“What can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?” I asked with a smirk.
“You want a drink?” he said, ignoring my sarcasm.
“No, it’s against the law to drink in federal buildings,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit,” he retorted as he got up to fix himself a Scotch. He flipped on the red-light switch and then zapped on his two televisions with his remote-control gadget. It was almost time for the evening network news.
“I’m getting a lot of heat out there about your investigation,” he said, shaking his head toward the Press Room. “They want to read your report. They want to know when it was finished and who you talked to. Tell me, how did you report to the President?”
“Ron, I didn’t.”
He nodded. “Well, can I say it’s an oral report?”
“Ron, there’s no report.”
“Well …” He paused. “Can I say there’s a report still in progress? Are you still working on it?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, I don’t think I can just keep saying it was an internal study,” he declared plaintively. “How should I handle it?”
“That’s what you get paid that high salary for. You know as much about this report as I do.” I left. Ehrlichman had long ago instructed me to tell Ziegler nothing, and I no longer feared retaliation from Ziegler for curt behavior. A touch of hubris had set in.
But there was a seed of doubt. Ziegler talked with me several times over the next week as he ducked, deflected and stonewalled a barrage of press inquiries about the “Dean investigation.” I began to have second thoughts about being publicly identified as the man who had established White House innocence on Watergate.
I raised the issue with Fielding. “Fred, let me ask you something. You know how this place operates. Do you think I’m being set up on this thing?”
“No,” he replied. A perplexed look came across his face. “What do you mean?” Fred had been kidding me about “getting on with” the Dean investigation, and ribbing me about my sudden notoriety. He knew I liked it.
“Well, I’m not sure I like being thrown out in front like this. If something goes wrong, I could be the fall guy.” I was thinking of Ehrlichman; I was certain that the President’s announcement had been his idea.
“I don’t think I’d worry about it, John,” Fred said seriously. “It’s just a PR move, like the death penalty statement.” He was referring to a previous press conference at which the President, when questioned on the Supreme Court’s death penalty decision, prefaced his answer by stating he had “just conferred with the counsel, Mr. Dean.” He had not, of course, conferred with me and he never did, but no harm had come from the remark. I took Fred’s advice and repressed my concern. I had no time for it, anyway.
The cover-up blistered on, with me throwing water on it. Each day brought threats, dramas and more legal strategies. Clandestine conversations with Kalmbach and LaRue about hush money. Nervous sessions with Pat Gray, during which he would hand me his personal attaché case filled with FBI reports. Conversations with Paul O’Brien and Kenneth W. Parkinson, the Re-election Committee lawyers who were fighting to stall discovery proceedings in a civil suit filed by Larry O’Brien. Constant messages between Mitchell and the White House. Crisis calls from Colson and Mardian. Coaching sessions for the witnesses being interviewed by FBI agents or paraded before the grand jury. Reports from Henry Petersen on the status of the criminal case.
In late August, when the press uncovered the source of the money used to pay for the break-in, and the Re-election Committee’s Finance Committee became the target of a long string of stories, its chairman, Maurice H. Stans, was named a principal defendant in O’Brien’s civil suit. Treasurer Hugh Sloan was under attack for having passed money to Liddy on Stans’s authority. Former general counsel Gordon Liddy was being painted as a wild man, a notion that was not discouraged by the White House. We wanted Liddy to sound like a man strange enough to have pulled Watergate off on his own. The strategy worked, but the cumulative effect of the critical stories on the Finance Committee created “human problems” among the aides and secretaries. The Finance Committee became tainted. People were ashamed to say they worked there. Many of them grew resentful of the protection given the political people at the Re-election Committee, such as Magruder. Finance Committee workers generally feel trampled upon in campaigns, anyway. They watch the political people spend their hard-earned cash like water, taking all the credit, always demanding more. We suspected that most of our adverse press leaks were coming from disgruntled Finance Committee employees.
The resentment boiled over when the President paid his first visit to the Re-election Committee offices. He gave a pep talk to the political employees, thanked them and predicted victory, and his magic presence lifted their spirits. He did not so much as visit the Finance Committee, whose offices were on a separate floor. Within minutes of his departure, I received an angry call from Arden Chambers, Maurice Stans’s secretary.
“John, a lot of people over here are outraged,” she told me. “And so am I. The President didn’t even wave at our door. He excluded us. And we’re the ones who are getting all the bad press for the stupid things those people upstairs have done. We’re the ones who do all the hard work, and they get all the credit. I think you ought to know a lot of people over here are very upset.”
“Arden, I understand perfectly. I know just how you feel.” I knew that nothing I could say would allay her anger. I told her I would see what I could do and apologized profusely.
It was time for some firefighting. I called Haldeman on the I.O. It could be explosive, I told him, if the finance people got mad enough to go public. They didn’t know many of the Watergate details, but they surely knew what was going on both by instinct and by osmosis. I recommended a Presidential “stroking session.” Haldeman agreed and told me to call Chapin and arrange a visit to the White House for Finance Committee employees. The President would meet them personally in the Roosevelt Room, shake hands, slap a few backs, renew their loyalty.
