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

by John W. Dean

  The president had Petersen brought over to his EOB office, where the poor audio quality of the tape suggests that both seated themselves facing away from the hidden desk microphones for this conversation.121 Pressed by Nixon for information, Petersen reported that his friend William Hundley would represent John Mitchell and that Sam Dash had informed the Justice Department that the Senate Watergate committee was going to seek immunity for a number of witnesses during their hearings. Petersen was going to try to talk them out of it, but he was not hopeful. Nixon asked how negotiations were going with Magruder’s attorney, and mine, and Petersen said no agreements had been reached. With the deeply incriminating March 21 tape fresh in his mind, the president said he thought that that conversation was “probably” my trump card, so he proceeded to spin it for Petersen into an innocuous passing inquiry by him as to how much money the Watergate defendants might want: “I said, ‘How much is this going to take?’ I mean, ‘How about maybe a million dollars.’ I said, ‘Well, we could get a million dollars, but how the hell are you going to get it to them?’ I said, ‘It’s wrong. You can’t go that way.’” Nixon warned Petersen that if I ever tried to testify about the contents of that conversation, I was not to be believed. “But that is the conversation, period. I remember telling Ehrlichman and Haldeman about that conversation,” he added, suggesting that his position could be corroborated.

  Petersen next reported, “The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York wants Dean to testify in the Vesco thing.” Nixon was surprised (as was I), but Petersen assured him that he had been holding them off, trying to make a deal with me. Petersen incorrectly reported that I had made “a couple of calls to the SEC” for Mitchell on Vesco’s behalf to get a subpoena quashed. He quickly moved on to report that he had learned the contents of the documents Gray had destroyed (from me via my attorney, for when Gray denied having the documents, I took a lie-detector test and challenged Gray to do likewise, since I had become tired of Gray’s calling me a liar publicly, and now privately, to prosecutors). Petersen explained that the documents included “concocted” State Department cables suggesting that, when Kennedy was president, he was actively involved in the murder of South Vietnam president Diem. Nixon, who said nothing, was aware of this undertaking by Colson and Hunt and merely asked why Gray had destroyed the material. Petersen still relied on Gray’s account that I had given him the documents to destroy them.

  Petersen reported that, based on information “from a very reliable source, a newspaper man” who had interviewed Donald Segretti, they were developing a criminal case against Segretti under the Corrupt Practices Act, and Petersen added that they would probably immunize two people to get an indictment against him. Not surprisingly Nixon continued to bring the conversation back to his own involvement, with him and Petersen repeating that they were not going to allow me to blackmail them, Haldeman, Ehrlichman or Kleindienst. What Nixon ultimately took from this conversation can be gleaned from his subsequent discussions with Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

  Nixon tried unsuccessfully to call Ehrlichman first, and failing to reach him, spoke with Haldeman, who was at home when the president reached him shortly before 7:00 P.M.122 “I had a good talk with Petersen and told him that, you know, about the need to expedite the grand jury,” Nixon reported. “Second, I told him I wanted a paper from him with regard to you and John. He said he’d have it by Friday afternoon.” The president gave Haldeman more background on the memorandum from Silbert regarding the Ellsberg case, which Nixon characterized as basically “a little blackmail” by Dean.123 Nixon expected that this would make the news, but Haldeman was not sure that was all bad, explaining, “Well, it adds confusion to the whole thing.” “Yeah,” Nixon responded, “the Watergate buggers tried to knock over Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.”

  The president asked if Haldeman had given Ehrlichman the memorandum from Kleindienst yet. He had not but said, “I covered it with him.”

  “I leveled with Petersen on the conversation that we had,” Nixon reported, regarding their review of the March 21 recording. “And I said, now I want you to know this, and I said, we’ll not be blackmailed on it, we didn’t do anything about it, but that’s when I started my investigation. And that’s our line there, I think,” noting, “incidentally, I think that should just be between you and me.” Haldeman agreed; they would not tell Ehrlichman. “Did it bother Petersen?” Haldeman asked. “Oh, well, everything bothers him,” Nixon quickly answered, and Haldeman could not resist laughing.

