Blind Ambition

by Dean, John W. ;

  The President called shortly after I arrived. He wanted to meet with Dick Moore* and me about a letter we were preparing to send to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was a miniature version of the Dean Report: we hoped to answer some of the questions Pat Gray had raised about my role in the Watergate investigation. I had struggled to write the letter in such a way that it would not raise more questions.

  As Moore walked back to my office with me for a postmortem, I was thinking that the current draft placed me very close to perjury, and this awareness didn’t help my mood. Moore tried to cheer me up.

  “John, you’re meeting an awful lot with the President these days, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Well, you know, this is pretty historic stuff. You’re in there with the President himself. Have you ever thought about taking notes on those meetings? You might be glad someday.”

  I looked at him coldly. “Dick, frankly I wouldn’t even want to write down what’s going on in there right now.”

  Moore looked startled at the idea that anything transpiring in the Oval Office wouldn’t wear golden wings in history. I noticed the discomfort my remark caused him and decided to let him know why I was so morose. Moore had recently come into the hush-money business as an extra White House courier to Mitchell.

  “Look, Dick, things have gotten pretty bad the last few days,” I said. “Hunt sent a message to me yesterday that he’s going to blow it if he doesn’t get a hundred twenty thousand dollars by tomorrow. He sent it to me personally. And he said he’s going to shit all over Ehrlichman too. Said he’d have seamy things to say about what he did for Ehrlichman in the White House.”

  “You mean like the Ellsberg thing?”

  “Yeah, like the Ellsberg thing,” I replied, surprised. “How’d you know about that?”

  “Oh, I picked it up around here.”

  “Well, he could blow that and a lot of other things. Pretty picture, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It’s extortion. That’s what it is,” Moore said, shaking his head.

  “I know, and I’m fed up with it. It keeps going on and on, and someday it’s going to blow. People are going to keep committing perjury. More and more people know about it. The money payments are chewing people up. It just keeps growing and growing. You know it’s bad, and I’m telling you it’s even worse than you know. Bigger and bigger.” I was gushing.

  The white-haired Moore looked kind and grandfatherly. He shook his head slowly, sadly. “It’s like some sort of tumor, I guess. It’s like a cancer.”

  “That’s right,” I said, struck by the image. “And the President’s got to do something to sever it. I tell you, I think he’s being ill-served by his aides. All of us. It can’t go on like this.”

  Moore and I agreed we would have to think harder about how to extricate the President. Then he left. I sat down at my desk, freshly aware of how much bigger the stakes were than I felt equipped to handle. Hunt’s demands kept rearing up in my mind, and I decided I couldn’t simply sit on them. I would have to pass the message along to Ehrlichman at least.

  I went over to his office and found him on his way to the Oval Office. He was in a hurry. We stood in the middle of his office, and I told him about my meeting with O’Brien. The demands coming straight at me. The implied threat to Krogh. The direct threat to him.

  “That’s interesting,” he replied simply, heading for the door.

  I followed him, once more amazed by his composure, worried that he could see how totally I’d lost mine. But I didn’t really care. “Well, John, what are you going to do?” I asked as we walked down the West Wing stairs.

  He turned to look at me over his glasses. “Have you raised this little sugarplum with Mitchell yet?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “How about Chuck? He’s supposed to be holding Mr. Hunt’s hand these days. What does he say?”

  “I don’t know. O’Brien told me Hunt was sending the same message to Chuck, but I don’t think there’s a damn thing he can do.”

  “Well, why don’t you have a little chat with Mitchell? And get back to me, okay?”

  Ehrlichman turned down the hall toward the President’s office. I stopped. This man is made of iron, I thought. I was envious, then furious. I watched him stride down the hall, and then I headed toward the EOB.

  I reached Mitchell at his New York apartment. “John, have you heard about our latest demand?” I asked, to make sure O’Brien or LaRue had filled him in.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard,” Mitchell sighed.

  I heard a noise on the line. My paranoia rose further. LaRue had warned me to take extreme care in speaking with Mitchell at home, because Martha had a habit of listening in on the extension. She might call the press. “Well, ah, John,” I said, “can I report any progress? Is the Greek bearing gifts?” I was referring to Tom Pappas.

  “I can’t talk about it now,” said Mitchell. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Click. I stared at the phone. Same old back-and-forth. I was determined not to get back into it. Sure, I said to myself, but that’s what you said yesterday.

  Bud Krogh walked in. He was the Undersecretary of Transportation, newly confirmed by the Senate, and he looked the part. He had a wardrobe full of new suits, and he had lost a great deal of weight from a vigorous jogging program. He sat down and began commiserating with me over all the bad press I was getting from the Gray hearings. He was trying to cheer me up, being very solicitous of my feelings.

