“I understand, Gordon.” I had heard enough. “But what about Hunt?”
“Well, Howard Hunt. He was the guy who got me the Cubans.”
“You mean the ones who were arrested?”
“That’s right. He knew those guys, and he got them for me.”
“I see. Well, how about the people in the White House? Is anybody in any way connected with this? I’ve got to know that, Gordon.”
“I don’t think so. The only person who might have known about it is Gordon Strachan.”
I turned away from Liddy for a moment to absorb Strachan’s name. This was the worst blow since Magruder’s call. I felt queasy. I really didn’t want to know more, because I had to assume that if Strachan knew, Haldeman knew. And if Haldeman knew, the President knew. It made sickening sense. Now I understood why Strachan had called earlier.
Liddy interrupted the silence. “John, I’m worried about the men who were arrested. We’ve got to get them out of jail. They need bonds and lawyers. We can’t let them sit there in the D.C. jail. It’s a hellhole.”
“Well, look, Gordon,” I said, fishing for a clear thought. I wanted to end the conversation. “I can’t do anything about that. And I think you can understand why I can’t do anything about that.”
He stopped for an instant, his eyes narrowing in thought. “Well, that’s right. I can understand.”
I saw more and more people on the street out of the corner of my eye. “Ah, Gordon, I think I’d better be heading back to my office now, and, ah, I—I really think this is the last conversation we’ll ever have until this whole thing is resolved.” I was now more flustered than Liddy, who seemed to feel better after unburdening himself.
“I understand that perfectly, John,” he said, straightening himself up. “I’ll walk on the other side of the street. That’s probably best. But before I go over there, I want you to know one thing, John. This is my fault. I’m prepared to accept responsibility for it. And if somebody wants to shoot me …” My head shot around. His eyes were fixed and hard, his face full of emotion, his words coming out in bursts. “… on a street corner, I’m prepared to have that done. You just let me know when and where, and I’ll be there.” He ended with a gesture of finality.
“Well, ah, Gordon,” I said tightly, flashing back to his burned hand and to Mafia movies, struggling for the strength to calm him again, “I don’t think we’re really there!”
“Oh, no, no,” he said, holding up his hands to hush me. “Look, John, I’m not going to talk about what’s gone on. None of these men will talk, you can be assured of that. They’re all soldiers. But we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay,” I said softly.
We turned and headed back up the street. I was looking at my shoes.
“John, I’ll tell you one thing,” Liddy said quietly. “Since you’ve got the responsibility in the White House to find out what’s going on, one thing you ought to do is get the 302s from the FBI.” He was giving me advice, completely recovered. The drama of the previous moment had already blown away on the breeze.
“What’s a 302?” I asked, relieved to return to dull information.
“Well, I’m an FBI man. I know how investigations operate. I used to be a prosecutor up in Dutchess County. What the agents pick up on those raw files will tell you how the investigation is proceeding. Those are the 302s. And the other thing you need is the AirTels. Those are the orders to the agents. They tell the agents whom to interview and what to ask. If you have those, you’ll know what’s going on.”
I responded to his mood rather than to his advice. “Well, Gordon, I’m sorry this whole thing happened.” It was the best leavetaking I could think of. “It sure is a mess now.”
He didn’t say anything, easing away from me with a look of both sadness and determination. I watched him cross Seventeenth Street and break into a brisk walk, and then I went back into the EOB.
I had to get something into my stomach, having fasted since Manila with no good result. I thought of the White House mess and was repelled by the thought of both the cuisine and the company. I wanted to be alone. Soup, I thought, was the answer. I bought a Styrofoam cup full of hot vegetable soup and went to my desk.
I was carefully drinking the soup when I looked up and saw Gordon Strachan at the door. His neck was flushed bright red down to his collar. The splotches stood out in relief against his fair skin and blondish hair. Gordon always looked like a fresh Scandinavian youth; on this day he was a troubled one.
