The Arrogance of Power

by Anthony Summers

  13. Spencer Oliver’s secretary Maxie Wells has repeatedly denied having had any knowledge of or involvement in a phone’s having been used for such a purpose. Alfred Baldwin, who monitored the bugged calls that apparently emanated from the Oliver phone, has said that he “can categorically state, from the conversations that were obtained, that no such [call girl ring] operation was being conducted, at least from the conversations I was monitoring.” More recently he testified that had ordinary members of the public heard the conversations, many might have thought they were prostitution-related. Fred LaRue, who heard Magruder describe the logs, said he mentioned nothing that touched on prostitution. Former DNC treasurer Robert Strauss testified recently that “among many wild rumors” he had heard was one that “some of the state chairmen would . . . use the phone to make dates for that night.” Maxie Wells’s former colleague Barbara Kennedy testified that there was “a rumor at the time” that a “call girl operation” was being run from the DNC. Kennedy said, “No one paid any attention to it.” Former staffer Margaret Shannon reportedly spoke privately even before Watergate of women at the DNC being “assigned” for sex. She no longer maintained that when interviewed by the author in 1998. (Wells denied: Maxie Wells int. by Jim Hougan, 1981, Hougan Collection, and Ida Maxwell Wells deposition, Sept. 19, 1997, Wells v. Liddy, Case CR 67231.0, p. 369; Baldwin “no such operation”: Baldwin int. transcript, “Watergate: The Secret Story,” CBS News, June 17, 1992, p. 5; more recently: Baldwin deposition, July 28, 1997, Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy, Case JFM-97-946, p. 155; LaRue: int. Fred LaRue; Strauss: Robert Strauss deposition, June 24, 1996, Maureen and John Dean v. St. Martin’s Press et al., Case 92-1807 (HHG), at www.watergate.com/strauss/.htm; Kennedy: Barbara Kennedy Rhoden deposition, July 17, 1996, Deans v. St. Martin’s Press et al., supra., pp. 23–68; Shannon: conv. Michael Ewing, former congressional investigator and staffer for Senator Harold Hughes and ints. Margaret Shannon.)

  14. Dean told the author he saw Rothblatt’s move as no more than “an effort by defense counsel to harass a plaintiff and make pursuing their lawsuit as unpleasant as possible.” (John Dean to author, Nov. 12, 1997.)

  15. In a 1996 deposition Dean said his comments to Ziegler about the Hollander affair were just “teasing” and that his office had concluded “there wasn’t going to be any embarrassment” from the Hollander case. He seemed to suggest that the passage on the subject in his book Blind Ambition was overwritten by his ghostwriter, Taylor Branch. Dean has recently appeared to disavow parts of that book, but Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch and his publisher, Alice Mayhew, have stood by Branch’s reporting. (“teasing” etc.: John Dean deposition, Jan. 22, 1996, Maureen and John Dean v. St. Martin’s Press et al., above, pp. 133, 139–; Branch role: Tampa Tribune, Apr. 22, 1993; Washington Times, Feb. 12, Sept. 15, 1996; New York Post, Feb. 15, 1996.)