In the midst of this small crisis, and several others, the Justice Department announced the first Watergate indictments on September 15.* The fanfare was heavy; it had been preorchestrated. Kleindienst said the investigation was “one of the most intensive, objective, and thorough investigations in many years, reaching out to cities all across the United States as well as into foreign countries.” The Justice Department said, “We have absolutely no evidence to indicate that any others should be charged.” The new Re-election Committee chairman, Clark MacGregor, called on “those who have recklessly sought to connect others with the case” to “publicly apologize for their unfounded charges.” Senator Robert Dole, the Republican Party chairman, said the indictments proved “there is no evidence to substantiate any of the wild and slanderous statements McGovern has been making about many high officials in the Nixon Administration.” Congressman Gerald R. Ford, the House Republican leader, said the indictments reinforced his “understanding that none of the people in the White House, in positions of leadership in the party or [in] the Committee to Re-elect the President were involved.”
I was pleased as I scanned the wire-service reports coming off the ticker machines down the hall from my office. They would be in every paper in the country by the next day, drowning out Larry O’Brien’s reported complaint that the investigation had not gone far enough. Phase one of the cover-up was a success. The doors that led to Magruder, Mitchell and many others were closed, at least for the present. I went back to my office, where Jane greeted me with a startling message.
“The President wants to see you,” she said. “Right now. In the Oval Office.”
My stroking session, I figured, and a well-deserved one. As I headed toward the West Wing, I thought of my previous meetings with the President, in which I had been little more than an inert fixture as he signed his tax return, testamentary papers for his estate plan or other legal documents. I used to joke that I was of far less concern to the President tha
n the little bust of Lincoln he kept on his bookshelf. Other than for legal ceremonies, my contacts with the President had been fleeting and few. The only one I could remember during the previous year had been odd. An urgent call had summoned me to the Oval Office. I arrived, panting, and was ushered in. “John,” said the President, “a bunch of long-haired college newspaper editors are coming in here in a minute. You and I will be discussing the budget.” Aides were busy spreading budget documents out on his desk as the President fidgeted with his watch. I sat in silent bewilderment, I knew absolutely nothing about the budget.
“Oh, hi,” said the President in surprise when the editors filed in. “John Dean, my counsel, and I were just discussing the budget.” Then he gave a ten-minute performance on budget priorities and the complexities of government. The editors were ushered out, and so was I.
Later I talked to Haldeman. “Bob, why was I in that meeting?” I asked.
“Because the President thinks you look hippie,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“You’re shitting me!” I said, but I remembered the jokes about my Porsche and my refusal to wear an American-flag lapel pin when everyone else had eagerly followed the President’s lead.
“No, I’m not,” said Haldeman.
But after the Watergate indictments I was expecting to be treated with more dignity. A pat on the back, staged carefully to seem informal. Still, I wasn’t sure. For all I knew, the President might have some garden club in his office.
I was not prepared for what I found. Haldeman was slumped in a chair in front of the President’s desk, his yellow pad dangling from his hand rather than poised as usual for note taking. The President was reclining in his swivel chair at what seemed a precarious angle, his feet propped up on his desk to leave the Presidential heel marks. From his nearly supine position, the President looked at me through the V his shoes formed. I paused at the door, feeling like an intruder, and waited for Haldeman and the President to snap back into form. But they didn’t, and I walked hesitantly to a chair. I wouldn’t have been much more surprised by the atmosphere if the two of them had been wearing dresses. I was flattered to be so collegially received.
“Well, you had quite a day today, didn’t you?” the President said cordially, still glancing at me through his feet. “You got Watergate on the way, huh?”
“Quite a three months,” I responded, thinking back over the scramble. An awkward silent moment followed, because I didn’t know what to add.
Haldeman, noting my uneasiness, rescued me. “How did it all end up?” he began.
“I think we can say …” What can I say? I wondered. What should I say? I thought of the wire-service stories I had just read. “Well, at this point, the press is playing it just as we expected.”
“Whitewash?” Bob asked, suspecting the worst.
“No, not yet. The story right now—”
“It’s a big story,” the President interrupted. He swung his feet to the ground and brought his chair to its upright position. He had become intent and sounded optimistic. It was important to the cover-up strategy that the press play up Hunt and Liddy as big catches.
“That’s good,” said Bob, satisfied that the media were running the story as we wanted. “That, that takes the edge off whitewash really … which … That was the thing Mitchell kept saying, that to those in the country Liddy and, and, uh, Hunt are big men.”
“That’s right,” I agreed.
“Yeah. They’re White House aides,” said the President.
“That’s right,” I agreed again.
The President seemed pleased. He sensed his reelection firmly within his grasp, and he initiated a bull session, opening it with the use of wiretaps by his predecessors. He was toying with the idea that a juicy revelation of political wiretapping by a Democratic President might further bury Watergate, I thought. He and Haldeman discussed whether to use information we had that President Johnson had ordered the Republican campaign tapped in 1968. “The difficulty with using it, of course, is that it reflects on Johnson,” said the President.
“Right,” I agreed, trying to sound tough and knowledgeable about such matters. I was busy studying the tone and the mood of the President.
