by John W. Dean
84 The claim that he did not authorize the use of the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation was established as untrue in his June 23, 1972, conversations with Haldeman: Conversation Nos. 741-2, 741-10 and 343-46.
85 Nixon falsely claimed in his April 30, 1973, statement that he started his investigation on March 21, 1973. However, I told him about the Ellsberg break-in on March 17 in Conversation No. 882-12.
86 Suffice it to say that the Senate Select Committee on Campaign Practices (Senate Watergate committee) included several hundred pages in their final report (June 1974) spelling out in great detail Nixon’s illegal and improper campaign practices and finance. Samples of Nixon’s campaigning techniques are found in his embrace of the dirty campaigning of Donald Segretti, which he did not find seriously troubling at all: For example, Conversation No. 795-1, Conversation No. 366-6, Conversation No. 830-6 and Conversation No. 878-14. Nixon’s requesting the Haldeman use of the Secret Service, while protecting McGovern, to obtain information about him in Conversation No. 750-13. Nixon’s demanding of an Internal Revenue tax audit of Larry O’Brien in Conversation No. 758-11 and Conversation No. 760-9 was illegal, not to mention his endorsing the use of the IRS in going after McGovern campaign contributors in the latter conversation. See the Final Report, Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, U.S, Senate (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974), Chapter 2: Campain Practices, 107–214, Chapter 3: Uses of Incumbency, Reponsiveness Program, 361–442, and Chapter 4: Campgain Finance, 445–563.
May 23 to July 16, 1973
1 That I had become Nixon’s arch enemy became increasingly apparent in the conversation that follow, then in the public speeches up to his resignation. After leaving office he purportedly gave his postpresidency assistant Monica Crowley his take on me: “He was a traitor and a liar and out for himself from the beginning. He was the one who was feeding me lies about what was going on. And there I was acting based on what he told me. He had a personal stake in covering up the facts, and I didn’t know that at the time.” Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter: His Final Revelations About Diplomacy, Watergate, and Life Out of the Arena (New York: Random House, 1998), 297. Note: The Crowley book, if correct, and there are questions about its accuracy, indicates that Nixon never did understand the facts, nor did he make any effort to do so. But the effort to discredit me, and the truth as set forth in the extensive record of Watergate, has continued long after Nixon passed. A small group of Watergate revisionists have sought to rewrite history by ignoring the record, while reinventing it to suit their needs, ranging from scholars with a serious “confirmation bias” to conspiracy theory entrepreneurs twisting history for money. Sadly, but not surprisingly, no group has done more to try to distort this history than the Nixon Foundation, which is still in the control of former Nixon aides who are avowed Nixon apologists.
2 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 962-2 (Ziegler, May 23, 1973); Conversation No. 440-65 (Haldeman, May 29, 1973).
3 Conversation No. 168-30 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).
4 Conversation No. 962-4 (Haig, May 23, 1973).
5 Conversation No. 39-104 (Buzhardt, June 6, 1973).
6 Conversation No. 962-2 (Ziegler, May 23, 1973).
7 Conversation No. 441-23 (Buzhardt, June 5, 1973).
8 Conversation No. 962-4 (Haig, May 23, 1973); Conversation No. 929-7 (Rogers, May 29, 1973); Conversation No. 440-65 (Haldeman, May 29, 1973).
9 Conversation No. 39-37 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).
10 Conversation No. 441-23 (Buzhardt, June 5, 1973).
11 Conversation No. 441-35 (Buzhardt, June 7, 1973).
12 Conversation No. 962-2 (Ziegler, May 23, 1973).
13 Ibid.
14 Conversation No. 962-4 (Haig, May 23, 1973).
15 E.g. Conversation No. 39-106 (Colson, June 6, 1973); Conversation No. 937-5 (Haig, June 12, 1973).
16 Conversation No. 962-4 (Haig, May 23, 1973).
17 Conversation No. 168-28 (Colson, June 3, 1973).
18 Conversation No. 168-30 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).
19 Ibid.
20 Conversation No. 39-37 (Ziegler, June 3, 1973).
21 Ibid.
22 Conversation. No. 39-129 (Colson, June 7, 1973).
23 Conversation No. 441-35 (Buzhardt, June 7, 1973).
24 Conversation No. 935-6.
25 Conversation No. 962-4.
26 Conversation No. 926-5.
27 Conversation No. 927-3.
28 Conversation No. 39-16.
29 Conversation No. 928-12. It appears the tape was changed during this conversation, and the first few minutes may have been unrecorded.