  Nixon talked about the problem of handling me “in such a way that he doesn’t become a totally implacable enemy.” He reminded Haldeman, “At least, I have treated him decently. In fact, more decently than he deserves. On the other hand, he may become totally intractable. If he does, you’re going to have one hell of a pissing contest.” “If you do, you just got to win it,” Haldeman replied, leading Nixon to wonder, “What else can you do? And when you think of this, all this kind of thing, you know, I was just thinking a little bit more about the impeachment thing, that I don’t see the Senate or any senators starting an impeachment of the president based on the word of John Dean.” Haldeman agreed,* and Nixon continued, “That’s all it is. I mean, John Dean says that, this, and that and the other thing happened.” “And there’s no way he can support it,” Haldeman added. “I mean, there’s no way to make a case.” Nixon cautioned, “Well, except it could be he recorded his conversation, made a memorandum, told his lawyers immediately thereafter, and so forth and so on. But even there, I mean, here is—”

  “Still his word, unless he’s got a tape recording. And even with the tape recording, I think you could make the case the other way,” Haldeman argued. The president remained silent a while, then thoughtfully added, “I don’t know [about] a tape recording. I can’t believe that he could have walked in there with a tape recorder that day, because that day, I mean, I’m not trying to be wishful thinking, that particular day he wasn’t really out to get the president, I don’t think.” “That’s right, no sir, he wasn’t,” Haldeman agreed. “He was going just the other way.” Nixon noted, “Trying to help?” Although Haldeman agreed, and said he could not conceive that I would have recorded Nixon, they continued to speculate about where and how I might have hidden a recorder. The conversation ended with the president encouraging Haldeman to make a trip to Mississippi with him on Friday and reminding him to fill Ehrlichman in on the Ellsberg matter.

  Three minutes after the president ended the call with Haldeman, the operator had Ehrlichman on the line, and they spoke briefly.124 The president explained that he had given Haldeman information to share with Ehrlichman following his talk with Petersen. “And the only thing that is particularly relevant is that piece of paper which they brought in here, which I talked to Petersen about, and he said that he felt very strongly, as did Kleindienst, and Dean’s people were trying to blackmail them with that. And that they, therefore, felt it was very important that they get that conveyed to the prosecution. Dean’s lawyer having told them this, they feel that it’s important that the prosecution know it. That the judge knows it. Now that’s what they’ve done.”

  “They passed it on to Matt Byrne?” a mildly mortified Ehrlichman asked. “Passed it on to the judge,” Nixon affirmed, and added, “And what is likely to happen is that, well, I don’t know. Might call Dean. And then Dean will have to say what it was. So the Watergate buggers are involved in the psychiatrist’s office.” He added, “Let me say, though, on that point, I think it was information all those prosecutors over there already [had],” referring to the Watergate prosecutors, and “it’s going to come out anyway, John.” Ehrlichman said he would speak to Haldeman.

  Nixon knew that this information being released to Judge Byrne had upset Ehrlichman, so he decided to shield his aide as best he could. At 7:22 P.M. he called Kleindienst and instructed him to warn the prosecutors and the judge “that this was a national security investigation of very great sensitivity.”125 Kleindienst th
ought this was a “good suggestion” and agreed to pass it along. As soon as Nixon completed this call to Kleindienst, he called Ehrlichman to report what he had done.126 “Great,” he told the president, and Nixon proceeded to give him a few highlights of his meeting with Petersen. Ehrlichman confided to Nixon, “I tell you, I made a mistake in joining with Bob in retaining counsel.” The president agreed and suggested, “You better change pretty fast.” Ehrlichman noted, “If I could, if I can figure out some way of getting a little separation, I think it’s wise to do.”127

  During this conversation Nixon ascertained who was involved in the Ellsberg break-in. When he told Ehrlichman that I might be called as a witness in the Ellsberg case on this matter, he said, “He’ll probably say he was doing it under Ehrlichman’s direction, right? Is that what he’ll say?” Ehrlichman answered, “I don’t think Dean can say that. They would have to get some other witness, they would have to get Liddy or Hunt or somebody. Dean was not directly involved.” “He wasn’t?” a surprised Nixon asked. “Then how the hell does he know about this? This is hearsay.” Ehrlichman did not recall how I had learned of it, so he said, “Snooping over the fence.” “Oh, I see. Oh, I see. He wasn’t an actor in this?” Nixon asked, despite having accused me to both Kleindienst and Petersen. “No, sir,” Ehrlichman assured him. I had not been involved.