  16. Erika Rikan, known as Heidi from her schooldays, has been at the center of allegations of a prostitution link between the Columbia Plaza apartments and the DNC. After intensive research, including interviews with people who lived with Rikan or knew her well, the author found no evidence that she was a prostitute or call girl. The only reference to her located in police files was for a minor driving infraction. Publicity about Rikan, notably in the 1991 book Silent Coup, has relied on the notion that she was one and the same as Cathy Dieter, named by Phillip Bailley as having run a call girl operation in apartment 204 at the Columbia Plaza. Two witnesses interviewed for this book said Rikan had an apartment in the Columbia Plaza, but then so did well over a thousand other people, including at one time Julie Nixon Eisenhower. The arrest record of the madam known to have operated from the Plaza, Barbara Ralabate, shows that she was the madam at apartment 204 in 1971–72, so Dieter hardly could have been. Bailley, who has spun various fantasies around his core story, may have built his Dieter story onto what he knew of the operation actually being run out of apartment 204. Ralabate did recall a woman of foreign origin called Erika having worked for her at a different Plaza apartment at another time. Police records show that a woman named Erika, with a different last name, was charged with prostitution in 1970. Shown a photograph of Erika Rikan, Ralabate was sure it was not of the Erika who had worked with her. The name Dieter meanwhile meant nothing to her. The author has seen no reliable evidence, let alone legal proof, that Rikan and Dieter were the same person. Yet Cathy Dieter did exist. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy recently testified that a woman using that name was associated with a Columbia Plaza call girl operation and cooperated with his investigation. (Suggestions re: Rikan: see refs. Colodny and Gettlin, op. cit.; Dieter and apt. 204: int. Phillip Bailley by Jim Hougan, Hougan Collection; author’s interviews re: Rikan: Edith Meck, Carolyn Rainear, John Dean, Pete Kinsey, Josefina Alvarez, Adrienne Grady Clark, Sam Kay, Rebecca Sutton Nesline, Fortunato Mendes, Alvin Kotz, Langhorne Rorer, former police officer Carl Shoffler, and convs. journalists Jim Hougan and Phil Stanford and author Len Colodny; driving offense: charge slip for Erika L. Rikan, ticket no. 8879779, Sept. 10, 1972, D.C. Superior Ct.; Rikan apt. Plaza: ints. Adrienne Grady Clark, Sam Kay; Julie Nixon: Miami Herald, July 15, 1974; Ralabate: charge sheets of Lillian Lori and int. Barbara Ralabate; other “Erika”: 1970 charge sheet for Erika K[name withheld], D.C. Ct. of General Sessions; no convincing evidence Dieter identical with Rikan: Author’s view takes into account the research reported in G. Gordon Liddy’s Consolidated Reply re: Motion for Summary Judgment in Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy, Civil Action JFM 97-946, at [Introduction] pp. 60, 63; letter from Collier, Shannon, and Scott to Stephen Contopoulos, June 11, 1992, supplied to author, and “Heidi Rikan was also known as Cathy Dieter,” Defendant Len Colodny’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, Dec. 1996, re: Maureen and John Dean v. St. Martin’s Press et al., Case 92-1807 (HHG), U.S. District Ct. for D.C., Core 1, p. 13–; Rudy on Dieter: John Rudy deposition, June 19, 1996, Maureen and John Dean v. St. Martin’s Press et al., Case 91-1807 (HHG) (AK), pp. 508, 690–.)

  17. Flanigan has denied that he called the U.S. attorney’s office, as reported in the Washington Star. (Colodny and Gettlin, op. cit., p. 144.)

  18. The woman’s name is withheld here for legal and privacy reasons.

  19. There is good reason to think the White House remained very sensitive to what O’Brien might have on the Nixon relationship with the Greek dictatorship, and not only because of the illegal funding for Nixon’s 1968 campaign. (See p. 284–.) The go-between in that affair, millionaire Thomas Pappas, remained extremely close to the administration and hosted Nixon’s brother on an Athens visit from which, as a vice president of Marriott Corporation, he came away with a contract to provide inflight catering for Olympic Airways. Pappas was cochairman of the Nixon fund-raising effort for 1972. The behavior of Nixon aides, meanwhile, demonstrates that the White House believed a real threat was posed by the exiled Greek journalist Elias Demetracopoulos, who had originally taken the information on the colonels’ 1968 funding to O’Brien. (See p. 286.) In 1971, after allusions to Pappas’s role in testimony to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Nixon’s confidant Murray Chotiner told Demetracopoulos to his face to “lay off” Pappas or risk deportation. Undeterred, Demetracopoulos submitted a memorandum to the House subcommittee that, he told the author, included sensitive information on the 1968 malfeasance. On January 24, 1972, at a political luncheon, John Mitchell raged about Demetracopoulos, threatening to deport him—this three days before presiding over the first of the GEMSTONE meetings with Gordon Liddy.

  Spencer Oliver, whose DNC phone was apparently bugged by Liddy’s people, has suggested another potential motive for the surveillance. The Nixon side would have had an intense interest in the Democratic party’s debate on whether McGovern’s candidacy should go forward. This was being hotly debated in June 1972, and as head of the party’s state chairmen’s group Oliver was deeply involved. Hence, perhaps, CREEP’s concern with his telephone conversations. (Pappas: Detroit Sunday News, Nov. 11, 1973; Roger W
itten to File 306, Dec. 20, 1973, Jan. 11, 1974, and Witten to Stans interview file, Dec. 3, 1974, WSPF; WP, March 22, 1972; Pappas, Donald Nixon: NYT, June 4, 1970; WP, Feb. 16, 1972; Donald Nixon testimony, E, Bk. 22, p. 10675; Bob Muse to Terry Lenzner, undated, re: int. John Meier, Hughes-Rebozo investigation, WSPF, and see Dean, Ambition, op. cit., p. 165; Demetracopoulos testimony: Demetracopoulos testimony, July 12, 1971, Hearings, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe, 92d Congress, 1st Session, p. 64–; Chotiner: ints. Elias Demetracopoulos, Nation [May 31, 1986]; memo to subcommittee: Demetracopoulos memo, Sept. 17, 1971, subcommittee on Europe, above, p. 450–; Mitchell raged: Louise Gore to Elias Demetracopoulos, Jan. 24, 1972, Demetracopoulos Papers; Oliver suggested motive: conv. Seymour Hersh, citing Spencer Oliver in Houston Post, June 15, 1972.)

