Blind Ambition

by Dean, John W. ;

  “John, only one question. Can you prove the story is false? Not that I doubt your word, but you want my advice, don’t you?” he asked, a trifle embarrassed at questioning my denial.

  “Tommy, ultimately I can. Immediately, I can’t. That’s why I just want to put the papers on notice. Since this conversation is privileged, I want to tell you something else. The shit is about to hit the fan, and the whole town is going to smell bad very soon. We need to have a long talk, and one of the things I’d like to talk to you about is hiring a criminal lawyer. I’d like to have some suggestions of people that you know who are really good.”

  “Okay, I’ve got to get moving to get these papers on notice. I’ll report back to you later on how it goes.”

  Haldeman called the morning of the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post story. He was pleased by the libel notice and told me the President would be announcing his full confidence in me. He said Magruder was on his own. The White House would not comment. “We’ve also been kicking around the idea of the President announcing that you’re ready and willing to go before the Watergate grand jury and testify about all this,” Bob said. “What’s your reaction?”

  “Well, Bob, I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. But here’s the problem as I see it: First of all, my testimony will sink Mitchell and Magruder, who have obviously perjured themselves before the grand jury.”

  “So what?” said Haldeman.

  So. The President had decided to cut Mitchell and Magruder loose. They were now expendable because they threatened his own position. And I had a second thought: I was also expendable. Or did Haldeman think I might go before the grand jury and lie? “One thing I’ve got to tell you, Bob. If I am going to go before the grand jury I’m going to tell it exactly the way things happened.”

  “Well, we’ve been protecting Mitchell and Magruder too long. And it got us in this damn mess.”

  “There’s another problem with going to the grand jury, Bob. What if they ask me how I have come to have this knowledge and why didn’t I report it earlier? That’s likely to lead them right into the activities that happened post–June seventeenth.”

  “Like?” he asked.

  I went over the highlights of his own involvement in the cover-up. Bob asked me to repeat several items. It was evident he was taking detailed notes. He was eliciting information from me as to what my testimony would be. I understood why: my testimony would implicate Ehrlichman and him, among others, in the obstruction of justice. He wanted to be prepared for the worst.

  It was a painful conversation for both of us. We were walking tightropes, suspicious of each other, but not overtly hostile. I wanted Haldeman to know I would not lie for him, if questioned, but I played down my conviction that I would be called to testify about the origins of the break-in, and that such questioning would lead into the cover-up. I could hear the prosecutor saying, “Now, Mr. Dean, tell us if you had any conversations with Mr. Liddy after June seventeenth.” My answer would open the door to the cover-up. I raised my cover-up testimony with Haldeman only as a possibility, because I was not willing to tell him directly that I would turn against him—and therefore against the President.

  Fortunately, Haldeman was still concentrating on events before the break-in. He was concerned that my testimony might sink Mitchell and Magruder, and that they might turn on people within the White House to save themselves. “What did Magruder and Mitchell testify to before the grand jury that your testimony might contradict?” he asked.

  “I don’t know for certain,” I replied. “Jeb’s story, for example, changes from day to day. But if he sees himself going down in flames, I suspect he’ll reach out to grab everybody he can hang on to.”

  “Why don’t you call up Magruder, go over the facts with him, get him down on record as to exactly what did happen, and tape him?”

  “Well, I don’t have any device to do that.”

  “Call up the Signal Corps. They’ll fix up a machine for you.”

  I thanked him for the suggestion. I decided I would think about it. Before he signed off, however, he asked about my report. I told him I had gotten diverted by the newspaper story. He urged me to get at it and in a hurry. Later that morning, the President announced his support for me. Not a word was said about my going to the grand jury.

  I told Mo about Bob’s suggestion of taping Magruder, and she said, “I don’t think that’s very nice.”

  “Well, I want to get Jeb on record that I didn’t have any advance knowledge. There’s no telling what Jeb would say someday about my involvement in this. Everybody at the White House tapes people: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Ziegler, Strachan, Higby, Colson and probably two dozen more I don’t even know about.”

  “I still don’t think that makes it sound very good,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve never done it before, but I think it’s necessary now. What I’m going to do is get that dictating machine that’s over there in the office and bring it here to the cabin. I’d be embarrassed to death if somebody walked in on me while I was using it.”

  After getting the dictating machine, setting it up on the coffee table, and testing it with a call to my office to see if I could hold the microphone to the receiver, I called Jeb. It was a difficult conversation under any circumstances, but Mo’s making fun of my trembling hands made it worse. I managed, however, to get Jeb to admit that I had had no advance knowledge. I tried the same procedure with Liddy’s lawyer, and later with Mitchell, but I was not very good at getting the information I needed.

