A strange notion, the far left and far right finding some kind of odd common ground beside the Watergate pool and particularly when one of them is a top Nixon speechwriter, spending most of his time trying to keep the Boss from sinking like a stone in foul water, yet now and then laughingly referring to the White House as The Bunker.
After the sixth or seventh beer, I told him about our abortive plot several nights earlier to seize Colson out of his house and drag him down Pennsylvania Avenue tied behind a huge gold Oldsmobile Cutlass. He laughed and said something to the effect that "Colson's so tough, he might like it." And then, talking further about Colson, he said, "But you know he's not really a Conservative."
And that's what seems to separate the two GOP camps, like it separates Barry Goldwater from Richard Nixon. Very much like the difference between the Humphrey Democrats and the McGovern Democrats. The ideological wing versus the pragmatists, and by Buchanan's standards it's doubtful that he even considers Richard Nixon a Conservative.
My strange and violent reference to Colson seemed to amuse him more than anything else. "I want to be very clear on one thing," I assured him. "If you're thinking about having me busted for conspiracy on this, remember that I've already deliberately dragged you into it." He laughed again and then mentioned something about the "one overt act" necessary for a conspiracy charge, and I quickly said that I had no idea where Tex Colson even lived and didn't really want to know, so that even if we'd wanted to drag the vicious bastard down Pennsylvania Avenue at 60 miles per hour behind a gold Oldsmobile Cutlass we had no idea, that night, where to find him, and about halfway into the plot we crashed into a black and gold Cadillac on Connecticut Avenue and drew a huge mob of angry blacks who ended all thought of taking vengeance on Colson. It was all I could do to get out of that scene without getting beaten like a gong for the small crease our rented Cutlass had put in the fender of the Cadillac.
Which brings us back to that accident report I just wrote and sent off to Mr. Roach at Avis Mid-Atlantic Headquarters in Arlington. The accident occurred about 3:30 in the morning when either Warren Beatty or Pat Caddell opened the door of a gold Oldsmobile Cutlass I'd rented at Dulles airport earlier that day, and banged the door against the fender of a massive black & gold Cadillac roadster parked in front of a late-night restaurant on Connecticut Avenue called Anna Maria's. It seemed like a small thing at the time, but in retrospect it might have spared us all -- including McGovern -- an extremely nasty episode.
Because somewhere in the late hours of that evening, when the drink had taken hold and people were jabbering loosely about anything that came into their heads, somebody mentioned that "the worst and most vicious" of Nixon's backstairs White House hit men -- Charles "Tex" Colson -- was probably the only one of the dozen or more Nixon/CRP functionaries thus far sucked into "the Watergate scandal" who was not likely to do any time, or even be indicted.
It was a long, free-falling conversation, with people wandering in and out, over a time-span of an hour or so -- journalists, pols, spectators -- and the focus of it, as I recall, was a question that I was trying to get some bets on: How many of the primary Watergate figures would actually serve time in prison?
The reactions ranged from my own guess that only Magruder and Dean would live long enough to serve time in prison, to Mankiewicz's flat assertion that "everybody except Colson" would be indicted, convicted, sentenced and actually hauled off to prison.
(Everybody involved in this conversation will no doubt deny any connection with it -- or even hearing about it, for that matter -- but what the hell? It did, in fact, take place over the course of some two or three days, in several locations, but the seed of speculation took root in the final early-morning hours of McGovern's party. . . although I don't remember that George himself was involved or even within earshot at any time. He has finally come around to the point where his friends don't mind calling him "George" in the friendly privacy of his own home, but that is not quite the same thing as getting him involved in a felony-conspiracy/attempted murder charge that some wild-eyed, Nixon-appointed geek in the Justice Department might try to crank up on the basis of a series of boozy conversations among journalists, politicians and other half-drunk cynics. Anybody who has spent any time around late-night motel bars with the press corps on a presidential campaign knows better than to take their talk seriously. . . but after reading reviews of my book on the '72 campaign, it occurs to me that some people will believe almost anything that fits their preconceived notions.)