  Chapter 31

  1. Russell apparently came to the attention of the FBI because McCord’s phone records showed he had made a recent call to a phone at Russell’s rooming house. Under questioning, Russell admitted that he had been at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant, across from the Watergate, between 8:30 P.M. and 10:30 P.M. on the night of the arrests. He claimed he was there “for sentimental reasons” because it was where he had originally met a woman friend. Russell’s accounts of his movements that evening were inconsistent, however. The best reconstruction, by investigative writer Jim Hougan, shows that in fact he returned to Washington from the suburbs after midnight, after telling his daughter he had to “do some work for McCord.” McCord has refused to discuss Russell. Russell’s friend Ruth Thorne, traced by the author in 2000, recalled his telling her that he was “outside watching” on the night of the arrests. (FBI ints.: ints. Louis J. Russell, June 27, 1972, July 5, 1975, by agents Rodney Kicklighter and James Hopper, FBI 139-166, and int. Russell by Donald Sanders and Harold Lipset, Apr. 12, 1973, with Russell letter to E, chief counsel, in Lou Russell file, Box C103, E. NA; Hougan reconstruction: Hougan, Agenda, op. cit., p. 181; McCord refused: ibid., p. 185; “outside”: int. Ruth Thorne.)

  2. In his 1978 memoirs, Haldeman recalled Nixon having first discussed the arrests with him (in Key Biscayne) during a phone call from the Bahamas on the morning of Sunday, June 18. Nixon told him, “Track down Magruder and see what he knows.” Haldeman called Magruder, Ehrlichman, and Colson, then phoned Nixon back. Haldeman’s diary, released on CD-ROM in 1994, offers a different account. It has Haldeman talking with Ehrlichman, Magruder, and Colson on his own initiative that Sunday morning. “The P,” according to the diary entry, was at that time still “not aware of all this, unless he read something in the paper, but he didn’t mention it to me.” White House logs, meanwhile, reflect a four-minute call by Nixon to Haldeman at 10:58 A.M. on Saturday, June 17 and also an eighteen minute call from Nixon to Haldeman on Sunday, June 18. The following day, Monday, June 19, Nixon phoned Colson and Haldeman twice and met with Haldeman before flying back to Washington. This is not necessarily a complete record. (Memoirs: Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit. pp. 7, 12; diary: HD, CD, entries of June 17, 18, 19, 1972; logs: President’s Daily Diary, June 17, 18, 1972, NP, NA; “First Conversations Concerning the Break-In,” Witness Files: Nixon, Folder 53A.2, Investigative files, WSPF, NA.)

  3. See pp. 403 and 526 n. 13.

  4. In his memoirs Nixon would question the competence of the technical experts consulted by the prosecutors, and cite criticism of the findings by other organizations. The House Judiciary Committee, however, pointed out that neither Dektor Counterintelligence & Security nor Home Service, Inc.—the two principal organizations in question—examined the controversial June 20 tape or the recorder Woods used, or reviewed the experiments with the expert panel. Nixon also failed to mention that his own attorney had Dr. Michael Hecker of the Stanford Research Institute review the experiments and confer with the panel. Dr. Hecker agreed with the panel’s approach and its expertise, and declared himself “in substantial agreement” with its final report. (RN questioned: MEM, p. 951; criticisms of findings: see technical article by George O’Toole, New Republic, March 9, 1974, citing Allan Bell of Dektor, and Summary of Information, R. Hearings, p. 114 nl; Hecker; ibid., p. 114.)