“Have a seat, Gordon,” I said uneasily. But he stood.
“John, I just wanted to talk to you about a couple of things. Sorry to drop in like this. I wanted to let you know I had a call from Haldeman. And I’ve destroyed all the documents in our files relating to that operation over there at the Committee.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I think there are wiretap logs we received, I’m not sure. And there’s a message there, notes I made, of instructions from Bob to tell Liddy to change his operation from Muskie to McGovern.”
I didn’t say anything. Strachan continued. “Now, John, Bob’s files are clean. I’ve gone through everything. I’ve gone through all the political-matters memos, and I’ve taken out everything sensitive and shredded it. Some talking papers and budget stuff. I don’t think there are any problems in there now.”
I shoved my soup away and stared. “Well, Gordon, that’s pretty heavy.”
“I know it is,” he sighed.
I sensed he wanted to talk some more, get things off his chest, but I didn’t. I cut him short and he left.
Hugh Sloan called. He was upset. As treasurer of the Re-election Committee, he had passed large bundles of cash to Liddy. I asked whether he knew what the money was for, and he said no, but he was worried about a Campaign Act violation for not having reported the expenditure. He was worried about whether fingerprints could be detected on hundred-dollar bills. I told him a campaign violation was minor, there were far larger things at stake. Using my standard line about having just gotten back to the country, being under pressure, etc., I got him off the phone. He was not satisfied.
I told Jane not to take any more calls. I wanted to concentrate on what I would tell Ehrlichman shortly in my report. Fielding came in and out of my office on routine business. He was a blur. I didn’t see him. What I was seeing was Jack Caulfield again, several months earlier, whispering to me with conspiratorial delight a story—which Bud Krogh had confirmed—about how Gordon Liddy and some other people had broken into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Los Angeles, on a “mission” for Krogh and Ehrlichman: “… They didn’t get anything, and tore the place up.… It was a bust. But they got away clean.” It was not so clean now. This guy Liddy is a real beggar’s crossroads, I thought. He leads to disaster in all directions. Through Magruder up to Mitchell; through Strachan up to Haldeman and the President; through Krogh up to Ehrlichman and the President. I felt way over my head.
I walked over to Ehrlichman’s office and found him in his white shirtsleeves, with a note pad before him. He offered me a chair next to his desk and motioned me to get on with the report. He was writing, but I couldn’t tell, as usual, whether he was taking notes or doodling. As I recounted my interviews, he was at his unflinching best. I piled up the gory details, receiving only a few raised eyebrows and several uh-huhs. He mustered a drawled “That’s interesting” upon hearing of Liddy’s offer to be shot on the street.
His interest picked up a bit when I blurted an account of the two meetings I had attended in Mitchell’s office on the Liddy plan. Ehrlichman was the only person I could turn to for counsel, but it was only the news of Mitchell’s involvement that made him perk up. Here was some leverage over his nearly vanquished rival. Maybe Mitchell could be made to carry some water for the White House on this break-in.
As much as I wanted to tell Ehrlichman everything I knew, I did not tell him about my conversation with Strachan or Liddy’s remarks about Strachan.
The implications were so gruesome that I believed he should hear those facts from Haldeman or the President. I thought I had already crossed the boundaries of what I should know. At the end of the Liddy tale, I wanted to broach the Ellsberg break-in. It was already on the White House grapevine, a possible threat. I knew I ought to raise the matter with Ehrlichman directly, but I could only bring myself to do so obliquely.
“By the way, John, it looks like the Watergate thing is not the only potential problem we might have at the White House from Liddy. There’s also the thing out in California.”
Ehrlichman’s mouth pursed in a tight circle, his lower lip protruding. I took this as a sign of surprise that I would know of the Ellsberg break-in. He said nothing and looked out over his glasses. I noted his lack of denial and wondered what bells might be sounding off, what strategies were forming behind the impassive eyes.