  When the president asked Ehrlichman what he would say about the matter, Ehrlichman provided a bit more information than he had in his previous denials: “Well, I’d say what is the fact, that my connection with it was that I authorized their travel, and I authorized them to go out and investigate Ellsberg, and among the things that were to be investigated out there was an examination of his medical records, if that were possible. Now they chose a method that I—” Nixon interrupted and injected, “You did not approve.” Ehrlichman agreed, “I did not approve. When I heard about it afterward I disapproved of it. And my shortcoming, my failing, was in not bringing them to account on it and not just having them arrested on discovery. Since it was a—” Nixon interrupted with the response he wanted again: “Highly sensitive thing.” But Ehrlichman continued using his own words, “A military area, why, ah—” The president interrupted again to remind Ehrlichman that the FBI was not being helpful, which Ehrlichman acknowledged might be part of the problem. “But here again, I think I’ll talk to Wilson about this in the morning, so that he’s forewarned. And he can do some briefing on it.” But based on Ehrlichman’s claiming that he had not approved anything, the president began arguing that it was not illegal, that he had done nothing wrong. Ehrlichman, however, was giving the president a less than full account.

  This conversation ended with Nixon relating to Ehrlichman that Petersen had told him that my attorneys (actually, it was only Shaffer) had made a serious error: “[Petersen] says, ‘I think Dean’s attorneys made a terrible mistake in putting this out to us,’” regarding Ellsberg. “Because they were trying to test us, they were trying to see if we got this information, they didn’t think we’d use it. And they thought they would hold that over our heads.” (I have not been able to verify Petersen’s making this statement to Nixon in their earlier conversation.128)

  After ending his conversation with Ehrlichman, Nixon was still worried about the possibility that I had recorded him, so he called Haldeman again at 7:46 P.M. and asked, “Is there any way that, even surreptitiously or discreetly or otherwise, that you could determine whether Dean might have walked in there with a recorder on him?”129 “No, I don’t think there is any way,” Haldeman replied. “I think [it’s] so remote as to be almost beyond possibility.” They discussed this for several minutes, and Nixon asked if I made memoranda of conversations; Haldeman replied that, to the best of his knowledge, I did not. They agreed again that they would simply have to destroy me if we got into “a pissing match.”

  At the end of the day Nixon again called Kleindienst to see if he had spoken with the Los Angeles–based Ellsberg prosecutor.130 Kleindienst reported that he had done exactly as instructed and described the Ellsberg information as sensitive national security material, and he told the president that they hoped they could persuade the judge to consider delaying examining if any improper evidence had been obtained and used until after the trial. “Okay, sleep well, boy,” Nixon said. Kleindienst chuckled, “Same to you.” Before calling it a night, however, Nixon called Ziegler at 9:07 P.M. to see how his day had gone.131 Ziegler reported that he was spending a lot of time with the press people, mending fences. Nixon wanted to be sure that he was stressing that “the president has been on top of this every minute of the day, and he’s trying to get to the bottom of this thing, and so forth.”

  April 26, 1973, the White House

  The president called Haldeman into the Oval Office at 8:55 A.M.132 Haldeman, who was in the process of assembling times and dates for his lawyers, remarked, “It’s amazing, when you go back and look through the papers, how little any of us, you or me or Ehrlichman, was involved in any of that stuff.”

  In this conversation Nixon was again trying to determine what sort of “bomb” or “trump card” or “big play” I might be contemplating in what he perceived as my quest for immunity. In attempting to identify that bomb the president had Haldeman take him through the schedule of our meetings. Tellingly he told Haldeman that the schedule for March 22 was wrong, as it had me with the president when he was in fact meeting privately with Mitchell, following a group meeting that Haldeman, Ehrlichman and I had attended. (I had been at the meeting with Mitchell for only a few minutes and then departed.)

