I saw him again yesterday, to get me a reading on what’s happening at the grand jury, which he promised to do.” The best news that Ehrlichman had for the president was that lead Watergate prosecutor Earl Silbert had told Kleindienst that they had no interest in calling Haldeman or Ehrlichman or Colson, but rather were only interested in Strachan, Dwight Chapin and me. But both men realized that, with the Senate Watergate committee paying careful attention, the prosecutors were undertaking “a very full and completely thorough investigation.” After the president gave passing consideration to a “special adviser” on Watergate, like a retired Supreme Court justice or federal judge, the conversation ended with Nixon’s concluding that, while he was not being “Pollyannaish,” he felt the situation was under control.

  April 11, 1973, the White House

  Shortly before noon, Ehrlichman reported during an Oval Office conversation that Mitchell had called to say that Robert Strauss, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was ready to settle their civil lawsuit against the reelection committee, having received approval to do so from Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, Speaker of the House Carl Albert, and the chairman of the Senate’s Watergate committee, Sam Ervin.41 Mitchell said they could settle if Maury Stans would agree, but that this might require a nudge from the White House. The president instructed Ehrlichman to tell Mitchell to do as he thought best and to have Len Garment do the nudging of Stans. (The lawsuit was ultimately settled for $775,000.42) Discussion of the suit prompted the president to complain about Sam Ervin’s “pissy-ass game” regarding the rules for White House witnesses at his hearings: “This old fart is trying to screw us.”

  Ehrlichman said he was going to pass the word to Howard Baker “that they really don’t want to get into Kalmbach’s records,” because “there’s going to be some senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle that really wouldn’t like to open that whole can of worms.” Nixon, however, was unclear about what he was referring to. “Well,” Ehrlichman explained, “you get into the [Teddy] Kennedy investigation, for one thing.”* Apparently Kalmbach had also arranged payments of campagin contributions to favored conservative Democratic congressional candidates. Most of this conversation focused on their concern about the reports Liddy had prepared for the reelection committee and the White House about information he was overhearing at the DNC, which he dictated to his secretary, Sally Harmony, based on the material gathered by Alfred Baldwin.* It appeared that these documents had been given to Gordon Strachan, which probably meant Haldeman was involved. Notwithstanding Haldeman’s denials, the president remained concerned about him.

  At 12:34 P.M. Ehrlichman was back in the Oval Office conversation to report on his talk with Mitchell about the DNC lawsuit; he agreed he would arrange to settle it.43 More important Ehrlichman said he had tried to brace Mitchell for what lay ahead, encouraging him to “focus” on the potential problems. Mitchell said he had retained Paul O’Brien to represent him. Ehrlichman thought this was a good development, “because we can use O’Brien now as a conduit to Mitchell in a way I didn’t think we could before,” suggesting that such information might now be protected by attorney-client privilege. The president made it clear he did not want Mitchell testifying in a way that appeared that either he or the White House was covering up. It was the potential criminal exposure that most troubled the president: “I don’t give a damn if the Ervin committee comes out and condemns us. That does not worry me,” although he proceeded to make it clear that he did not want Ervin to have a free ride: He wanted a strong minority report by the Republicans on the committee. Ehrlichman explained that that was not going to be all that easy for Baker and the other Republicans were “not about to endorse anybody at this point,” and Baker himself had become “very standoffish.”

  Ehrlichman wanted Nixon’s views on my testifying before the Senate, because the committee wanted to subpoena me, which could “get the litigation started,” if that was going to be necessary. The committee felt it could get its request for subpoeaned information to the U.S. Supreme Court by summer. This was fine with the president, but Ehrlichman, who was meeting with Ervin and Baker again that evening at Blair House, said he would keep it an open question: “I’d rather not give them a definite no on Dean at this point.” Ehrlichman appeared both comfortable with my testifying and with a court test on my not testifying.