And so much for all that.
August 2nd Patio Bar beside the Washington Hilton Swimming Pool
Steadman and his wife had just arrived from England. Sandy had flown in the day before from Colorado and I had come up from Miami after a long vacation in the decompression chamber. It was a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, I think, and the Watergate Hearings were in progress but we'd decided to take the first day off and get ourselves under control. One of the first things I had to do was make out a long overdue accident report for that night, two weeks earlier, when the door of my rented car smacked into the Cadillac at four in the morning. The Avis people were threatening to cut off my coverage for "non-cooperation" so I'd brought the insanely complicated accident report down to the patio table by the pool, thinking to fill it out with the help of eight or nine Carlsbergs.
Steadman was already sketching distractedly, swilling beers at a feverish rate and muttering darkly to himself about the terrible conditions in the hotel and how earlier that morning while passing thru the coffee shop, a huge ceiling lamp had fallen from the ceiling and nearly killed him.
It was "teddible teddible," he said, "the damn thing came so close that it knocked my briefcase full of drawings out of my hand. Six inches closer and it would have caved in my head!"
I nodded sympathetically, thinking it was just another one of those ugly twists of luck that always seem to affect Ralph in this country, and I kept on grappling with the accident report.
Steadman was still babbling. "God, it's hot. . . Ah, this teddible thirst. . . what's that you've got there?"
"The goddamn accident report. I've got to make it out."
"Accident report?"
"Yeah, I had a small wreck the last time I was here about two weeks ago. . ."
"Alright, alright. . . Yes, two more Carlsbergs."
". . . And the car blew up the next night and I had to abandon it in Rock Creek Park at four in the morning. I think they're still billing me for it."
"Who?"
"The Avis people."
"My God, that's teddible."
"I only had it two nights. The first night I had this wreck, and the next night it blew up."
"What were you doing in this wretched city at four in the morning?"
"Well, actually we were thinking about going out to Tex Colson's house and jerking him out of bed, tying him behind the car with a big rope and dragging him down Pennsylvania Avenue. . . then cutting him loose in front of the White House Guard Gate."
"You're kidding. . . You don't really mean that. You wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?"
"Of course not. That would be a conspiracy to commit either murder or aggravated assault, plus kidnapping. . . and you know me, Ralph; that's not my style at all."
"That's what I mean. You were drunk perhaps, eh?"
"Ah, we were drunk yes. We'd been to a party at McGovern's."
"McGovern's? Drinking? Who was with you?"
"Drinking heavily, yes. It was Warren Beatty and Pat Caddell, McGovern's poll wizard, and myself and for some reason it occurred to me that the thing to do that hour of the morning was to go out and get Colson."
"My God, that's crazy! You must have been stoned and drunk -- especially by four in the morning."
"Well, we left McGovern's at about 2:30 and we were supposed to meet Crouse at this restaurant downtown. . . McGovern lives somewhere in the Northwest part of town and it had taken me two hours to find the damn
house and I figured it would take me another two hours to get out again unless I could follow somebody. Crouse was about a block ahead of me when we left. I could see his taillights but there was another car between me and Crouse and I was afraid I'd lose him in that maze of narrow little streets, almost like country lanes.
" 'We can't let Crouse get away,' I said. So I slammed it into passing gear and passed the car right in front of me in order to get behind Crouse, and all of a sudden here was a car coming the other direction on this street about 15 feet wide -- just barely enough room for two cars to pass and certainly not enough room for three cars to pass, one of them going about 70 miles an hour with a drunk at the wheel.
"I thought, hmmmm, well. . . I can either slow down or stomp on it and squeeze in there, so I stomped on it and forced the oncoming car up over the curb and onto the grass in order to avoid me as I came hurtling back into my own lane, and just as I flashed past him I happened to look over and saw that it was a police car. Well, I thought, this is not the time to stop and apologize; I could see him in my rear view mirror, stopping and beginning to turn around. . . So instead of following Crouse, I took the first left I could, turned the lights off and drove like a bastard -- assuming the cop would probably chase Crouse and run him down and arrest him, but as it happened he didn't get either of us."
