Blind Ambition

by Dean, John W. ;

  The most recent EMK [Edward M. Kennedy] report has been submitted. It contains nothing.

  The question is whether or not the subject of intelligence shouldn’t receive a greater allocation of time and resources than it is receiving now.

  Strachan recommended more resources for intelligence, and Haldeman wrote his “H” in the space marked “Approve,” but added a cryptic note: “resources as to what?” Accordingly, Strachan sprayed calls around, asking for specific ideas about how to organize the intelligence operation. When he called me, I told him that Caulfield was working on a plan and Jack’s project went into the tickler.

  Caulfield’s campaign intelligence plans had grown out of his personal disappointment. Ehrlichman had tried to have him appointed director of the Alcohol, Tax and Firearms Division at IRS, but Internal Revenue Commissioner Randolph Thrower had blocked the move (using up his last credit at the White House in the process). Caulfield, knowing that he had no future in the counsel’s office, began looking for a niche outside government. He had hit upon the idea of establishing a private security firm, using his White House connections. If he could land the President’s reelection campaign as his first client, he might find entrée to lucrative corporate accounts after the election. He had worked on his plans for months, and in late September he produced a twelve-page memorandum outlining “Operation Sandwedge.” I assumed that the code name had something to do with Jack’s love of golf. A sandwedge digs the ball out of the sand, deep weeds or mud. Rather a sporting metaphor for political intelligence, I thought.

  The plan read like a grade-B detective story, but Jack was thinking big. Sandwedge called for a budget of half a million dollars, which would pay for everything from convention security to undercover investigations and, Jack added privately, electronic surveillance on request. As support, Caulfield had enlisted some hefty names as Sandwedge partners: Joseph Woods, Rose Woods’s brother, a former Cook County sheriff; Roger Barth, assistant to the commissioner of Internal Revenue; and Mike Acree, a career IRS official who would later become commissioner of customs. Tony, Jack’s New York operative, would be in charge of covert activities.

  I had mixed emotions when Jack asked my help in selling Sandwedge to the triumvirate of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell. Caulfield did not really belong in the counsel’s office; there was not enough demand for his specialty. He was looking for an opportunity to move, and I wanted to fill the slot with another lawyer. This weighed in favor of sponsoring Sandwedge, but I hesitated. I sensed that an Irish cop without a college education would not be entrusted with such a sensitive assignment in an Administration of WASP professional men. There was risk involved in supporting a losing proposition. I told Caulfield I would speak with “the Big Three,” as he called them, after they had read Sandwedge.

  I heard first from Mitchell, as I was leaving his Justice Department office one day. “Say, incidentally, John, I read that damn memo Caulfield sent me on Operation Sandwich,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, Sandwedge.”

  “Whatever the hell he calls it. I don’t know, but I don’t think Caulfield should handle an operation like that, nor do I want Rose Woods’s brother involved in it. I’ll talk with Haldeman, but I want a hold on it for now. I want a lawyer to handle it. If Caulfield wants to work for the lawyer, fine.”

  “I think Jack sees himself as chief bottle washer of the operation,” I said.

  “Well, put a hold on it for now. Jeb was over here asking me about it, and I told him to sit tight until the thing is properly structured.”

  A few days later, Caulfield came to my office, looking unhappy.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Jeb called me a few days ago and said that since there was a hold on Sandwedge, he had to go ahead. He’s under pressure to get information on Muskie and asked me to check some guy named Buckley out as a possible informant. I checked him out with Rumsfeld, since he used to work for Don at OEO.” Caulfield was distressed about young, inexperienced people at the Re-election Committee setting up an intelligence operation. This was the kind of thing Sandwedge was designed to deal with, and he was offended. I had not told him of my discussion with Mitchell, hoping to spare his feelings until Mitchell met with Haldeman. Also, I did not want Caulfield to mount a personal lobbying effort that might displease them.

  Curious to know what Jeb Magruder was doing, I called him with Jack’s report on John R. Buckley.*

  Jeb was coy. “We’re setting up a little operation over here of our own,” he said. “I can’t wait for Caulfield.”

