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

by John W. Dean

  * The FBI’s records show that Ehrlichman was only interviewed on one occasion, July 21, 1973, at which time he told the agents all he knew about Watergate was what he had read in the newspaper, a false statement for which he would be indicted on March 1, 1974.

  * Gray did not live long enough to fully appreciate the extent of Mark Felt’s betrayal, but he did get a sense of it when Felt and Ed Miller, an assistant director, were later indicted for authorizing FBI burglars to get information on the Weather Underground while Gray was acting director. They claimed to have used a secret communications system and, falsely, that Gray had authorized the activity. Gray’s attorney, Alan Baron, investigated the charges and found the government had no case against his client, and the charges against Gray were dismissed. Ironically, former president Richard Nixon testified in Felt’s defense at his criminal trial when he was convicted. President Ronald Reagan then pardoned Felt, a truly cunning operator and undoubtedly one of the most Machiavellian characters in government.

  * To this day this meeting will not be found in the president’s daily diary. It was set up so that, immediately afterward, Baker would attend a reception in the State Dining Room for members of Congress who had supported the president’s Vietnam policies. Shortly after their meeting ended the president went up to the residence to freshen up, while Timmons guided Baker to the reception, which included thirty senators (including two other members of the Senate Watergate committee: Chairman Sam Ervin and Edward Gurney [R-FL], and over 140 members of the House of Representatives. It was a perfect cover for Baker’s private session.

  * This part of my conversation was redacted for decades. Until writing this book I had never listened to it, but when I did I understood why Nixon had suppressed it.

  * Nixon had named Brown chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in 1969. Brown (born in 1928) is now a Philadelphia-based attorney and, as Nixon recognized, an able attorney.

  * Jewel S. Lafontant was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School; she had been an assistant U.S. attorney (1955–58) and a delegate to the 1960 GOP convention, who gave a seconding speech for Nixon. In 1963 she was the first black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and she had run unsuccessfully for judicial office in Illinois. In 1972 Nixon appointed her as a U.S. representative to the United Nations, and later Nixon made her the first-ever African American woman deputy solicitor general at the Department of Justice.

  * After the press conference that morning, Clark Mollenhoff called me to apologize, saying he did not intend to impugn me in any way but wanted to flush out the issue. Clark, who was an attorney, and I had a good working relationship, and we had spoken the evening before about executive privilege in an off-the-record conversation. Clark did, however, despise Haldeman and Ehrlichman and could be tough on Nixon. See Dean telephone memorandum, March 1 and 2, 1973, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

  * Ehrlichman publicly stated that he had requested I be present at his FBI interview. See, e.g., John M. Crewdson, “Nixon Aide Tells of Talk to FBI,” New York Times, March 10, 1973, 13. Gray dared not invoke Ehrlichman, who had made the arrangements he was complaining about, but he had no compunction about blaming the situation on me.

  * I misspoke, for I meant Hugh Sloan, who asked Liddy what to do and how to get the checks cashed. See G. Gordon Liddy, Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 222.

  * See Appendix A.

  * In 1948 the former Treasury Department official was accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Soviet spy. He died of a heart attack three days after he testified before the committee. History had largely confirmed that, in fact, he was a Soviet spy, not because he was a communist but rather because he was a sympathizer with the Soviet experiment.

  * As noted earlier, Harrold Carswell was Mitchell’s disastrous recommendation for the U.S. Supreme Court, who was rejected by the Senate. In fact, Carswell had been recommended by Chief Justice Warren Burger to Mitchell.

  * See Appendix A.

  * Neither my transcriber nor I were able to further transcribe the name of this person. Nor was I able to indentify someone fitting the description provided by Ehrlichman, but I found the information of potential importance so I have included it, with the thought that someone might recognize either the person or the description.

  * While this was what Liddy told me, today I better understand his highly manipulative personality, and the ease with which he falsely pointed the finger at others. So he was no doubt making something of an overstatement.

  * See Appendix A.

  * While Nixon would later claim this was the first he had learned of this activity, the fact that he has Ehrlichman responsible suggests that Ehrlichman had, in fact, made some mention of this operation during the July 8, 1972, walk on Red Beach, as Ehrlichman later claimed.

  * Ehrlichman’s appointment calendar shows our meeting occurred at 3:30 P.M. in his office; he went to the Oval Office at 4:00 P.M.

  * A fugitive American financier who had contributed to the Nixon reelection campaign (his contribution was later returned). Vesco, always looking for an angle, had hired President Nixon’s nephew, Donald Nixon, Jr. Ehrlichman had been charged by the president to keep an eye on “Donny.” Mitchell and Maurice Stans had become entangled in the Vesco web, and were being investigated by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which had originally sought to indict Vesco before he fled the United States.

  * I misspoke, for it was not on June 17, when I was in Manila, Philippines, rather June 19, after I returned.

  * See Appendix A.

