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Blind Ambition
The White House Years
John W. Dean
For my son John to better understand someday …
To my wife Mo for all her love and understanding …
CONTENTS
Preface
Author’s Note
1 Reaching for the Top, Touching Bottom
2 Firefighting
3 The Tickler
4 Linchpin of Conspiracy
5 Containment
6 Closing In
7 Breaking Point
8 Scrambling
9 Going Public
10 On Camera
Journal: July 1973–January 1975
Index
About the Author
PREFACE
What was Watergate? The answer is not simple and could take any number of varying legal, ethical, moral, social, historical, and political perspectives. Clearly, Watergate became much more than a hotel, office, and apartment complex alongside the Potomac River in Washington, DC, when, on June 17, 1972, a team of five men dressed in business suits and wearing surgical gloves were arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In a study of how Americans collectively remember Watergate, the complexity of this question was noted by Michael Schudson’s Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (1992). Schudson found, “There is no agreement on what Watergate is. The interesting question becomes how, not whether, we remember Watergate, which face or facet of Watergate we recall and why. Not surprisingly, this varies across different groups.”
I came upon the best definition I have yet found when browsing in a bookstore in the mid-1970s. I opened a newly released dictionary that defined Watergate as “a scandal involving the abuse of high office occurring during the presidency of Richard Nixon.” I no longer recall the dictionary, but I have never forgotten the definition, for it is the way I have used the term “Watergate” in all the years since discovering it. Still, as Schudson pointed out, it is how we remember these events. In the pages that follow, written shortly after the events occurred, I recorded my memory of them and my experiences at the Nixon White House.
Blind Ambition: The White House Years was first published over four decades ago in 1976. In the years since, I have discovered more information about Watergate, which has been woven into the account found in The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (2014). These books complement each other in reporting what happened inside the White House of Richard Nixon during his troubled presidency. For that reason, and to provide a solid historical record, I am republishing my original account of Watergate. While I made a few minor mistakes in remembering these events, I felt this book should be republished as it was first released.
In 1974-75, when I was working on Blind Ambition, very little information about the Nixon White House was available. I had been denied access to my White House files before I testified, as well as when I worked on this book. Since then, and over the past three decades, a virtual tsunami of information has become available. The voluminous records of the Senate Watergate Committee, the House Impeachment Inquiry, and the Watergate Special Prosecution Force have been made public, along with hundreds of hours of secretly recorded conversations on Nixon White House tapes. Many of my former colleagues have written their accounts of what happened, and countless historians and journalists have written about these events.
Until 1991, I largely ignored all this information, but when I was forced to file a lawsuit to set the record straight, I read massive amounts of material related to the abuses of power at the Nixon White House. When that litigation was satisfactorily resolved, I decided to use what I had learned to write the definitive examination of Nixon’s handling of Watergate by transcribing all of his secretly recorded conversations on the subject. That material is the basis for The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (2014). Nothing I learned from that work changed my mind about what I had written in this first book. To the contrary, I found solid corroboration, although I was able to fill in blanks I had not initially understood because the information had been unavailable.
Blind Ambition was not written to explain Watergate; rather, it is a memoir of my experiences at the Nixon White House that certainly adds to the explanation of that historical event. Because I am trained as an attorney, however, I had a unique problem when writing this book: How should I deal with my Watergate testimony? I knew that I could not repeat it, verbatim, in the book, for it was as flat and dull as testimony tends to be. (It also ran over 61,000 words!) At first, I tried to quote select passages and explain my feelings about the matters involved. I proceeded in this fashion because I was concerned about changing so much as a word of my testimony—lest I be asked, “Which is true, Mr. Dean, Blind Ambition or your testimony?” My literary agent at the time, David Obst, told me that my effort to tell the story in this fashion did not work. He had an idea. He would get Simon & Schuster to hire another of his writers, Taylor Branch, to help me pull it together, and in less than a month we had reworked the material into the narrative you’re about to read. If it had been suggested at the time, I would have added Talyor’s name to the cover for I certainly wrote this book with him.
JOHN DEAN, 2016
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a portrait—not a black-and-white photograph—of five years of my life. It represents my best effort to paint what I saw and reproduce what I heard. I have included detail, texture, tone, to make this history more vivid—though, I trust, no prettier. I prepared for the writing of Blind Ambition the same way I prepared to testify before the Ervin Committee, before the special prosecutors, and in the cover-up trial. But in the book I have included dialogue and enclosed it in quotation marks, whereas in my testimony I deliberately refrained from dramatizing the events I was relating.
While many White House conversations were taped, many were not. To reconstruct what occurred, I reviewed an enormous number of documents as well as my own testimony. Wherever possible, I spoke to others who were present with me during discussions, or I talked to people to whom I’d related conversations shortly after they took place, and I referred to notes I had kept. I have also, of course, relied on my memory in this account of my experiences in the White House, and while I do not claim to report the dialogues verbatim, I vouch for their essential accuracy. To borrow my lawyer’s phrase: “I’m ready to get on the box”—take a lie-detector test.