  “Jeb, if I can be of assistance let me know,” I volunteered.

  “I’ll tell you one thing you can do. You can get Colson off my back.” He said it half jokingly, but I knew he meant it. Jeb and Chuck had never gotten on well. “He’s driving me crazy,” Jeb claimed. “He has one request after another. There’s no end to it. Currently he’s all worked up that we’re not providing good intelligence on Muskie’s campaign, and he’s got Haldeman worked up, too, Strachan tells me.” Obviously, the tickler was at work on him.

  Operation Sandwedge was blocked with Mitchell’s hold, but Gordon Strachan’s tickler had not released it. On October 7, 1971, Strachan again raised the fate of “Sandwedge and covert activities” with Haldeman, suggesting that Haldeman and Mitchell meet to make some decisions about it and about other pending campaign matters. After the meeting, Mitchell said Sandwedge had been scratched because neither he nor Haldeman had confidence in Caulfield’s ability. Campaign intelligence would be assigned to a lawyer, Mitchell told me. I suggested that the Re-election Committee’s eventual general counsel might handle it. Mitchell agreed.

  This decision was picked up by the tickler, and soon Strachan was inquiring regularly if I had found a general counsel for the Re-election Committee. Magruder wanted Fred Fielding, who had a background in Army intelligence work, but I refused Magruder without raising it with Fielding. Later, my conscience prodded me to offer Fred the opportunity, but Fred declined. He knew I planned to move on after the election, leaving him in line to succeed me. The job remained vacant.

  After another call from Strachan, I talked with Bud Krogh about the possibility of having David Young go to the Committee. Not possible, Bud told me, protecting his own deputy.

  “How about Gordon Liddy?” Bud suggested. “He’s just finishing a project analyzing the organization of the FBI and could be available. He’s a helluva lawyer. The President read one of his memos and complimented it.”

  “I don’t really know Liddy.”

  “Well, he ran for Congress once, and I don’t really know what he knows about the election laws. But I know he’s a fast study and could learn them.”

  “One of the things Mitchell wants the general counsel to handle is intelligence,” I added. “Demonstrations and the political stuff, too.”

  “Gordon is a former FBI man, and I’m sure he could handle any intelligence needs they might have. He’s handled some very sensitive things here for us.” Bud was selling Liddy. There were no negatives, and I respected Bud’s judgment. After all, he had once recommended me.

  Within a few days, I met Gordon Liddy in Bud’s office. Wearing a three-piece charcoal-gray suit and groomed like a Vitalis commercial, he bristled with energy, and talked law. He was very interested in the job and, while he did not profess expert knowledge of campaign law, he was familiar with the new election bill then winding its way through Congress. He had a quick mind and was articulate. I told Liddy he could use my election-law files if he got the job. The Liddy recommendation was passed on to Ehrlichman. He approved; so did Haldeman, Mitchell and Magruder. On December 8, 1971, Gordon Liddy became general counsel of the Committee to Re-elect the President.

  Within a week, I heard from other Committee aides that Magruder was introducing Liddy as “our man in charge of dirty tricks.” Liddy, who was in my office to review my election-law files, was annoyed.

  “Magruder’s an asshole, John,” he said curtly, “and he’s g
oing to blow my cover.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I told him, and I called Jeb to say it was less than prudent to announce that Gordon Liddy was handling dirty tricks.

  Some weeks passed, and word filtered back that Liddy had jumped with both feet into the accumulated legal work of the campaign. The backlog was far too much for one man to handle, and Liddy complained that Magruder would not let him hire staff lawyers. I suggested volunteer lawyers to help him with massive projects, such as an analysis of the voluminous state election laws, and on several occasions Gordon thanked me profusely for helping him get started. Then he vanished, I assumed, into the lawbooks and I did not envy him.