  * After the release of the Pentagon Papers Nixon ordered break-ins at the Brookings Institution on four occasions to retrieve classified material he believed they held: On June 30, 1971, in Conversation No. 533-1; on July 1, 1971, in Conversation No. 534-2; on July 1, 1971, in Conversation No. 534-5; and on July 2, 1971, in Conversation No. 537-2. See also, Stanley I. Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, and 17.

  * During Nixon and Haldeman’s conversation of January 3, 1973, immediately after Haldeman met with Magruder in his office, Haldeman described these events to Nixon, so clearly they were well known to him.

  * Ehrlichman would later be indicted both by California, for conspiracy in the burglary of Ellsberg’s doctor’s office, and the Watergate special prosecutor, for conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of an American citizen (also in the burglary of Dr. Fielding’s office), for making false statements to the FBI, and for making false statements to the grand jury. When the federal government indicted him, California agreed to drop their charges. Howard Hunt, Bud Krogh and David Young testified for the government against Ehrlichman, who had personally authorized the covert Fielding operation in writing. He was convicted on all counts. See U.S. v. Ehrlichman, 546 F2d 910 (1976).

  * Although I was unaware of it at the time, Ehrlichman had reached the same conclusion in his earlier conversation with the president.

  * While I made this comment to underscore the severity of the problems we faced, on reflection, I am sure that without statutory authority (which did not exist), no federal judge could appoint a federal prosecutor, which was purely an executive function.

  * Krogh had worked in Ehrlichman’s Seattle law firm, and Ehrlichman had brought him to Washington as his associate counsel when he entered the White House in 1969. He was Krogh’s mentor and longtime family friend.

  * When I later spoke with Pat Gray, he admitted he had “screwed up” and made a mistake, which he said he would correct when he made submissions for the record. He never bothered to do so. Nor did the matter ever arise again in connection with the Watergate investigations.

  * Sherman Adams, a former governor of New Hampshire, was President Dwight Eisenhower’s White House chief of staff. He ruled the White House with an iron hand
and, other than Cabinet officers and National Security Counsel members, controlled who had access to Eisenhower. When it was discovered that Bernard Goldfine, a testile manufacturer under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, had given Adams an expensive vicuna overcoat, he was soon forced to resign. In later years Nixon claimed Eisenhower had him remove Adams, but this is not supported by the record. Nonetheless, Nixon long believed that Eisenhower had been thoughtless in removing Adams, for no wrongdoing was ever established.

  * Liddy’s attorney advised him not to give such a statement, because it could waive his Fifth Amendment rights. But O’Brien, who prepared a memo of my conversation with Maroulis that I later provided to the Senate Watergate committee, said after talking to Liddy’s lawyer that he also said “Liddy did wish to convey that his reasons for not providing such a statement was not because he disagreed with the facts but because of the advice of counsel.” Dean testimony, 3 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 1005.

  * Based on written documents and the testimony of Bud Krogh and David Young, Ehrlichman was convicted of approving Hunt and Liddy’s “covert operation” at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office “[i]f done under your assurance that it is not traceable,” which Ehrlichman added when approving the operation. Colson, who raised the money for this California operation, was also indicted, as a coconspirator. During pretrial motions U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell ruled that President Nixon lacked the authority to authorize such an undertaking for national security reasons, not to mention that he had, in fact, never delegated such authority to Ehrlichman, nor could he. See U.S. v. Ehrlichman, 376 F. Supp. 29 (1974).

  * Literally, this was probably true, for Nixon had not given Colson a commitment, although he had certainly all but done so. Nor had Colson told Bittman that he had been made such a promise, although Bittman and Hunt were given the impression Colson could deliver clemency around Christmas.

  * See Appendix A.

  * For a full account of my relationship with Shaffer see Blind Ambition: The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), chapt. 8ff.

  * For example, on April 5, 1973, Ehrlichman met with CRP attorney Paul O’Brien at his Western White House office, which Ehrlichman testified later he orally reported to the president on April 14, 1973. Senate testimony of John Ehrlichman, 7 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC), 2731–33.

  * The president would again instruct Haldeman to destroy the tapes that afternoon, and on April 18, 1973, in Conversation No. 900-4. Needless to say, and for reasons never fully explained, Haldeman did not carry out the president’s instructions. It appears that Haldeman became overwhelmed himself by Watergate, and in later recorded conversations with the president he incorrectly believed that the tapes might somehow protect the president. Had Haldeman followed Nixon’s instruction, there is no doubt that Watergate would have had a very different outcome, and it is most unlikely Nixon would have been forced to resign. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

  * It appears that Ehrlichman did pass the word and the Senate never did open that “whole can of worms.”

  * No recordings were made of the DNC-intercepted conversations because McCord could not get his radio receiver connected to his tape recorder. So Liddy cleaned up Baldwin’s notes on the overheard conversations. G. Gordon Liddy, Will (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 235.

  * According to his office calendar Ehrlichman had just come from a meeting with Strachan and Haldeman in his office.