  “It’s a lot worse than the Gray hearings, Bud,” I told him after we had talked awhile. “That’s peanuts. And while you’re here, I think I should tell you that you might be in jeopardy yourself. Hang on. This is rough. Howard Hunt’s blackmailing us, Bud. He’s holding us up for everything we’ve got, and then some. And his latest threat is that he’s going to blow the Ellsberg thing on Ehrlichman. If he does, I don’t see how you could get out of that. I’m sorry to lay that on you, but I thought you should know. This whole goddam mess is at the breaking point.”

  Bud got up and walked over to my window. It was dark outside. He looked out for a couple of minutes and turned back to me. He looked more resigned, and less resistant, than I had expected. “What are the chances Hunt’s going to talk?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. The whole thing’s up in the air right now, and I don’t really want to get into that. But you’ve got to understand something else. If there’s an investigator who’s worth his salt up on the Ervin Committee, there are going to be some rough problems.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, during the Watergate trial the Justice Department got a file on Hunt and Liddy from the CIA. And the file included some pictures, and they’re incredible pictures, Bud. Some of the goddam pictures are of Liddy standing out in front of this Dr. Fielding’s office in California. He’s standing there proud as a rooster. And any investigator who sees that picture is going to want to know what’s happening. And he’s going to plow right in and find out that Dr. Fielding is connected to Ellsberg and that there was a break-in at his office. Ehrlichman’s been trying to have me get those documents back from Justice and over to CIA so no one will run into them. But the CIA’s not about to take them. Those guys are playing this pretty damn smart, and they don’t want that stuff. And Henry Petersen can’t do anything with them, either, because he’s got this letter from Mansfield* telling him to hold on to all the stuff. That’s another way the whole thing could unravel. And there are more. A lot of people seem to know about it.”

  Bud looked at me stoically. “Listen, John, if the damn thing’s going to come out, it’s going to come out.” Bud had been a tough cookie at the White House; now he looked like Sir Thomas More facing the executioners bravely. “I’ll tell you something. I haven’t really had a good day since I went over there to Transportation. I’m troubled by my confirmation hearings up in the Senate. I think I may have crossed the line up there. I tell you, I thought about saying this was all national-security stuff, but
I decided just to sort of dodge it. I don’t even like to read back over my testimony.”

  He’s worried about perjury, too, I thought. I decided to get him off the subject. “How strong is Hunt’s hand on this, Bud? Did John approve this Ellsberg thing?”

  “No,” he answered. “I don’t think John knew much about it.”

  His reply caught me off guard. I suspected Bud might be trying to protect Ehrlichman, his mentor, and then I worried that Hunt might know even more “seamy things” about Ehrlichman. “Well, how in the hell did it happen, then?”

  Bud glanced over toward the West Wing. “That one came right out of the Oval Office, John,” he said gravely.

  “You’re kidding,” I said, sinking back in my chair. There was a pause.

  “Goddammit, I hope this thing never comes out,” said Bud. “But if it does, I’m ready for it. I’ve talked to my wife about this whole thing, and we’re together. If the curtain comes down, I’ll just have to stand up. I tell you, I’m not eager for it, but sometimes I’d just as soon get it over with.”

  “I’ve been feeling that way, too,” I said. “If this thing isn’t put to rest soon, the President’s going to have some big problems. I don’t think we’ve advised him very well on this whole mess.”

  Bud and I rambled on and then parted as if we were leaving someone’s death bed. Fielding came in as I was leaving the office, and I gave him my pitch about how the cover-up was coming to a head. He seemed taken aback, as much by my attitude as by my words.

  As I walked in the door of my house the phone rang. Pete Kinsey, one of my staff lawyers, who was over for dinner, answered it. “John! It’s the President!” he said, between a whisper and a shout. He almost dropped the telephone.

  It was the first time the President had ever called me at home. As I went to take the call I motioned to Mo to bring me a drink.

  “You are having rather long days these days, aren’t you?” he asked, almost tenderly. “I guess we all are.”

  “I think they will continue to be longer,” I replied, surprised that I didn’t snap to my usual optimism for his benefit. My mind was sprinting ahead, trying to figure out why the President was calling me. Then, when he launched into a sales pitch on the Dean Report, I knew. Ehrlichman had gotten to him and charged him up about the report again. He’d probably also told Nixon that I seemed shaky. That would make sense. I had revealed my fears to a lot of people that day; such news would travel fast. This was a stroking call, mixed with a little pressure on the report.

  As the President talked, I assembled the strands of my courage and asked him for a private meeting, the first time I had done so. “I would think, if it’s not inconvenient for you, sir, I would like to sort of draw all my thoughts together and have a, just make some notes to myself so I didn’t—”

  “Could you do it tomorrow?” the President interrupted.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I had wanted more time to prepare, but I would take what I could. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then, we could probably do it, say, around ten o’clock.”

  “That would be fine, sir.”

  I had gulped down my drink by the end of the phone call, and I kept up the pace afterward. I avoided Watergate conversation all evening, until Mo and I were going to bed. Then I told her I was going to lay it all out for the President the next day. And I also said that my fears about going to jail were real and growing, but she dismissed the idea and I didn’t press it.