  As they attempted to recall Nixon’s meetings with me, Nixon paused to instruct Haldeman on his taping system. “With regard to these tapes. I don’t know how you can reconstruct it, but I think that, for your information, the directive I’ve given you is,” he began, and then proceeded to what he wanted: “I don’t think it should ever get out that we taped this office, Bob. Have we got people that are trustworthy on that? I guess we have.” “I think so,” Haldeman responded, and Nixon continued that if it ever did become known he taped, then “we only taped the national security information. All other information is scrapped, never transcribed. Get the point? That’s what I want you to remember on these, if you will. See my point? That’s just a memorandum for your file, basically, that you make.” Nixon added, “I think that’s very important. You never want to be in a position to say the president taped it, you know. I mean taped somebody.”

  Haldeman agreed that they would say the purpose was national security, and Nixon further instructed, “I don’t want you to disclose that to Ehrlichman or anybody else. I mean, that’s just something—I know what you can tell Ehrlichman. Just say you went over it, and it’s about the same as—” Haldeman interrupted. “I’ve already, what I said to him is that the tape, he knows I went over it, of course. Ah, I said, ‘It, it basically says what the president recalled.’” Informed that Ehrlichman was aware of the taping system (though Ehrlichman thought Nixon taped only select conversations133), Nixon did not press the point further, and they returned to the March 21 conversation and Nixon’s concern that I had made a record of our talk. Haldeman was still not concerned: “That area is totally privileged until you come to an impeachment proceeding. There’s no way that that can be brought out, because there’s no forum for going into presidential guilt except an impeachment.” Nixon agreed, and Haldeman continued, “And they have got to impeach you first before the proceeding starts, and they aren’t going to impeach you.”

  Nixon responded, “No, I slept a little on that, and it’s good for John to look at it that way,” he said regarding Ehrlichman’s raising the possibility. But Nixon was not concerned either, asking, “My God, what the hell have we done to be impeached?” Haldeman reminded Nixon, “But John doesn’t believe you have either, and John doesn’t believe you can be impeached. What he believes is, that’s the game Dean is trying to play. Does not believe it’s a game of any potential.” And they returned yet again to analyzing the Mar
ch 21 conversation, with Haldeman constantly reminding Nixon that he was merely “trying to smoke out” information from me throughout the conversation. Nixon explained to Haldeman that, when talking about money for the defendants, the reason he had mentioned the Cuban committee is that he “had read about the Cuban committee in the paper, that’s true.” (The piece apparently ran in a Miami newspaper, for no relevant story was published in either the New York Times or The Washington Post.)

  In going through a drill about what the president did and did not know about the money before our March 21 conversation, Nixon explained: He did not know about the $350,000; he did not know about “the launching of Kalmbach”; and he added, generally, “I did not know, I had read stories to that effect, but I didn’t frankly look into them. But basically, I frankly said, ‘Well, it must be a bunch of Cubans, or something like that, and I thought of the Cuban committee.” “I didn’t know about La Costa,” he added, and the request that Moore tap Mitchell for money. “My point is, and I’m not trying to be selfish, but the point is, the story is very true that I didn’t know a thing. Now there’s only one weakness in that, the Pappas thing,” which Nixon acknowledged he spoke to me about on March 21. Nixon quizzed Haldeman about what he heard regarding Pappas on the March 21 recording: “Did I say, ‘I understand that Pappas is helping,’ or [did he say], ‘Pappas was helping’?” Haldeman reported, “[Dean] said, ‘Mitchell has talked to Pappas.’ You just quickly lobbed it in, ‘I know.’” Nixon resumed, “‘Yes, I know.’ Well, the point was, what I was referring to only was not that Mitchell had talked to Pappas but that Pappas never mentioned that here in this office. Never mentioned that, I know. All he said is that, I’m helping, helping John’s [Mitchell’s] special project,’ and I said, ‘Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it very much.’ He didn’t tell me what it was about.” The president was correct regarding Pappas’s not knowing why he was providing cash, for he was happy to keep the ambassadorship for his friend that he wanted in exchange for his assistance. Haldeman had clearly explained to Nixon, however, why they needed cash from Pappas, which is reflected in their conversation.*