Blind Ambition

by Dean, John W. ;

  Caulfield conducted an investigation on Anderson’s brother that produced nothing. Jeb Magruder, who was now deputy director of the Re-election Committee, sent former Plumber G. Gordon Liddy to run down a tip that Jack Anderson was involved in a questionable land deal in Maryland. Nothing.

  Colson was reporting to the President on his efforts. It reminded the President of the Alger Hiss case—of how, as a young congressman, he had fought to prove that the State Department official was a Communist and a perjurer. “The typewriters are always the key,” the President told Chuck. “We built one in the Hiss case.” As were all the top Nixon aides, Chuck was frequently instructed to reread the pertinent chapter in Six Crises for lessons on how to run over bureaucrats and smoke out political enemies.

  The original Dita Beard memo went to the FBI on March 10 at my request. The lab work did not begin for several days, and ITT had Pearl Tytell, a New York document analyst, compare a photocopy of the memo with other materials from Dita Beard’s typewriter. When she had concluded that the document was phony, ITT flooded the FBI with documents.

  On March 13, Colson asked me to retrieve the original memo from the FBI. Pearl Tytell, he said, would not issue a notarized report of her findings until she had inspected the original. I had been nervous about ITT’s expert from the beginning; the FBI never touched evidence analyzed by anyone else. Hoover had an iron rule against competition, the possibility of contradiction. I was afraid of what Hoover might do if he found out we had sent the original to an outside expert. Colson said it was vital for Tytell to have it, and assured me no one would know. I called the FBI lab and had it picked up. ITT officials took it to New York. The next day, Tytell called Colson to say she would stake her professional reputation on her conclusion. It was clearly a fraud, but she recommended a chemical analysis.

  Chuck was enchanted with Tytell’s potential as a Senate witness. “Who’d dispute that nice, grandmotherly little lady?” he asked. “Even Teddy Kennedy wouldn’t doubt her in public.” He authorized an ITT official to fly the memo to chemical expert Walter McCrone for “paper chromatography” and “microprobe analysis” work. McCrone snipped two small corners off the original, performed his tests and reported his support for Tytell. Chuck was ecstatic. The document was phony.

  Now Chuck felt confident enough to make use of Howard Hunt’s report that Dita Beard denied writing the memo and was prepared to so testify before a special panel of senators who were to question her in Denver as soon as she got out of the oxygen tent she was in. A Dita Beard statement was phoned to Washington as Chuck scrambled to rehabilitate her image in the media, an image he himself had sought to discredit by leaking stories that she was a sad old drunkard. Suddenly, stories appeared concerning her distinguished career at ITT. On March 17, Chuck incorporated her statement into a press release and had it delivered to the home of Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott. Fielding and I watched the news that evening. Scott appeared on all three networks, proclaiming Dita Beard’s denial of authorship.

  “At last we’ve turned the corner,” said Chuck. “We’ve started to reverse the bad news. Next we hit them with the FBI lab report, and it’s all over.”

  J. Edgar Hoover called me. “Mr. Dean, I’ve arranged for you to meet with Mr. Felt to discuss the lab findings.” He hung up abruptly and I called Felt.

  “What have you got, Mark?”

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s what you need. I’m sending over a draft letter, which the director is ready to sign, but he’s authorized me to let you see it first. It says we can’t make a definite finding.”

  I read the letter with dismay. It was worse than I had expected from Felt’s remark. In FBI jargon, Hoover was saying the Dita Beard memo was legitimate. Colson, outraged, called Felt to complain and then accused Bob Mardian of sabotaging the lab study by leaking word about ITT’s experts to Hoover. He insisted that I persuade Felt to change the letter, at least to make it innocuous.

  Felt would not budge, because the director would not budge. Colson carried the FBI’s draft letter to the President’s office, and when he returned he said he had never before seen the President so furious. The President penned a note to his friend Edgar, asking him to “cooperate,” then gave it to Ehrlichman with instructions to turn Hoover around. Ehrlichman could not budge the director an inch. When the President was told, he mused, “I don’t understand Edgar sometimes. He hates Anderson.”