"What a rotten thing to do."
"Well, it was him or me, Ralph. . . as a matter of fact I worried about it when we didn't see Tim at the restaurant later on. But we were late because we did some high-speed driving exercises in the Southeast area of Washington -- flashing along those big empty streets going into corners at 80 miles an hour and doing 180s. . . it was a sort of thunder road driving trip, screwing it on with that big Cutlass."
"Enormous car?"
"A real monster, extremely overpowered. . ."
"How big is it? The size of a bus?"
"No, normal size for a big car, but extremely powerful -- much more, say, than a Mustang or something like that. We did about an hour's worth of crazed driving on these deserted streets, and it was during this time that I mentioned that we should probably go out and have a word with Mr. Colson -- because during a conversation earlier in the evening, the consensus among the reporters at McGovern's party was that Colson was probably the only one of Nixon's first-rank henchmen who would probably not even be indicted."
"Why's that?"
"He had managed to keep himself clean, somehow -- up to that point anyway. Now, he's been dragged into the ITT hassle again, so it looks like he might go down with all the others.
"But at that point, we thought, well, Colson really is the most evil of those bastards, and if he gets off there is really no justice in the world. So we thought we'd go out to his house -- luckily none of us knew where he lived -- and beat on his door, mumbling something like: 'God's mercy on me! My wife's been raped! My foot's been cut off!' Anything to lure him downstairs. . . and the minute he opened the door, seize him and drag him out to the car and tie him by the ankles and drag him down to the White House."
"He could identify you. . ."
"Well, he wouldn't have time to know exactly who it was -- but we thought about it for a while, still driving around, and figured a beastly thing like that might be the only thing that could get Nixon off the hook, because he could go on television the next afternoon, demanding to make a nationwide emergency statement, saying: 'Look what these thugs have done to poor Mr. Colson! This is exactly what we were talking about! This is why we had to be so violent in our ways, because these thugs will stop at nothing! They dragged Mr. Colson the length of Pennsylvania Avenue at four in the morning, then cut him loose like a piece of meat!' He would call for more savage and stringent security measures against 'the kind of animals who would do a thing like this.' So we put the plot out of our heads."
"Well, it would have been a bit risky. . . wouldn't have done the Democratic party any good at all, would it?"
"Well, it might have created a bit of an image problem -- and it would have given Nixon the one out he desperately needs now, a way to justify the whole Watergate trip by raving about 'this brutal act.'. . . That's an old Hell's Angels gig, dragging people down the street. Hell's Angels. Pachucos, drunken cowboys.
"But I thought more about it later, when I finally got back to the hotel after that stinking accident I'm still trying to explain. . . and it occurred to me that those bastards are really mean enough to do that to Colson themselves -- if they only had the wits to think about it. They could go out and drag him down the street in a car with old McGovern stickers on the bumpers or put on false beards and wave a wine bottle out the window as they passed the White House and cut him loose. He'd roll to a stop in front of the Guard House and the Guard would clearly see the McGovern sticker on the car screeching off around the corner and that's all Nixon would need. If we gave them the idea, they'd probably go out and get Colson tonight."
"He'd be babbling, I'd think --"
"He'd be hysterical, in very bad shape. And of course he'd claim that McGovern thugs had done it to him -- if he were still able to talk. I really believe Nixon would do a thing like that if he thought it would get him out of the hole. . . So I thought about it a little more, and it occurred to me what we should do was have these masks made up -- you know those rubber masks that fit over the whole head."
"Ah yes, very convincing. . ."
"Yeah, one of them would have to be the face of Haldeman, one the face of Ehrlichman and one the face of Tony Ulasewicz."
"Yes, the meanest men on the Nixon Staff."