  * This is a reference to the First Lady’s scheduling and activities operation, which was located in the East Wing of the White House.

  * Literally Colson was correct, for it was a member of his staff, Richard “Dick” Howard, who had called Magruder to lean on him to hire Hunt. See Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 181.

  * In fact, it was Thursday morning, March 22, 1973, at 11:00 A.M. in Haldeman’s office, as Ehrlichman’s desk calendar reveals.

  * While it is possible they had forgotten during this conversation, later they simply denied that I had come to Camp David after the election with an audiocassette of Hunt’s conversation with Colson, demanding money from him, that made it very clear that the Watergate defendants expected to be paid for their silence. Dean Senate testimony, 3 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 969.

  * See Appendix A.

  * See Appendix A.

  * Haldeman’s youngest son, Peter, had just been expelled from Sidwell Friends, a private school in Washington. As Peter later wrote, these were very difficult years for him. Peter Haldeman, “Growing Up Haldeman,” New York Times Magazine, April 3, 1994.

  * Approximately six hours of Watergate-related discussions are missing, which would have been one reel of recordings. Haldeman made notes and diary entries of matters that he found of interest during the meetings where he was present.

  * This was an emotional speech vice presidential candidate Nixon gave during the 1952 presidential race in which he pleaded that he not be removed from the ticket with presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower because of a fund that had been created for him during his time in the U.S. Senate by prominent businessmen. He ended the speech by saying a man in Texas had sent his daughters a cocker spaniel they had named “Checkers, [and] the kids loved that dog, [so] regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.” It worked, and Eisenhower dared not remove him.

  * Ehrlichman would deny that he told me to “deep six” the material from Hunt’s safe. But I had been so stunned by his instruction at the outset of the cover-up that I mentioned it to my assistant, Fred Fielding, when it happened, and Fielding was later called as a witness to corroborate my testimony. See testimony of Fred Fielding, U.S. v. Mitchell et al., November 5 and 21, 1974. Ehrlichman secretly recorded a confused Colson, who had been present when Ehrlichman ordered Hunt out of the country, and Colson thought that had happened in his office and Ehrlichman had not been present. So Ehrlichman used the information from Petersen after getting Colson to corroborate for him that it had not happened as I claimed to protect himself on that minor detail.

  * Because I had gone from my walk down Seventeenth Street with Liddy (where we had been seen by Jack Caulfield as we headed back toward the White House just before noon) directly to Ehrlichman’s office, and met with him at twelve o’clock, Ehrlichman had trouble denying I had reported to him just after meeting with Liddy. Since Ehrlichman had lied to the FBI about having any knowledge of Liddy’s activities after the Watergate break-in, he simply claimed he had no memory of my mentioning Liddy on June 19, 1972.

  * Years later Colson told me that his law partner, David I. Shapiro, was close to assistant U.S. attorney Seymour Glanzer, who later joined his Washington law firm, Dickstein Shapiro. Presumably, Glanzer was the source of this information, since few were privy to it.

  * Ehrlichman was apparently casting aside his knowledge of the law of agency, for he surely understood that a principal is liable for the actions of his agent, not to mention the law of conspiracy, in which all the coconspirators are accountable for the actions of the others when in furtherance of the conspiracy, even if they have no specific awareness of those actions.

  * Because of Nixon’s propensity to put words in the mouths of those he used to make points, I searched his recorded conversation with Rogers for the information he shared with Petersen. I can find no such statements by Rogers during any of the recorded conversations, and it does not appear Nixon had any unrecorded conversations with Rogers, although that certainly could have occurred.

  * As Haldeman’s notes of my conversations with Petersen document, he was giving me far more than status reports. In addition, Petersen overlooked perhaps the two most important of our conversations: when we met on June 20, 1972; and on November 8, 1972, after Nixon called for the resignation of all presidential appointees. When I spoke with Petersen to tell him he was safe in
his post I had found him remarkably angry and very upset. He told me “he had gone above and beyond the call of duty [and] acted at some risk” in restraining the Watergate investigation, which was still ongoing, yet had been asked for his resignation. But as noted earlier, I had anticipated his concern and taken care to keep him in place.

  * Haldeman can be heard making notes on the president’s desk during this difficult to hear recorded conversation. Based on those notes, Haldeman later dictated to his diary his understanding of what Nixon was reporting from Petersen regarding the Magruder case: “They’ll say he’s named certain people, and that other people are non-indicted co-conspirators that will be named as a group. This will include Dean, but Petersen will not include Ehrlichman and Haldeman if they take a leave. The P said are you saying if Haldeman and Ehrlichman take a leave you won’t prosecute them? He said no, it just means they aren’t on the list. They’ll still appear at the grand jury and I’ll have to make their case there.” Haldeman further noted the president as saying, “Petersen’s really saying that we’ll be on the list unless we decide to take a leave.” H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1993), 645.