  During that period, Bob Bennett visited me for the first time in nearly a year and made another long and delicate speech. A writer named Clifford Irving was claiming authorship of Howard Hughes’s autobiography, he said, and it was a fraud. Hughes had never met Irving, much less told him the story of his life. Bennett suspected a dark plot to ruin Hughes’s most valued possession, absolute privacy, and he hinted that Hughes’s former confidant and current archenemy, Maheu, might be behind it. He asked me to have the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. I responded vaguely and let the matter drop.

  Early in January, Liddy stopped by to tell me he was going to New York for a meeting with Caulfield and his man Tony to audit, at Jack’s request, their financial accounts. Ehrlichman had promised Tony support through 1972, even though Liddy was now the man in charge of intelligence. Caulfield and Tony dropped from the picture gracefully, but the Sandwedge proposal remained as the only intelligence blueprint in the tickler. Caulfield, not the plan itself, had killed Sandwedge, and Liddy’s lawyerly caution and professional demeanor were designed to make up for Caulfield’s deficiencies. I thought it a good decision to have hired someone like Liddy, a man of caution, instead of Jack.

  I smiled at the thought of what lay in store for Liddy at the old Sandwedge New York “headquarters,” for I had spent the night there when interviewing for jobs outside government a few months before. I had to pay for the trip myself, and Jack had offered to help defray my expenses by letting me stay at the planned undercover apartment. It was then being used for a special Ehrlichman-approved assignment which required a luxurious ambience, and Jack had described it as “quite a pad.” The apartment was meant to serve as a boudoir; Tony had enlisted acquaintances of amorous reputation in a mission to seduce there some of the women who had attended Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick party. (The women would, according to the plan, volunteer some details of Kennedy’s conduct in a moment of tenderness, or under fear of extortion.) After an elegant dinner in the company of a New York businessman and his wife, I walked to the apartment with my blind date. I was aghast. The woman, who had high expectations of the counsel to the President, had one quick drink and left. The apartment looked like a Chicago whorehouse—red velvet wallpaper, black lace curtains, white Salvation Army furniture, and a fake-fur rug. Upon my return to Washington, Jack asked me how I liked the pad, and I could not bring myself to tell him. “Well, Jack, it saved me some money,” I stammered. “Thanks.”

  Liddy offered no comment on the apartment after his trip. He seemed tight-lipped about all his operational work, but he did seem genuinely to admire Caulfield’s street smarts. “Caulfield’s a good man,” he said. “He’s been around.” It became apparent from a brief conversation that Jack and Liddy had traded war stories.

  “By the way, John,” Liddy added, “I’ve been analyzing all these intelligence requirements for the campaign, and it’s a big operation. What kind of budget do you think I should have? It’s expensive to do it right.”

  “I don’t have a clue what it costs, Gordon. But I know Haldeman wants the best. He’s always bitching about intelligence.” Thinking of Caulfield’s Sandwedge budget, I tossed out a figure idly. “Maybe half a million bucks, Gordon. Maybe more if you can justify it.” Liddy, I soon realized, didn’t take anything idly, and he returned to his calculations.

  Soon afterward, he was back in my office complaining about the White House bureaucracy, which was threatening to take away his White House identification pass, and did. As he spoke, I noticed a bulky white bandage wrapped around his fist.

  “What happened to your hand, Gordon?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, nothing really.”

  “It looks serious.”

  “Well, some might feel that way, but I don’t. It was necessary, you see, that I prove my strength to the men I’m thinking of recruiting to assist me at the convention.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in my business, John, it’s important that those I work with understand I’m a man of strength. Macho, as they say. So to prove myself to them I held my hand over a candle until the flesh burned, which I did without flinching. I wanted them to know that I could stand any amount of physical pain.”

  “My God, Gordon!” I didn’t really know what to say, so I told him I hoped his hand healed quickly, which he also shrugged off. After he left my office I called Bud Krogh and told him the story Liddy had just told me. “What’s with this guy, Bud?”

  Bud did not seem surprised. “Liddy’s a romantic,” he said. Then he offered some advice: “Gordon needs guidance. Somebody should keep an eye on him.”