"Well, Colson's the meanest man in politics, according to Pat Buchanan. Ulasewicz is the hit man, a hired thug. I thought if we put these masks on and wore big overcoats or something to disguise ourselves and went out to his house and kind of shouted: 'Tex, Tex! It's me, Tony. Come on down. We've got a big problem.' And the minute he opens the door, these people with the Haldeman and Ehrlichman masks would jump out from either side and seize him by each arm -- so that he sees who has him, but only for two or three seconds, before the person wearing the Ulasewicz mask slaps a huge burlap sack over his head, knots it around his knees and then the three of them carry him out to the car and lash him to the rear bumper and drag him down the street -- and just as we passed the White House Guard Station, slash the rope so that Colson would come to a tumbling bloody stop right in front of the guard. . . and after two or three days in the Emergency Ward, when he was finally able to talk, after coming out of shock, he would swear that the people who got him were Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Ulasewicz -- and he would know they were mean enough to do it, because that's the way he thinks. He's mean enough to do it himself. You'd have to pick a night when they were all in Washington, and Colson would swear that they did it to him, no matter what they said. He would know it, because he had seen them."
'"Brilliant, brilliant. Yes, he'd be absolutely convinced -- having seen the men and the faces."
"Right. But of course you couldn't talk -- just seize him and go. What would you think if you looked out and saw three people you recognized, and suddenly they jerked you up and tied you behind a car and dragged you 40 blocks? Hell, you saw them. You'd testify, swear under oath. . . which would cause Nixon probably to go completely crazy. He wouldn't know what to believe! How could he be sure that Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Ulasewicz hadn't done it? Nobody would know, not even by using lie detectors. . . But that's a pretty heavy act to get into -- dragging people around the street behind rented Avis cars, and we never quite got back to it, anyway, but if we hadn't had that accident we might have given it a little more thought although I still have no idea where Colson lives and I still don't want to know. But you have to admit it was a nice idea."
"That's a lovely thing, yes."
"You know Colson had that sign on the wall in his office saying ONCE YOU HAVE THEM BY THE BALLS, THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW."
"Right."
"He's an ex-Marine captain. So it would be a def
inite dose of his own medicine."
"Do you really think he deserves that kind of treatment?"
"Well, he was going to set off a firebomb in the Brookings Institution, just to recover some papers. . . Colson is not one of your friendlier, happier type of persons. He's an evil bastard, and dragging him down the street would certainly strike a note of terror in that crowd; they could use some humility."
"Poetic justice, no?"
"Well, it's a little rough. . . it might not be necessary to drag him 40 blocks. Maybe just four. You could put him in the trunk for the first 36 blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly scare the piss out of him, bumping along the street, feeling all his skin being ripped off. . ."
"He'd be a bloody mess. They might think he was just some drunk and let him lie there all night."
"Don't worry about that. They have a guard station in front of the White House that's open 24 hours a day. The guards would recognize Colson. . . and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported that a bunch of thugs had kidnapped him."
"Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going around to the front of the White House? There's a naked man lying outside in the street, bleeding to death. . .' "
". . . and we think it's Mr. Colson."
"It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I think it's safe to say we'd see some headlines on that one."
PART II
Flashbacks & Time Warps. . . Scrambled Notes and Rude Comments from the High Country. . . Dean vs. Haldeman in the Hearing Room. . . A Question of Perjury. . . Ehrlichman Sandbags an Old Buddy. . . Are the Sharks Deserting the Suckfish?
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Due to circumstances beyond our control, the following section was lashed together at the last moment from a six-pound bundle of documents, notebooks, memos, recordings and secretly taped phone conversations with Dr. Thompson during a month of erratic behavior in Washington, New York, Colorado and Miami. His "long-range-plan," he says, is to "refine" these nerve-wracking methods, somehow, and eventually "create an entirely new form of journalism." In the meantime, we have suspended his monthly retainer and canceled his credit card. During one four-day period in Washington he destroyed two cars, cracked a wall in the Washington Hilton, purchased two French Horns at $1100 each and ran through a plate-glass door in a Turkish restaurant.
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time Page 36