  Repeatedly, throughout this conversation, Ehrlichman mentioned how unhappy the Senate committee was with McCord as a witness, because of the weakness in his information and its crediblity. The president said that a result of Sirica’s delaying McCord’s sentence, to see how he could help the Senate was to give McCord high incentive for fabricating testimony or, as Nixon described it, “producing a bunch of God damn crap.” Accordingly, the president told Ehrlichman he wanted attention devoted to the “destruction of McCord.” Given Ehrlichman’s meeting that evening, the discussion of the Ervin committee’s proceeding remained at the forefront of this discussion. “John, let’s face it,” Nixon said, the proceeding was not going to end until they got “some big fish and fry them, and then they’ll go away. Not until then.” No big fish concerned Nixon more than Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and he wanted to know what would happen if Magruder, with his “apple-cheeked credibility and all that, were to blow.” Nixon believed that merely calling him a liar would not solve a potentially “uncontrollable” situation. Nixon was also concerned about me, and asked, “Is Dean now trying to be subpoenaed? Is that right?” Ehrlichman reported I was “still waiting” and had “not yet heard.” The president understood that both Dwight Chapin and Gordon Strachan had already been to the prosecutors’ office.

  Most everything Ehrlichman had discussed with the president earlier in the day was revisited, to varying degrees, during midafternoon Oval Office conversation with Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Ziegler.44 Ziegler attended to considering appropriate public statements about a situation that Ehrlichman sardonically described as “We’re getting bombed because [the president] appears to lack candor, forthrightness, [and] responsiveness to the needs of the nation in cleaning out a festering corruption.” The president observed that whatever statement was made, it should be made strongly.’’

  Regarding the Senate’s likely Watergate hearings and the grand jury’s investigation, Ehrlichman felt all the White House witnesses would be strong, but the “weak witnesses would be Mitchell, LaRue, Mardian, folks of that kind” from the campaign. Nixon agreed, then noted, “Haldeman is the man we have to think about here. I don’t know what you do in the Dean thing. It’s tough.” There followed a lengthy and indecisive discussion about whether or not I should testify before the grand jury, but it was unanimously agreed that I should not appear before the Senate committee. At most I should provide written answers to questions, or possibly take part in an informal meeting with the committee members. It was presumed that Haldeman would testify before the Senate, and he was working on a statement. Although Ziegler had been dealing with Watergate since its inception, he was relatively new to these process discussions, and he suggested that enough information be released “to draw a circle around the president, around
the White House, to give the presidency and the White House something to stand on.”

  “How do you do that, Ron?” Ehrlichman asked. Ziegler, who became frustrated and annoyed when Ehrlichman pushed, replied, “I don’t have the solution, John.” “Well, I’ve got the itch. I don’t know how to scratch it. That’s my problem,” Ehrlichman said, dismissing Ziegler.

  Haldeman was concerned that if I did not appear before the Senate it would be claimed “that Dean was the mastermind that ran this whole thing.” The problem with that argument was that it would come back to either Mitchell or Haldeman, since it was well known I did not have that kind of power. The president liked the idea of claiming that, as the lawyer, I had conducted an investigation, although he understood I had not done so, because my undertaking was protected by privilege. They plotted and speculated about what might have occurred during the planning stages that produced the break-in, and then in the aftermath, and Ehrlichman ran out several scenarios of my testimony, all of which absolved everyone but me.

  Ehrlichman suggested, for example, how I might testify I had learned about the hush money demands: “I continued to attend meetings at the committee to reelect,” Ehrlichman, playing the role of Dean, began, “principally for the purpose of counseling on election laws, to make sure that the White House didn’t get off on the wrong foot, and so forth. At those meetings the question of the care and feeding of the defendants kept arising, and people kept turning to me, particularly John Mitchell, saying, ‘You’ve got to help us get the money to keep these fellows from starving and to keep their attorneys going and so forth.’ And so, on several occasions I came back to the White House and communicated John Mitchell’s message to various people in the White House. On one occasion, I contacted Herb Kalmbach to see if he could raise money for John Mitchell. On other occasions, I communicated with people outside of the White House with regard to this matter, and I became a participant in the process of raising and trying to send any money to the defendants.” The president, confused by Ehrlichman’s proposed fictional account, asked, “Did he raise money?” Ehrlichman answered, “He was in the process. But he didn’t personally put an arm on anybody.”