  The next morning I called Haldeman and told him what I was about to do: I was going to tell the President that the Dean Report was a bad idea, and I was going to tell him that the cover-up couldn’t go on. To my surprise, Haldeman didn’t protest at all. He wished me well.

  As I was composing my thoughts for the meeting, Fred LaRue walked in. He sat down in the chair in front of me without taking his coat off. “John, what are you going to do about the message Hunt sent?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Fred.”

  “Well, what do you think I ought to do?”

  “I think you ought to get your directions from Mitchell on that.”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  I was far more nervous than I had been that first time I’d met the President at San Clemente, nearly three years ago. It seemed like a very long walk from my office to the Oval Office. I sat in the waiting room as Ehrlichman met with the President. I went in as he came out. Ehrlichman had left a chair directly in front of the President’s desk, on the blue rug. I sat down in it instead of in my usual chair off to the side.

  The President seemed in remarkably good spirits. We exchanged pleasantries and comments on the morning’s news. I sat up on the edge of my chair. The President put his elbows on the arms of his chair and clasped his hands together, resting his chin on his fingers. He looked at me intently, studying me. I felt like an actor on stage for a big performance, with a bad case of butterflies.

  “Uh, the reason I thought we ought to talk this morning,” I began, “is because in our conversations, uh, I have the impression that you don’t know everything I know.” This opening was partly true and partly false. Like a good staff man, I wanted to give the President “deniability,” just as I had been indoctrinated to do since my first day in the White House, even though most of what I was telling him now was not new. Also, I wanted to give him room to respond with shock and drastic action.

  “That’s right,” said the President.

  I warmed up to my first blast to grab his attention; I had settled on Moore’s “cancer” metaphor. “I think there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got,” I said. “We have a cancer within—close to the Presidency—that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding. It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself. Uh, that’ll be clear as I explain, you know, some of the details of why it is. And it basically is because: one, we’re being blackmailed; two, people are going to start perjuring themselves … to protect other people and the like.” I had my hands out in front of me, ticking these vulnerabilities off on my fingers. Then I stopped. “And that is just … And there is no assurance …” I hesitated.

  “That it won’t bust,” the President concluded for me.

  “That it won’t bust.”

  “True,” said the President, nodding, his chin still resting on his hands.

  “So let me give you some of the basic facts,” I continued, and I began a long narrative on the origins of the break-in. I wanted to make absolutely certain he knew what I was building on, because he so often forgot from one day to the next what I had told him. My worries on this point diminished as I went along. The President was with me. I could almost feel his concentration. Each question he asked was acute, and he didn’t ask many. Most of his interruptions had to do with Haldeman’s vulnerability for the events before the break-in, which was understandable. Haldeman was so close to the President that his vulnerability was nearly indistinguishable from the President’s own. I picked up the pace of the story, encouraged by the President’s state of mind, and ran on to the day of the arrests.

  “Now …” I drew a deep sigh. “What has happened post–June seventeenth? Well, I was under pretty clear instructions …” I succumbed to a short, nervous laugh. I was about to tell the President that the “Dean investigation” was a lie, which he knew, but it wasn’t easy to say “… uh, not to really investigate this. That this was something that just could have been disastrous on the election if it had—all hell had broken loose. And I worked on a theory of containment.”

  “Sure,” the President said.

  “To try to hold it right where it was.” I was seeking his approval, and I got it.

  “Right.”

  “There is no doubt, I, uh, that I was totally aware of what the Bureau was doing at all times. I was totally aware of what the grand jury was doing—”

  “You mean …”

  “I knew what witnesses were going to be called. I knew what they were go
ing to be asked, and I had to. There just—”

  “Why did Petersen play the game so straight with us?” asked the President suddenly. He had dropped his hands from his chin and was looking at me with genuine curiosity.

  “Because Petersen is a soldier,” I replied. “He kept me informed. He told me when we had problems, where we had problems, and the like. He believes in—in you. He believes in this Administration. This Administration had made him. I don’t think he’s done anything improper, but he did make sure the investigation was narrowed down to the very, very …”

  “Right,” the President overlapped, nodding.

  “… fine …”

  “Right.”

  “… criminal things, which was a break for us. There is no doubt about it.”

  “He honestly feels that he did an adequate job?” the President asked incredulously. I responded in a way that I hoped would get him off the subject of Petersen, who had nothing to do with the message I was trying to deliver. Besides, I was afraid he was about to start identifying with the investigators again, as he had done so often when he reminisced about the Hiss case.

  I dispensed with Petersen, and quickly brought the President to the raw nerve—money: “All right, so arrangements were made through Mitchell, initiating it, in discussions that—I was present—that these guys had to be taken care of. Their attorneys’ fees had to be done. Kalmbach was brought in. Kalmbach raised some cash. Uh, they were obvi—uh, you know …” I was hesitating over whether I could be so blunt as to say that the defendants had clearly been going to blow if we didn’t pay them. The President interrupted me.