“I talked to Chuck,” I said, anxious to move on. “He swears his innocence. He says Hunt is a figure from his distant past.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“I don’t know whether he mentioned this to you, John, but he wants to meet with the two of us later this afternoon. It sounded urgent.”
“Okay. Why don’t the two of you come back about four-thirty? I’ve got to send my Care package off to Florida.”
I went back to my office, called Colson about the meeting, and took care of some routine business. Magruder stuck his head in the door once while I was on the phone, waved, and ran off. He was making the rounds. I called Fielding in and asked him about Hunt’s employment records. He reported a hopeless tangle in the personnel office. Clerks were still sorting papers, but the gist of the confusion thus far was doubt that Hunt had ever gone off the payroll. I took this information back to Ehrlichman’s office, where I found Colson in a state of vigorously renewed ignorance about Hunt.
Ehrlichman listened to Colson for a while and then knitted his brow mischievously. “Well, where is Mr. Hunt?” he queried with heavy sarcasm.
“I don’t have the foggiest notion where he is,” Chuck shot back.
“Do you know where Mr. Hunt is?” Ehrlichman asked, turning to me.
“Of course not. I don’t have any idea where he is.”
He paused and thought heavily. “Well, don’t you think Mr. Liddy might talk to him about getting out of the country? Don’t you think that would be a good idea?”
Silence.
“Why don’t you call Liddy and tell him to pass that message to Mr. Hunt?” he asked, looking at me. Such questions, from Ehrlichman, were commands. He seldom gave orders any other way. So I went to the phone in Ehrlichman’s office while the two of them continued their conversation.
“Gordon,” I said after fumbling with the phone long enough to reach him, “I have a request that Howard Hunt ought to be out of the country.”
“Yes, sir,” Liddy snapped. “I understand. That’ll be passed on immediately.”
I rejoined the meeting, but second thoughts quickly began to plague me again. That order would come back to haunt us, I thought.
“You know, I don’t think that was a very smart thing we just did,” I said. “Because this guy is obviously a part of—of what all’s happened. I don’t know what all the details are yet, and you don’t know, but he’s gonna be questioned.”
Chuck agreed. Second thoughts are contagious.
“Yeah, I guess it was a bad idea,” said Ehrlichman. “Why don’t you call back and retract that suggestion?”
Back to the phone. “Gordon, what I just said about Hunt. Retract that.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“What do you mean?”
“The order’s already been passed.”
“Well, do your best.”
“Right. I’ll do my best.”
Debate resumed on Hunt’s status at the White House. Colson was voluble.
“I’ve heard all that,” I said, “but it’s not clear at all from the personnel records, Chuck. Fielding’s been down there, and it looks like he’s still on the payroll, for God’s sake!”
“He can’t be!” said Chuck. “He’s not been working for me for months!”
Ehrlichman finally waded into the conversation. “I’ll resolve this. Let’s bring Kehrli [the staff secretary] up here with all the records.”
“Well, let’s bring Clawson up here, too,” said Colson. Ken W. Clawson was the deputy White House director of communications. “He tells me some reporters are on to the Hunt business. They’re bugging him about what Hunt did at the White House, and he doesn’t know what to tell them.”
“Okay,” said Ehrlichman.
“While they’re coming over,” said Colson, with a forced nonchalance, “I want to tell you something else, uh, that we should take care of. And that is that apparently Howard Hunt had a safe here in the White House up in his office.”
Ehrlichman became more animated than I’d seen him all day. He leaned forward. “You mean to tell me he even has an office here?” His voice rose in bewilderment. He was clearly enjoying demonstrating his ignorance of Hunt’s activities as superior to Colson’s. Ehrlichman’s shock was so well performed I almost laughed to release tension.
Chuck was exasperated. “We just never shut down that office,” he explained hopelessly. “No one ever paid any attention to it. It was good office space—I’m surprised our people didn’t move in on it.”