30 Conversation No. 929-5.
31 Conversation No. 440-65.
32 Conversation No. 168-32.
33 Conversation No. 168-36.
34 Conversation No. 168-38.
35 Conversation. No. 39-37.
36 Conversation No. 441-2.
37 See Conversation Nos. 442-1 through 442-69. NARA has taken the “Draft Transcript Prepared by the Impeachment Inquiry Staff for the House Judiciary Committee of a Recording of the President’s Work-Day, June 4, 1973” and broken this 170-page document into sixty-nine segments, interlaced with the telephone calls that occurred throughout the day. The recording is basically the recording of Nixon listening to select conversations with me, and his reactions along the way, which he shared with Haig and Ziegler. Because the president wore a headset during the afternoon, it is not possible to know precisely which conversations Nixon did actually listen to on June 4, 1973—the only occasion during his presidency that he appears to have listened to the recordings.
38 Conversation No. 864-4 (February 27, 1973); Conversation Nos. 866-3, 866-4 and 866-17 (March 1, 1973) and Conversation No. 865-14 (February 28, 1973).
39 Conversation No. 39-78.
40 Conversation No. 39-79.
41 Conversation Nos. 39-80, 39-81 and 39-83.
42 Conversation No. 441-23.
43 Conversation No. 933-1.
44 Conversation No. 933-3.
45 Conversation No. 933-11.
46 Conversation No. 39-104.
47 Conversation No. 443-35.
48 Conversation No. 934-5.
49 Conversation No. 441-35.
50 Conversation No. 935-4.
51 While there had been no substance to the earlier scandal charge, what Nixon knew but only a few others did was that Kleindienst had lied during his confirmation hearing concerning talking with the president about the ITT merger. Richardson’s amendment to the Cox charter would surface Kleindienst’s false testimony. But Kleindienst would negotiate a plea deal for a misdemeanor and only receive a slap on the wrist. The investigation of ITT by the special prosecutor’s office produced nothing else of note. Re Kleindiesnt: Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr., Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 377–78.
52 Conversation No. 935-7.
53 Conversation No. 935-11.
54 Conversation No. 444-5.
55 Conversation No. 936-1.
56 Conversation No. 936-3.
57 Conversation No. 40-20.
58 Conversation No. 937-3.
59 These were less than challenging question, most of which I answered when testifying before the Senate in my opening statement. It appears Nixon incorrectly thought I was not going to discuss my own role in the cover-up. Several of Nixon’s questions are based on incorrect assumptions. His seven questions were: “(1) How often did you see Henry Petersen after the break-in? (2) Did he tell Petersen about the meetings he had had prior to the break-in with regard to it? (3) Did he tell Petersen about his talks with Walters asking him to put ‘buggers’ on the CIA payroll? (4) Did he tell Petersen about his meeting with Magruder and Mitchell when he suggested that Magruder lie about his role? (5) Did he tell Petersen about the fund-raising activities of Kalmbach that he was aware of, and the awareness of the $350,000
fund? (6) Did he tell Petersen of his offers of clemency to others? (7 ) How often did he see Gray? Did he tell Gray about these offers—or some of these other matters? In other words these are questions concerning all these things that happened before March.” Fred Thompson’s first questions of me during his cross-examination related to Petersen, but they appear based on my testimony rather than on the questions fed to him by the White House—although it is not clear.