A final matter of importance. I have often read authors’ acknowledgments, but I never before quite realized what they were saying. Now I do, and it is not merely a gesture when I offer thanks to all those who helped with this book. I sincerely thank Marcia Nassiter and David Obst for their early encouragement; Estelle Oppenheim and Marie Ralphs for typing and retyping many drafts; Patty Firestone and Hays Gorey for critical readings and helpful suggestions; Richard Snyder, Sophie Sorkin, Vera Schneider, Harriet Ripinsky, David Nettles, Frank Metz, Joanna Ekman and the staff of Simon and Schuster for their enthusiastic and professional support; Taylor Branch for his talented assistance and patient tutoring; and Alice Mayhew, my editor, for guiding—more truly, forcefully but thoughtfully driving—the book to completion.
JOHN DEAN
Los Angeles
August 1976
Chapter One
REACHING FOR THE TOP, TOUCHING BOTTOM
“Would you be interested in working at the White House?” Bud Krogh asked me casually.
It was a warm afternoon in May 1970, and we were walking toward a park bench
that was well shaded by the aged trees surrounding the Ellipse. Bud had invited me to his White House office and, when I arrived, had suggested that we take a stroll so that we could talk, but I had had no idea what he wanted to talk about. I was pleasantly surprised by the question.
“Why do you ask?” I countered, trying to check my impulse to give way to the flattery.
As I listened to Bud telling me he had recommended me for President Nixon’s White House staff, I was also paying attention to the little voice in the back of my head that was telling me to act reserved, to remember the negative impressions I had collected about the White House: friends haggard and drained from long hours of pressure, able men reduced to “gophers” and errand boys, breaking their necks whenever one of the President’s top aides had a whim. That was not for me even if it was the White House. My job at the Justice Department was relaxed and enjoyable, with importance and promise for advancement. “Bud, thank you,” I said, “but I really like it at Justice.”
I did not want to act coy, just properly cautious, so that he would carry back the message that I would not be lured by just any job. He was scouting, and I wanted to find out exactly how interested the White House was. As always, I was masking my inner calculations and feelings, this time behind an appearance of friendly sincerity. So was Krogh. We had both come a long way in the government at thirty.
Speaking as if he were musing on whether I could move my desk down the hall, Bud inquired whether I thought the Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, would let me move to the White House.
“I really don’t know,” I replied.
Bud said that his boss, John Ehrlichman—the President’s former counsel and present domestic-affairs adviser—or Bob Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, might raise the possibility with Mitchell. I liked the notion of these powerful men negotiating for my talents.
Nothing happened, but several weeks later John Mitchell called me into his office to tell me that my going to work at the White House had been discussed, and that he had raised no objections. But Mitchell did not encourage me to go. On the contrary, he told me that I could expect to be promoted at Justice in time and that I would be better off staying where I was. In an almost fatherly way he suggested that the White House was not a healthy place; his distaste for the President’s staff was vague but real. I knew there was some jealousy between Mitchell and the White House, but I had no idea the animosity cut deep. I would learn.
In early July, I was eating lunch at the Congressional Hotel on Capitol Hill, discussing the Administration’s drug legislation with a key House Commerce Committee member, when I was paged to the phone. It was Lawrence Higby, Haldeman’s chief gopher, and he was in a hurry. The legendary White House operators had tracked me down at my obscure corner table for Higby, who was across the country at the Western White House. He asked me to catch the next plane to California because “Mr. Haldeman wants to meet with you.” Immediately. Drop everything. With the efficiency that was the stamp of Haldeman’s staff, Higby reeled off the available flight times. I thought I could catch the three-o’clock flight from Baltimore’s Friendship Airport with a mad dash. I would be met in Los Angeles, he told me, but he failed to say why I was being summoned to San Clemente. I assumed it was about the White House job. “Don’t miss the plane,” Higby said and hung up.
I went back to the lunch table and whispered to my Justice Department colleague, Mike Sonnenreich, that he would have to carry on without me. As nonchalantly as possible, I mentioned that I had to leave at once for San Clemente on urgent business.
His jaw dropped, his composure momentarily lost. “You what?”
Having secured the name dropper’s most savored prize, I smiled and rushed off.
Richard G. Kleindienst, the Deputy Attorney General, was in a meeting. I interrupted to tell him the news. We had talked about my moving to the White House, and he was more opposed than Mitchell. Half seriously and half to flatter, he said again that he didn’t want to lose me, and that the last place in the world he wanted to see me was in “that zoo up the street.” No title and no amount of money could induce him to work there, he said. Despite the overstatement, he was serious. When I said Haldeman had summoned me, he observed, “Haldeman’s the only son-of-a-bitch in the whole place who can think straight. You’ll like Bob.”