A little more jousting on this point, and then the conversation focused on the question of how to get into Hunt’s safe.
Bruce Kehrli came in, glanced at the assembled faces and drew a deep breath. He was carrying a bunch of file folders.
“Well,” asked Ehrlichman, “what is the status of Mr. Hunt?”
Kehrli was befuddled. He didn’t know what to say. He mumbled personnel-office jargon during several intricate sentences, and then managed to conclude that the picture was unclear.
Chuck looked straight at him. “Hunt was off my payroll.”
“Okay,” said Kehrli.
“I guess,” Ehrlichman said, “if Chuck says he is off the payroll, he’s off the payroll.”
One decision made. Kehrli made a note on his pad, and Clawson entered.
Ehrlichman asked Kehrli to wait while Clawson’s press problem was addressed. It was generally agreed to stress the classified nature of Hunt’s activities to forestall further inquiry. He had worked on “declassification” projects involving sensitive materials and on “drug intelligence matters.” Clawson went off to enlighten the reporters on this point, and to add that Hunt had worked only sporadically at the White House. His work had terminated at some time in the past; old records were being dusted off to determine exactly when.
As soon as Clawson had departed, Ehrlichman addressed Kehrli. “Listen, Bruce, we understand there’s a safe in Hunt’s office. How can you get into that safe to find out what’s in it?”
“We have a procedure where we can have the GSA [General Services Administration] open those safes,” Kehrli replied.
“Well, why don’t you get that safe opened?” asked Ehrlichman.
“Dean should take possession of the contents,” Chuck chimed in quickly.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Ehrlichman said, and added, “and Dean should be present when the safe is opened.”
“Okay,” said Kehrli, turning to me. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
I hurried back to my office. This is just like the Town House records, I thought. Give the hot stuff to the counsel’s office. Double protection—executive privilege and the attorney-client relationship. But I felt no resentment at the notion of having it dumped on me. I was rather curious, in fact, about what Hunt had in his safe.
Jane handed me a note when I walked in the door: “Meeting. Six P.M. Mitchell’s Watergate apartment.” “You’re pretty busy today,” she quipped.
Indeed I was. I had dealt with John Mitchell for more than three years as a trusted subordinate, but I had never been invited to his apartment.
Swelling with my sudden new intimacy, I rushed off to the Watergate apartment building. It was next door to the Watergate office building, which we would soon dub the “scene of the crime.”
Fred LaRue greeted me at the door, wearing his normal warm smile. He was a younger, thinner-looking copy of John Mitchell, which made some sort of poetic sense, because LaRue served as Mitchell’s alter ego. A millionaire oil man from Mississippi, he had been serving in the Administration out of curiosity mingled with a sincere desire to be of help. He had no ambitions that I could discern, nor any enemies. LaRue had begun as a dollar-a-year consultant at the White House and had taken a pay cut to join Mitchell at the Re-election Committee. At the endless government meetings, Fred would melt invisibly into the back of the room and smoke his pipe. He held no title. The standard interpretation was that his full-time job was to be Mitchell’s friend—a vital service, since Mitchell had little use for the senior officials around him.
Fred led me to the den on the second floor of Mitchell’s elegant apartment, where Magruder, Mardian and Mitchell were already in a discussion. Mitchell rose to greet me.
“Thanks for dropping by,” he said warmly, with a handshake. “How about a drink?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a little stomach problem from Manila, and I’m on the wagon.” I cast a desperate, longing glance at their drinks and made a useless effort to recall when I had needed one more. But I wanted to have my wits about me in case the meeting introduced some new disaster. I was shellshocked and nervous.
Within a minute or so, Magruder said he had to leave. He looked remarkably chipper, as if his earlier ashen fear had been only a dream. “Well, I guess I’ll leave this crisis to you gentlemen,” he said. “I’m almost late.” He came over to me and whispered his secret. “I’ve got a tennis date, John. Guess who?”
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