60 Conversation No. 937-5.
61 Conversation No. 937-8.
62 Conversation No. 40-28.
63 Conversation No. 937-19.
64 Conversation No. 40-33.
65 Conversation No. 938-6.
66 Conversation No. 938-12.
67 Conversation No. 40-43.
68 Conversation No. 40-49.
69 Conversation No. 939-2.
70 Conversation No. 445-6.
71 Conversation No. 40-70.
72 Conversation No. 445-22.
73 Conversation No. 40-86.
74 Conversation No. 40-95.
75 Conversation No. 940-2.
76 Conversation No. 40-111.
77 Conversation No. 446-6.
78 Conversation No. 942-1.
79 Conversation No. 942-6.
80 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “Nixon Expected to Alter Stance, Abandon Aide,” The Washington Post, June 18, 1973, A-1.
81 Conversation No. 943-1.
82 Conversation No. 943-2.
83 Conversation No. 944-2.
84 Conversation No. 41-1.
85 Conversation No. 41-3.
86 Conversation No. 447-11.
87 Buzhardt would also push this approach in Conversation Nos. 945-3, 945-7 and 447-40.
88 Dean Senate testimony, 3 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 935–36, 1025, 1374–78 and 1390–93; see also, John W. Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 302, 326–27.
89 Conversation No. 944-7.
90 Samuel Dash, Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee—The Untold Story of Watergate (New York: Random House, 1976) 161.
91 Conversation No. 945-1.
92 George Lardner, Jr., and Timothy S. Robinson, “Nixon Subpoena Studied,” The Washington Post, June 19, 1973, A-1.
93 Conversation No. 945-3.
94 Conversation No. 945-5.
95 Conversation No. 169-16.
96 Dean Senate testimony, 3 SSC 1019, 1030–31, 1576–77, 1588.
97 Dash, Chief Counsel, 159.
98 White House press briefing No. 1762, 10:21 A.M., PDT, at the Western White House with Ron Ziegler, June 25, 1973.
99 Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 890.
100 Nixon, RN, 893.
101 See, Final Report, SSC (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974).
102 Conversation No. 947-3.
103 Conversation No. 947-5.
104 Conversation No. 947-15.
105 Conversation No. 947-16.
106 Conversation No. 948-3.
107 I was asked about the president’s interest in tax cases. I responded: “It gets more and more painful to bring these names out, as it was painful to bring the president’s name out. It is painful to bring out other people. It was Rose Mary Woods who kept asking me the status of the case, because this individual was seeing the president a good deal.” When pressed further, I said: “I told Miss Woods at one point that she should just stay as far away from the case as possible. She was seeing the individual, having encounters with the individual who was the subject of the tax case, and he would protest his innocence to her. He is a fine man, and she was quite convinced of his innocence and could not believe he was being harassed by agents that were trying to get somebody who was close to the president. The individual was using the president’s name a great deal; he was traveling with the president to China and Russia and other places.” Without naming the individual, I continued testifying that no one at the White House had tried to influence the case. See 4 SSC 1558–60. And when I testified I did not know that Dr. Kenneth Riland, an osteopathic physician, had been indicted in New York on April 10, 1973. According to news accounts, he later went to trial and was found not guilty, and another of his high-profile patients, Nelson Rockefeller, assisted him with the back taxes.
108 Conversation No. 948-10.
109 Conversation No. 41-61.
110 Conversation No. 948-14.
111 Conversation No. 948-18.
112 Nixon, RN, 898.
113 Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Senate Unit to Act on Nixon Files: Senate Probers to Decide on Subpoena of Nixon Files,” The Washington Post, July 11, 1973, A-1.
114 Fred D. Thompson, At That Point in Time: The Inside Story of the Senate Watergate Committee (New York: Quadrangle, 1975), 83.
115 Conversation No. 949-7.
116 Conversation No. 949-10.
117 Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry, Inner Circles: How America Changes the World (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 374.
118 Thompson, At That Point in Time, 87.
119 Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon’s White House, Watergate, and Beyond . . . (New York: Random House, 1997), 277.
120 Haig, Inner Circles, 373.
121 Nixon, RN, 899–900.
122 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 58.
123 4 SSC 1466.
124 Haig, Inner Circles, 375.
125 Garment, Crazy Rhythm, 278.
126 Ibid.
127 Haig, Inner Circles, 375.
128 Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr., Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 112.