I dashed home to pack, carefully selecting suits, shirts, ties and shoes consonant with my image of the Nixon White House. As I drove my Porsche through the early-afternoon traffic on the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, I wondered whether I could beat a speeding ticket by telling a policeman I was on my way to the Western White House. Luck spared me, and I caught the flight with five minutes to spare.
Five hours, a few Scotch-and-sodas, a meal, some thoughts about the White House, some promising conversations with the stewardesses, and we were landing. The passengers in the first-class cabin were pulling their coats from the overhead racks when an officious airline executive stepped briskly on board.
“Excuse me,” he said to the startled passengers, “would you all wait just a moment, please?” He whispered to the stewardess and then followed her to my seat. “Mr. Dean?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to San Clemente?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any luggage?”
“Only what I’m carrying.”
He took my bag and marched off the plane ahead of me. The other passengers were held up until I made my exit, pleasantly embarrassed. Just outside the plane’s door the executive stopped in the folding passageway to unlock a door that led down to the ground. By this time, the flight crew had gathered to watch. I noted the curiosity on their faces and tried to look as though I were accustomed to this royal treatment. I planned to step smartly into the limousine I expected below, but instead of a limousine I saw, not a hundred yards away, a shiny brown-and-white Marine helicopter with a corporal in full-dress uniform standing at attention at the foot of its boarding ramp.
The airline executive handed my suitcase to a young Marine lieutenant who stepped out of the helicopter as we approached. The corporal, still at attention and expressionless, snapped a salute at me without even glancing at my face. I stopped at the top of the boarding ramp to look back at the crew while the chopper pilot gunned the engine. I decided I had handled my escalating headiness fairly well. I had been cool, had controlled my excitement, yet had managed a little hustling. Well, I thought, if nothing else came of this trip I could at least call the stewardess whose name and phone number I had managed to acquire. I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble getting a date—she must be wondering just who I was. I was wondering the same thing.
The pilot asked me if I’d ever been in a helicopter before. I told him yes, in military helicopters much like his, except not as plush. Shortly after I went to work at the Justice Department the senior officials had gone through a nuclear evacuation drill, and a helicopter had whisked us to a secret subterranean retreat where we would operate the government in the event of a real attack. Also, I had once surveyed an antiwar demonstration from a helicopter. I preferred not to think about those previous trips, because now I was relishing the glamour without the unsettling idea of living like a mole under scorched earth or of watching police bang heads.
As we headed south toward San Clemente, the pilot pointed out landmarks and towns along the coast: the drydocked Queen Mary, being converted into a hotel but looking from the air like an old and rusting toy; the indistinguishable beach towns of Newport and Laguna; and hundreds of white dots on the water, the luxury boats marking the leisure and wealth that abound in Southern California. We landed at a helicopter pad a few miles from the Western White House, and I was driven to “the compound” by another Marine corporal. The grounds and the buildings looked like the campus of a well-endowed small college. I heard my driver receive instructions on his two-way radio to take me to the “admin building,” where Higby was waiting.
Higby asked if I would like to freshen up befor
e I met Mr. Haldeman. My God, I thought, I’m meeting with Haldeman tonight. As I splashed cold water on my face, I realized I was tired from the trip and from the meal and the drinks on the flight. I began thinking, Maybe I am really too interested in this job, maybe that’s the wrong frame of mind. I suspect it is the fear of failure or rejection that sets off this defense mechanism in me before any interview. I wanted to make a mental adjustment. I would have to collect my thoughts fast, and I would have to start telling myself I did not even want to work at the White House.
I was still working on convincing myself later in Haldeman’s outer office, when Haldeman emerged. We had never met before, but when he saw me he bounded across the small reception area, his right hand extended, a broad smile on his face. Athletically built, with crew-cut hair and deeply tanned skin, he looked like a college football coach recruiting a new player—not like the awesome ramrod of the President’s guard I had heard so much about. And he seemed genuinely pleased to meet me, which caught me off guard.
“I’m Bob Haldeman,” he said. I was faced with a split-second decision on how to respond. I didn’t want to become trapped as I had with Mitchell, whom I still called “Mr. Mitchell” or “General.” Even though our relationship was now informal, I could not pull myself over the mental hurdle to call him John. I doubt that he would have, been offended, but he had never invited me to change, either. The pattern, I thought, had been fixed at our first meeting. I wanted to do better with Haldeman. His unexpected pleasantness pushed my resolve over the edge.
“Bob,” I replied, “it’s nice to meet you.” That took care of that. Since he did not seem put off by my informality, I was heartened enough to comment on his suntan.
“Well, don’t get the idea that all we do out here is lie around in the sun,” he said with a smile. Haldeman usually managed a tan. Later I wondered if Bob’s tan level was an indicator for the President as to when they should travel to the warm climates he also loved. Whenever Haldeman’s tan began to fade, off they would go.
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