  Colson did not tell ITT officials about the FBI report, but instead he encouraged them to release their experts’ reports. They did so on March 20. The next day, Dita Beard’s lawyers released her sworn affidavit that the memo was not hers, just as Senator Scott had told the world she would. On March 23 Senator Scott and the ITT officials found out that they had been left on a limb, as Hoover sawed it off by releasing the FBI letter. Public debate on the memo’s authenticity ended with the FBI’s pronouncement.

  A fresh wave of anti-Hoover sentiment lapped through the Administration. Had he deliberately doctored the lab reports after discovering the work of ITT’s experts? Speculation intensified when he threatened to have McCrone indicted for tampering with FBI evidence. We tried to trace all the people who knew about the ITT work, but the original memo had traveled thousands of miles, and through countless hands. An old proposal to make Hoover “director emeritus” was briefly recalled. Colson wanted to fire Hoover. The idea was, as always, discarded. There was a question on Hoover in each secret poll of public opinion conducted by the White House, and he always ranked extremely high. This piece of political realism, more than fear of blackmail, probably guaranteed Hoover his job until he died, unexpectedly, a few months later.

  The most intense debate took place over what to do about the Kleindienst hearings in the wake of Colson’s defunct memo strategy. It was election year, and the Administration was getting hit every day with revelations about the ITT deal and evidence of favoritism toward big business. Once again Colson came up with the game plan: the President should end the political drain of the Kleindienst hearings by canning him. The President agreed and instructed Haldeman to inform Mitchell. But the firing was never carried out. I don’t know why. Perhaps the President simply could not face anyone down in person, or perhaps Kleindienst saved himself with a message that his friend Senator Eastland would block any other nominee. The hearings dragged on through April as the President’s popularity slipped.

  The ITT scandal was serious enough business, but I found some hilarity in the high jinks even then. That ceased abruptly in mid-April when Haldeman and Ehrlichman sent me up to the Kleindienst hearings to order a witness to refuse to give testimony. The witness was Jack Gleason, a former Administration official who was now an ITT consultant and who was scheduled to testify about his work for the corporation.

  I already knew that Gleason was scared about something. He had come to my office and said, “John, I could be in some trouble. I can’t tell you the details, but I need a lawyer.” I had sent him to a friend who had been my lawyer, and it didn’t take me long to figure out what was bothering him. He was worried about potential criminal liability. I knew from Chotiner that Gleason had been involved in a secret effort in 1970 to raise and distribute political funds. Gleason had operated out of the basement of a Georgetown town house, and the records of the Town House Operation were considered radioactive in the Administration. Colson had them for a while, but he decided to turn them over to my office because I was doubly protected against having to disclose them: not only did I fall under executive privilege* but, as the President’s official lawyer, I could also cite attorney-client privilege. When Colson called to say he was sending the files, he ordered me to keep them secret and said that anyone who had knowledge of the information would be endangered.

  I knew all this before Haldeman summoned me to his office. To my surprise, I found Ehrlichman there, too. Obviously this was important.

  “John, I’ve got a job for you,” Ehrlichman began. “You know Jack Gleason is testifying down at the inquest to
day. We’ve decided we don’t want to run any chance that he’ll talk about his prior service here. I want you to see if he’ll take the Fifth. You know his lawyer, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’ve known him for a long time. But I don’t think he’ll let Jack take the Fifth out of the blue. That’s throwing up a red flag. They don’t know anything about Gleason yet.”

  “And they still won’t if he doesn’t say anything,” said Haldeman.

  “When he takes the Fifth, it’ll be all over the press.” They knew this as well as I did, but I wanted to hear their answer. Ehrlichman and Haldeman in the Town House Operation, I was thinking. They must have sold the Washington Monument for one of those contributions. Or Gleason must know something else even worse. “And they’ll start investigating the shit out of him within twenty-four hours.”

  “There are all kinds of investigations,” Ehrlichman replied. “Jack works for ITT, and they’ll be combing the files over there at the money factory.”

  “Jack has his own consulting firm,” I corrected, “but it works mostly for ITT.”

  “Well, then, they’ll look over there,” he said impatiently. “I just don’t want them sniffing over here.”

  “Look, John,” said Haldeman, “suppose some bright guy on the committee knows Gleason did some fund raising in 1970. And suppose they ask for the records just to check on whether ITT corrupted the Attorney General way back then. Jack can’t even say who he raised the money for. What’s he going to tell them?”