129 Haig, Inner Circles, 379.
130 Richard Nixon, Handwritten Notes re Tapes, dated 7/21, Nixon library, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
131 Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Polling on Watergate: The Battle for Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 4 (1980): 530–47.
132 Nixon, RN, 901.
Epilogue
1 Unless more specifically noted, the following sources have been very helpful in assembling this chronology: R. W. Apple, Jr. (narrative); Linda Amster (chronology); and Gerald Gold (general editor), The Watergate Hearings: Break-in and Cover-up; Proceedings (New York: Viking, 1973), 219–77; and Watergate: Chronology of a Crisis (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).
2 Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 287, 295. Note: From law clerks debating what Nixon meant by “definitive” to Justice Brennan leading the effort to get an 8 to 0 vote against Nixon to leave no doubt that it was a “definitive” ruling. Clearly, baiting the high Court had been a foolish ploy by Nixon, for this statement would not have been made by Gerry Warren without direction from the president.
3 Leon Jaworski, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate (New York: Readers Digest Press, 1976), 47.
4 The following conversations were included (listed here with the later created NARA identifications)—Abbreviations: HRH (Haldeman); JDE (Ehrlichman); JWD (Dean); RLZ (Ziegler); RGK (Kleindienst); JNM (Mitchell); HEP (Petersen); and WPR (Rogers)—National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 779-2 (September 15, 1972: HRH and JWD), Conversation No. 865-14 (February 28, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 878-14 (March 13, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 882-12 (March 17, 1973: JWD), Conversations No. 37-175 and 37-176 (March 20, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 886-8 (March 21, 1973: JWD and HRH), ConversationNo. 421-18 (March 21, 1973: JWD, HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 422-33 (March 22, 1973: HRH, JDE, JWD and JNM), Conversation No. 44-50 (March 28, 1973: JDE call to RGK), Conversation No. 890-19 (March 30, 1973: JDE and RLZ), Conversation No. 44-103 (April 8, 1973: JDE), Conversation No. 428-19 (April 14, 1974: HRH and JDE), Conversation
No. 896-4 (April 14, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 428-28 (April 14, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 38-31 (April 14, 1973: JDE call to RGK), Conversation No. 38-34 (April 14, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 38-37 (April 14, 1973: JDE), Conversation. No. 896-6 (April 15, 1973: JDE), Conversation. No. 38-44 (April 15, 1973: RGK), Conversation No. 38-52 (April 15, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 38-53 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-55 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-58 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 38-63 (April 15, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 897-3 (April 16, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 897-9 (April 16, 1973: HRH and JDE), Conversation No. 897-11 (April 16, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 427-2 (April 16, 1973: HEP), Conversations No. 427-5 and 427-6 (April 16, 1973: RLZ and JDE), Conversation No. 427-10 (April 16, 1973: JWD), Conversation No. 38-80 (April 16, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 898-6 (April 17, 1973: HRH), Conversation No. 898-12 (April 17, 1973: HRH, JDE, RLZ), Conversation No. 898-19 (April 17, 1973: JDE), Conversations No. 898-20 and 898-21: HEP), Conversation No. 898-23: HRH, JDE, RLZ), Conversation No. 429-3 (April 17, 1973: WPR, HRH, JDE), Conversation No. 38-100 (April 18, 1973: HEP), Conversation No. 429-22 (April 19, 1973: Wilson and Strickler) and Conversation No. 906-17 (April 27, 1973: HEP and RLZ).
5 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 263. Note: This account of the final days has held up remarkably well, and I have always felt the reporting here was much better than their first Watergate book, All the President’s Men. So I have drawn from their information as well for the final, final days. They interviewed many of the people involved during a relatively contemporaneous period.
6 In addition to The Final Days, first-person accounts of this period can be found in Nixon, RN, 1040–90 (“Impeachment Summer”); Raymond Price, With Nixon (New York: Viking, 1977), 308–52 (“The Last Historic First”); Alexander M. Haig, Jr. with Charles McCarry, Inner Circles: How America Changed the World (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 466–505 (“The Smoking Gun” and “The Final Paradox”).