  As usual, I felt exhausted when I arose the next morning. While showering, I thought again about hiring a criminal lawyer. If I hired a lawyer for myself, went to the prosecutors and told them everything I knew—except about the President—I’d really be dumping on Mitchell and Haldeman. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about Ehrlichman. But as for me I’d be a squealer, and just to save myself. Then I rationalized that if I hired a lawyer to assess my liabilities, I could also be assessing them for others. That was it: then I could determine what was best to do next for everybody. The contrivance made me feel less a squealer, but I still could not make a decision.

  Tommy Hogan called and we talked about criminal lawyers. One name he suggested struck me in particular: Charles Shaffer. I had met Charlie once, on a duck-hunting trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, many years earlier. He had once been an assistant United States attorney in the New York Southern District; later he had been selected by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to come to the Department of Justice. Shaffer was tough, experienced, and well respected. Tom seemed to sense my uneasiness, that I was on the verge of some sort of decision, and asked if he should contact Shaffer.

  “No,” I told him. “Let me call you when I get back to Washington. I’m really not sure I want to do it yet, Tommy.”

  On March 28, 1973, after I had been at Camp David for five days, Haldeman called to summon me down from the mountain. It was a call that would bring me face to face with the human consequences of the decision I had made not to lie: Haldeman wanted me to meet with Mitchell and Magruder, who were coming over to his office that afternoon to talk about my testimony. I protested. They knew that my testimony would be about those early meetings in Mitchell’s office. Bob insisted, “You can’t hide up there on that mountain forever.”

  An hour and a half later I was in his office. Mitchell and Magruder had just left him; they were down the hall in Dwight Chapin’s abandoned office, waiting for me. Again I protested having to meet with them.

  “I don’t want to get involved with this,” Haldeman said flatly. He was seated at his conference table, tilting his chair back slightly, and he seemed different. It was not the Bob Haldeman who had always treated me with a degree of warmth, had often quipped when things were tense, and had never borne down on me as he did on other subordinates. Now he had detached himself from me. “I want you to work this out with Mitchell and Magruder,” he said. “They tell me you all agreed on this”—the testimony we would give if it c
ame to that—“a long time ago.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they say. I’m not involved in this and I don’t want to be involved in it, but I want you to go down there and talk with them.” He brought his chair to the floor, and stood.

  John Mitchell’s face looked long and gray as he pulled slowly on his pipe. Magruder, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands, spoke for both of them. He was desperate, his voice jumpy. “John,” he said, “remember we met over there at Mr. Mitchell’s office to discuss my grand-jury testimony on those meetings? You agreed you would testify the way we had. That Liddy had come to those meetings to talk about the election laws. In fact, you suggested that idea. And also that the second meeting was canceled. Bob says that isn’t the way you remember it now, but that’s what you told us.”

  Jeb was pleading. I was miserable. If I testified truthfully, I would provide evidence against Jeb both on the break-in and on his perjury. I had never agreed to support his perjured testimony with false testimony of my own, but I had certainly condoned his story and even coached him to help make it convincing. He considered me his partner in the cover-up. I had helped throw him overboard, and now I was yanking back the lifeline. Only my anger at Magruder saved me from feeling like the lowest rat. Jeb was the one who was most responsible for the break-in, who had got us into this whole mess. True, I had helped him save himself by helping him to commit perjury. But I had never agreed to lie for him. Now he was threatening me. I latched onto my anger for dear life.

  “Jeb, the question is moot right now,” I said. “I haven’t been asked to testify anywhere.” I was dodging. I couldn’t say I would lie, and I couldn’t say I wouldn’t. I knew they would interpret my hedging as an ominous sign for them.

  “Yeah, but what if you do testify?” Jeb persisted.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Just like you will.”

  “How do you remember it?” Mitchell asked me. He spoke quietly, not looking at me, staring at the wall across the room.

  I couldn’t look at Mitchell, either. I felt no animus toward him, unlike Magruder. He had been an uncle to me, and now he was asking whether I would help send him to prison for something I had broken down doors to help him cover up. I felt completely disarmed and wretched. “Well, John,” I said, “I recall the meeting with Jeb vividly, and I never heard of the cancellation of the second meeting until after he testified. That was some later refinement I was unaware of. I do recall saying that if asked why I was at the meeting, he could say I was there because I was the election-law expert. Jeb added that he could say the entire meeting dealt with that, and—”

  “Yeah, but you agreed you’d go along,” blurted Magruder. “It was your suggestion about the election laws that made me decide to testify that way.”

  Jeb was hurting me, but his aggressive tone was in such contrast to Mitchell’s hapless calm that I found it almost easy to brush him off. “There’s no sense debating this now, Jeb. I’m just not … No one has asked me to testify.”

  I turned to Mitchell. I was not certain he had perjured himself, although I would have been shocked to learn he had testified about having heard bugging discussed in those meetings. And I wanted to assure him that I had only hearsay knowledge that he had approved the Liddy plan after the February 4 meeting. “John, I don’t know to this day precisely what happened after that second meeting. I’ve never asked you, and I won’t ask now. I can only speculate.” I had no intention of speculating, of course. What I was telling him was that I had little or no legal evidence against him on the break-in.