  I was annoyed. “Bud,” I said, “this guy is a strange bird. Why didn’t you tell me this before? I can’t watch him.” It began to dawn on me that Bud might have touted Liddy to me to unload him from his own staff. It’s an old trick, sell the bad apple elsewhere; I had done it myself. But this could be serious. “Listen, Bud,” I said, “I think you should call Magruder and tell him to keep an eye on Liddy. He’d listen to you because you’ve worked with the guy.” Bud agreed, and I called Magruder too.

  Jeb had heard the candle story. “Weird guy,” he said.

  On January 26, Jeb called with an invitation to sit in on a meeting the next morning at the Attorney General’s office. Liddy was going to present his plans for campaign intelligence. I knew Magruder wanted me there for more than courtesy. I was still the collecting point at the White House for demonstration intelligence. I had recommended Liddy for the job, and Magruder wanted an intelligence man from the White House at the meeting for protection. I was both curious and apprehensive. I knew this meeting was the culmination of a long series of demands coming down through the tickler. Campaign intelligence was important, and Liddy was our professional. But I had seen enough hardball at the White House to be worried, and Liddy’s hand-burning incident stuck in my mind. The counsel’s job, I thought, is to recommend caution before the fact and to work miracles afterward.

  When I arrived at Mitchell’s office, Liddy was arranging commercially prepared charts—multicolor, three feet by four feet—on an easel. He finished soon after I walked in, and everyone took a seat after greetings were exchanged. Mitchell sat behind his Bureau of Prisons desk and began his normal slow and unconscious rocking motion. The rest of us faced him in a semicircle, sitting in faded red leather chairs whose straight backs and narrow wooden armrests seemed designed to keep visitors in a state near attention, and we were. I sat on Mitchell’s right. Magruder faced him directly, sitting in the center. And Liddy was on Mitchell’s left, by his easel.

  Jeb started the meeting, obviously nervous. “Mr. Mitchell,” he said, “Gordon has prepared a presentation for you on what he believes is necessary for campaign intelligence, and handling demonstrations at the convention and in the campaign.” Then he turned to Liddy, who was looking for a place to put his pipe. “Why don’t you go ahead, Gordon?” Then a quick glance back at Mitchell. “If you’re ready, Mr. Mitchell.” Mitchell nodded his assent.

  This was the first time I had ever seen Mitchell and Magruder together, and it was obvious Jeb did not have the easy rapport I had with him. Part of his discomfort grew out of political reality. Haldeman, not Mitchell, had hired Magruder to be Mitchell’s deputy and run the day-to-day operations of the campaign. Mitchell, his influence wanin
g, could do nothing about it. Jeb was Haldeman’s man, or, more accurately, Larry Higby’s man, since Haldeman never proclaimed a very high estimation of Magruder. Higby had put Jeb where he was, and Jeb had to walk on eggs. About the only thing Mitchell and Magruder had in common was an antipathy for Chuck Colson. Initially Jeb had been so frightened of Mitchell that he had dealt with him through me for weeks after joining the Re-election Committee. Finally I had told him he must develop his own relationship with Mitchell, but I could see that Jeb was still uncomfortable.

  Gordon Liddy, on the other hand, went to his easel and began his speech with authority. He seemed to enjoy the stage, and his speech was remarkably free of the normal conversational “uhs” and nervous pauses. He began with a brisk description of his own qualifications for handling the job and followed with a recitation of the names of specialists he had consulted, with appropriate security precautions, in the course of constructing his plan. I wondered how he could possibly have done all this at a time he was swamped in legal work.

  Liddy explained that he had divided his program into components, which he would discuss individually before showing how it all fit together. This ended the preview. “If you have any questions, General, please interrupt and I’ll address them,” he told Mitchell with gallant deference, and then turned to his first chart.

  The first component dealt with Mitchell’s biggest worry, convention demonstrations. It had its own code name, Operation Diamond. Liddy told how he would set up intelligence liaison with the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA. Also, he would gather his own information by infiltrating antiwar groups with paid informants. All the incoming information would be professionally analyzed to determine which groups and which leaders posed the greatest potential for disruption.