  I searched for legal positions that Gleason might hold them off with, but I could see the box Haldeman was building: Town House hadn’t been registered as a political committee, but it should have been; even if Gleason admitted that, he would have to explain where the records were. “Well, if it gets that far,” I said, “he can argue that he doesn’t know where the records are, which is true.”

  “If it gets that far,” Ehrlichman said quickly, “it’s already on our doorstep. If he tries to take the Fifth then, they probably won’t let him. Even if they do, it won’t matter. He’ll have led them to the thicket. If he’s going to take the Fifth, he should do it before he opens his mouth.”

  “The ITT people won’t like that, John,” I said. “They might fire him.”

  “ITT’s used to it,” said Ehrlichman, “and they don’t have to run for election. Besides, Jack can take care of himself.” If ITT fired Gleason, he was telling me, it would draw the investigation toward itself closer. The White House was prepared to let Jack lose his job, on this one anyway.

  I tried a different tack. “Look, Gleason’s lawyer is a good friend, but he’s not likely to do something like this on my say-so. I don’t have a lot of ammunition.”

  Ehrlichman answered, though I was looking at Haldeman. “John, that’s the sort of dilemma a counsel to the President gets his inspirations for.” He shifted in his chair, he had finished what he had to say.

  I drove up to Capitol Hill, went to Vice-President Agnew’s sparsely furnished office in the New Senate Office Building, and sent word to the committee’s hearing room for Edward P. Taptich, Gleason’s lawyer. Without using Haldeman’s or Ehrlichman’s name, I told him what I wanted. It was an unpleasant conversation. He went to the committee room to confer with Gleason. When he returned with Gleason’s answer I called Haldeman, and Ehrlichman came on the phone also. Sitting in Agnew’s chair talking, I knew they might have fired me if they had known Taptich was in the room with me. He nodded as I repeated his arguments.

  “Bob,” I said, “it’s a pretty firm no. My lawyer friend does not feel he would be properly advising his client to tell him to take the Fifth, and Gleason doesn’t want to take the heat unless he has to.”

  “Goddammit, he has to,” Haldeman said. “He doesn’t know—”

  “And, besides, Bob”—I was anxious to get to some good news—“my friend Ed thinks there’s no problem. He’s going to object to any question they ask about anything except Gleason’s work for ITT in San Diego, the convention stuff. He’ll say that anything else is not germane to the Kleindienst confirmation hearings. That will probably happen on some warm-up question before anything troublesome gets introduced.”

  “What happens,” Ehrlichman pressed, “if he loses the objection?”

  “Well, I don’t think that will happen, because of Brother Eastland’s sense of fairness. But if it does, Ed will make a speech about how he refuses to let his client be subjected to a hearing that has no boundaries and goes fishing into the man’s political background. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll ask for a recess on account of his laryngitis, and we’ll call you.”

  “This is too important to go in praying,” said Ehrlichman. “I think maybe you should have a word with Gleason yourself.”

  “I can’t call him out of the hearing room, John,” I said. “He’s sitting down there now, about to go on. Look, I think we’ve got a ninety-five percent chance of getting by, which will leave us a hell of a lot better off than taking the Fifth. We won’t lose too much anyway by trying it the way Ed’s got it planned. Besides, I’m sure they’re not going to budge. They think it’s their hot seat.”

  “Okay, John,” Haldeman said. “I hope you’re smiling when I see you next.”

  Taptich went to the hearings and I waited. He objected when Senator Kennedy asked Gleason what job he had received when the Nixon Administration took office. Eastland sustained the objection. When Senator John V. Tunney, another committee member, got wind of my presence in the building and asked about my conversations with Gleason, Taptich objected, and was again sustained after a long argument. He was home free. Two years later, when Town House came to light, Gleason and another White House aide pleaded guilty to Campaign Act violations and received suspended sentences while Herbert Kalmbach went to jail for selling ambassadorships. The prosecutors sat on a possible indictment against Bob Haldeman.