“He ordered it,” the President continued. “If it weren’t for that, I’d use it. Is there any way we could use it without reflecting on Johnson? Now, could we say, could we say that the Democratic National Committee did it? No. The FBI did the bugging, though.”
“That’s the problem,” said Haldeman.
“Is it going to reflect on Johnson or Humphrey?” I asked in an attempt to offer an acute question. Since Johnson was retired, I thought, maybe the bugging would reflect on his Vice-President, who was still quite active.
“Johnson,” said Haldeman emphatically. “Humphrey wouldn’t do it.” He intended it derisively.
“Humphrey didn’t do it?” I asked.
“Oh, hell, no,” said the President quickly.
“He was bugging Humphrey too,” cracked Haldeman, breaking into peals of laughter. Bob liked dark humor; the idea of crafty old LBJ bugging his own Vice-President set him off.
“Oh, goddam,” chuckled the President. I tried to join in the laughter, too, but I was embarrassed at having been so naïve about Humphrey. It was clear the Senator was considered a babe in these woods.
I dropped out of the bugging discussion as the President told Haldeman to seek John Connally’s advice as to how President Johnson, his fellow Texan, might react. Then he asked Haldeman if the revelation would also tarnish the image of the FBI. Haldeman said it would, and a brief discussion followed on the dangers of insulting the Bureau. Finally the President dropped the idea. “It isn’t worth it, dammit,” he said. “It isn’t worth—the hell with it.”
The rap session turned to other subjects. I reported on the status of the civil suit Larry O’Brien had filed against Maurice Stans and the Re-election Committee. The case looked under control, I said. It had been assigned to Judge Charles Richey, a Nixon appointee, who was sending encouraging signals through our contacts. The judge, I reported, had been so accommodating as to urge Stans to file a counter-suit against O’Brien for libel. Stans had done so.
Alexander Butterfield, the President’s executive-office manager, interrupted to tell the President he had a call waiting from Clark MacGregor. The President got on the phone and joked with MacGregor a bit before telling him to get on with the “big game,” the campaign, now that Watergate was contained with the indictments. Haldeman and I twiddled silently while he was on the phone. I looked out the window at the dusk. This has already been a long audience, I thought. I noticed a greenish light reflected through the windows of the Oval Office and realized it was the effect of the special Secret Service bullet-proofing.
My attention snapped back when I heard the President sign off with MacGregor: “… Anyway, get a good night’s sleep. And don’t bug anybody without asking me. Okay?” He hung up with a laugh. When he had finished signing several papers Butterfield had placed before him, he turned to me but said nothing, apparently waiting for me to say something.
I figured the meeting must be about over, so I tried to wrap it up. “Three months ago, I would have had trouble predicting where we’d be today. I think that I can say that fifty-four days from now [Election Day] nothing will come crashing down to our surprise.” A pause.
“Say what?” mumbled the President, as if coming out of a dream. I realized that his mind had been off somewhere even though he had been looking directly at me. I repeated myself.
The President’s concentration returned. He leaned back in his chair, said a few words, and propped his feet up on the desk again. To my surprise, the bull session resumed. “Awfully embarrassing,” the President continued, shaking his head. “And, uh, but the way you, you’ve handled it, it seems to me, has been skillful, because you—putting your finger in the dikes every time that leaks have sprung here and sprung there.” Haldeman had clearly filled him in on how busy I’d been.
He knew I would relish such praise from the President.
We rambled on about the remaining trouble spots, including the bruised egos over at the Finance Committee, and the proposed “stroking session.” Suddenly, the President’s mood darkened. He sat up again and set his jaw tightly. “They should just behave, and recognize this, this is, this is war!” His voice was low, but anger spilled out. “We’re getting a few shots,” he continued. “It’ll be over. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side right now. Would you? I wouldn’t want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ position after this election.”
“No, no,” I agreed. Williams was representing Larry O’Brien in his lawsuit.
“None of these bastards …” the President said, trailing off into a vague but bitter passion.
“He, uh, he’s done some rather unethical things that have come to light already,” I said, trying to pick up on the President’s new mood.
“Keep a log on all that,” Haldeman said tersely. The hostile side of his personality fit the President’s like a glove.
“Oh, we are,” I agreed, hesitating, “on these. Yeah.”
“Because afterwards that is a guy …” said Haldeman.
“We’re going after him,” the President overlapped.
“… that is a guy we’ve got to ruin,” said Haldeman.
The President’s brooding anger caught me off guard. It was a Richard Nixon I had seen in the action memos that reached my desk, but that I had never heard personally. I tried to curry favor with him by joining in with the tenor of the conversation. “One of the things I’ve tried to do,” I said, “is just keep notes on lots of people who are emerging as less than our friends.” I figured he would like that—even though my notes were only mental.
“Great,” he said.
“Because,” I went on, repeating what he had just said, “this is going to be over someday and there is going to be—we shouldn’t forget the way some of them have treated us.”
The President leaned forward and gazed at me intently. “I want the most, I want the most comprehensive notes on all those who have tried to do us in,” he instructed firmly. He punctuated his phrases by pointing his finger in the air. “Because they didn’t have to do it.”
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