  5. Nixon said in his memoirs that he knew he had not deliberately erased the tape segment and that he believed Woods’s similar denial. In a later book he enlarged on his claim that the court-appointed experts’ report had been flawed (see Note 4, supra.) and dismissed the suggestion that he or any staff member had erased incriminating conversation as “the most preposterous myth.” He said the prosecutors overlooked the fact that Haldeman’s “Complete notes” of the meeting contained “nothing out of the ordinary.” Haldeman, however, emphasized in his own memoirs—and in the context of the eighteen-and-one-half-minute gap—that his notes were often incomplete. The issue should be viewed in the context of other evidence of deception and destruction of evidence (RN denial: MEM, pp. 919, 948–; “myth”: Nixon, Arena. op. cit., p. 32; Haldeman on notes: Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit., p. 42.)

  6. “Everybody bugs everybody else,” Nixon said, quoting Barry Goldwater, on June 23, 1972. There is in fact no good evidence that the Democrats bugged the Republicans in 1972, in spite of allegations to that effect. The author has, however, made some investigation of a fascinating angle to the case: that the Democrats had advance warning of the Watergate break-in. Good evidence, in the form of testimony and correspondence gathered by the Senate Watergate Committee, establishes that O’Brien was warned nearly three months before the fateful break-in of “very disturbing stories about GOP sophisticated intelligence techniques.” A Democratic official then met with the source of this information, a private investigator with an intelligence background named Arthur Woolston-Smith. He obscured his source but revealed to the author in 1996 that it had in fact been none other than the veteran wireman who had long worked for Nixon himself, John Ragan. (See above, pp. 314 and 341.) Ragan, now dead, had been security officer for the Republican National Committee until the fall of 1971 and was thus the predecessor of CREEP’s James McCord, who went on to become the electronics man for the Watergate break-ins.

  The Democrats almost certainly did anticipate the break-in even if they did not know when to expect it. Veteran Democratic aide Frank Mankiewicz, who was with O’Brien when he learned of the arrests, thought the DNC chairman seemed “not very excited, by any means.” Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee has recalled that his paper was notified within hours of the arrests by the Democrats’ attorney, Joe Califano. Califano filed a suit against CREEP on the second possible business day after the arrests, an action so speedy that, Haldeman said, “As the mystery of Watergate deepened, we would wonder about his swiftness. Seemingly the Democrats had this lawsuit, with its complex legal briefs, all cranked up and ready to go.” Woolston-Smith, the source of the Democrats’ information, told the committee he thought O’Brien had “formulated a plan” and recalled that the DNC official he had been in touch with seemed “elated” after the arrests. He told the author that the notion that the Democrats “entrapped” the burglars is “pretty close.” O’Brien dismissed such ideas in his memoirs as “preposterous.” Whatever the truth, there is wonderful irony in the fact that the warning about Republican dirty tricks apparently originated with, of all people, the wireman Nixon himself had long used. (“Everybody bugs”: WHT, Sept. 15, 1972, AOP, p. 147; allegations: MEM, p. 67; Lasky, op. cit., p. 326; DNC had advance warning?: summarized in Fred Thompson, At This Point in Time, New York: Quadrangle, 1975, p. 225–, and see John Stewart deposition, Feb. 28, 1973, DNC v. McCord et al., Civil Action 1233-72; William Haddad testimony, Oct. 4, 1973, Box B79, E, NA; Arthur Woolston-Smith testimony, Oct. 10, 1973, Apr. 29, 1974, Box C129, E, NA; Woolston-Smith revealed: ints. Arthur Woolston-Smith; Ragan, RNC: John Caulfield testimony, E, Bk. 1, p. 235; O’Brien “not excited”: George, June 1997; WP tipped: Bradlee, Good Life, op. cit., p. 324–; “As the mystery”: Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit., p. 14; “preposterous”: O’Brien, op. cit., p. 342.)

  7. As reproduce
d by the House Judiciary Committee, Nixon’s June 20 Dictabelt note mentioned that he had tried to cheer up Mitchell and that Mitchell had responded by regretting that he had not controlled his people better. Special Prosecutor Jaworski, however, later referred in his memoir to a Dictabelt note in which Mitchell “gave Nixon his first hard information on the details of the Watergate burglary. . . . When we subpoenaed that belt, the only words on it were: ‘John Mitchell called me at two o’clock, and John said. . . .’ The rest was erased.” Either Jaworski was mistaken about the contents of the known June 20 Nixon call to Mitchell, or this passage must refer to a different—hitherto unknown—call. (Jaworski, Confession, op. cit., p. 237.)