  I had survived my first minor role on the front lines of a cover-up and had risen in the confidence of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Looking back, I wonder that I failed to see the signs of worse to come. At the time, I was relieved to have passed. The ITT scandal at last melted to the back pages of the papers, and Kleindienst was confirmed. When the White House returned to normal, I started planning another of the foreign junkets I took frequently now that I had decided to leave the Administration. Fielding and I abandoned our crisis regimen of sandwiches at our desks and resumed leisurely lunches at the mess.

  “Well, Johnny,” Fred said as we walked slowly back from lunch one day in mid-May, “I read back in January where Jeane Dixon predicted Nixon would have a serious scandal this year but would survive it. It’s amazing, she was right. We’ve had it, and the President was untouched.” I agreed.

  We were all wrong, of course. The machinery had long been cranking through the White House toward a scandal that would grind down the President himself. And I was part of the machinery.

  * On May 5 the GOP voted to switch the convention to Miami, citing, among their reasons, labor problems, insufficient hotel space and concern with demonstrations.

  * While at the Special Prosecutor’s office in 1974, I was not at all surprised to see the following handwritten note by Haldeman on his May 13, 1971, meeting with the President: “Kalmbach—a little later hit Geneen hard. Work through Kleindienst.” Translated, this meant that fund raiser Herbert Kalmbach, who was Nixon’s personal attorney, was to pressure ITT president Harold Geneen for a campaign contribution after the antitrust settlement went through. He was to check with Kleindienst first, because Kleindienst would be well acquainted with how much benefit Geneen had reaped from the settlement. Both Kleindienst and Kalmbach say this never occurred.

  * A Presidential claim to constitutional authority for withholding information from his co-equals: the Congress and the courts.

  Chapter Three

  THE TICKLER

  The White House apparatus went into motion each morning about seven. Bud Krogh had indeed been late when I encountered him on my firs
t day. The daily staff meeting, chaired jointly by John Ehrlichman and George Shultz, began at 7:30. Usually by seven a sleepy-eyed handful of those who attended this meeting would be in the mess munching cereal and silently reading their news summaries to prepare for the day. Ehrlichman was a regular breakfast-clubber. He sat at a small table near the wall with the newspaper in his face, sometimes lifting one eye to see who else was there, and departing about 7:25 for the Roosevelt Room to preside.

  At 8:15 Ehrlichman and Shultz adjourned their meeting and walked down the hall to the more important session in Haldeman’s office, where they were joined by Henry Kissinger, Chuck Colson, Bryce Harlow (later it was MacGregor, then Timmons), Peter M. Flanigan, an assistant to the President, and Ron Ziegler. “The 8:15” flushed up matters the President’s top-level aides thought he should be thinking about that day, for Haldeman would go from the 8:15 to the President’s office.

  After a few months at my job, I suggested to Higby that it seemed appropriate for the counsel to attend the 8:15. Haldeman did not agree but said I could, if I wished, attend the 7:30. For several weeks I dragged my body out of bed at 5:45 to make it to the mess by seven, and then on to the Roosevelt Room. I listened to the discussion of proposed supplemental foreign-assistance appropriations; Shultz’s professorial analysis of the need for a forty-five-day extension of the no-strike period in a railway labor-management dispute; a speechwriter’s report on what the President might say upon signing legislation giving the Blue Lake lands back to the Taos Pueblo Indians. All routine business not involving the counsel’s office. Quietly I stopped attending, and no one missed me. The meetings were simply a mechanical technique to make sure that what the President wanted was being done. However, they were not as strict or severe a method as the tickler.

  The discipline of Haldeman’s tickler was unrelenting. I had felt it with my first assignment, the action memorandum on Scanlan’s Monthly, with its due date “Wednesday, August 5, 1970, at 2:00 P.M.” That one I had answered on time, but subsequently I spent too much time preparing my answers to a few action memoranda, let the due dates slide by, and discovered the consequences. First a secretary in the staff secretary’s office called my secretary, asking where the answer was, and when the explanation was found unsatisfactory a very bitchy Larry Higby called to say, “What’s the matter, Dean, can’t you meet a deadline? Do you think you’re someone special?” When I explained I was working on the response, Higby snapped, “Work a little harder.” Higby was chewed out by Haldeman when the paper did not flow as the chief of staff wanted, so he leaned on others.