  “Well, what is your speculation?” he asked, still looking away.

  I was stunned by the question. Why would he possibly ask that? I hesitated, my eyes darting about the room, before deciding to tell the truth. Mere speculation could do Mitchell no harm, I figured. “Well, I have had a lot of theories,” I began. “My strongest one is that Colson was all over you on the Liddy plan, and Haldeman was sending down pressure through Strachan. I know you weren’t too excited about it, but I figure you finally said what the hell and approved it to get them off your back. My theory is that you just threw the dice on it.”

  Mitchell turned to look at me for the first time. He was holding his pipe in his hand, leaning slightly forward in his chair. “Your theory is right,” he said quietly, “except we thought it would be one or two times removed from the Committee.”

  My gut wrenched. I looked in Mitchell’s face. This was not John Mitchell the stonewaller, “Old Stone Face,” as the President called him. He had just admitted to me that he had approved the Liddy plan, that he was in trouble and needed help. He had just trusted me with his biggest secret, and if I told the truth I would have to betray this one too. A hundred perjuries are not much worse than one. Deep down, I knew Mitchell had played his best card. He was counting on my feeling for him, laying himself in my hands. My realization was overwhelmed by sentiment. Now I felt the razor edge between the squealer and the perjurer. I had never felt more squalid.

  I looked away from Mitchell’s eyes. The room was closing in on me. I had to get out. Fast. “Listen, I can’t talk about this now,” I said to no one, trembling. “I’ve got to get back to my office. We can talk later maybe.”

  I turned and walked hurriedly out of the room, down the hall. I did not go to the office. I went straight home. One small lie to stop more lies. My emotions were spilling over in all directions. I called Tom Hogan and asked him to arrange a meeting with Charlie Shaffer as soon as possible. I needed help.

  * Richard Moore, special counsel to the President, who worked on public-relations projects at the White House.

  * In early January 1973 Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield informed all the relevant executive departments and agencies of the impending Senate investigation, and requested that all documents that might relate to 1972 campaign practices or to Watergate be carefully maintained.

  Chapter Eight

  SCRAMBLING

  Charles Norman Shaffer calls himself a simple country lawyer, but he prosecuted some of the toughest criminals of the sixties and went on to defend many others. Tall, athletically trim, with prematurely graying hair, he strikes a commanding presence in any crowd. Hogan arranged for us to meet at an apartment not far from Charlie’s office in Rockville, Maryland. The two of us reminisced briefly about the duck-hunting trip we’d once met on, but Charlie ended the pleasantries.

  “Well, John, obviously you didn’t ask to meet with me to talk about old times. You’re a busy man, and so am I. What’s on your mind?”

  “Just for the record, Charlie, this conversation is, of course, privileged?”

  “Are you here to retain me as your lawyer?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, whether I take your case or not, this is a privileged communication. You look like a man with some heavy problems,” he said.

  “I am, Charlie, but I don’t want to talk about the President, or matters that might be considered national-security matters.” I was still a long way from telling anyone such things.

  “I’m ready to listen. I can give you at least two hours, but I’ve got something on my schedule for this afternoon. So maybe you better start.”

  For the next five hours I took Charlie through the highlights of what had happened. He sat silently. Occasionally he shook his head in disbelief and said, “I’ll be damned” or “No shit.” Only once did he interrupt, to call his office and cancel his appointment. As I told the story, I felt a great relief in getting the weight of it off my mind, sharing the burden with somebody else. Five hours was not enough to tell him all I knew, so we agreed to meet for another session.

  “Well, Charlie, what do you think about what I’ve told you thus far?” I asked.

  “Frankly, I’m overwhelmed. I want to think about it. I’ll tell you when we meet next if I can represent you, and we’ll talk further. I already think you should minimize your dealings with others as much as possible. Don’t talk fa
cts with them. From what you tell me, it looks like this fella Ehrlichman is maneuvering to protect himself at your expense.”

  Three days later, on the morning of April 3, we resumed our discussion. I realized how much he had absorbed. He asked a few sharp questions “to start separating the wheat from the chaff,” and told me he would represent me. I was encouraged. Finally I ended my recital with another “What do you think?”

  “John, you’re in big trouble. Serious trouble.” My heart pounded. I had expected my lawyer to be more encouraging. “But your problem depends on a lot of things, lots of things. For example, who is going to handle this case. Do you know?”

  “I assume the U.S. attorney’s office here in the District—Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and a guy named Donald Campbell. They’ve been on it so far.”

  “Old Seymour Glanzer is in this case.” Charlie laughed. “I’ll be damned.” I didn’t see the humor. “Seymour is a good lawyer, a smart bastard, and one tough prosecutor,” he continued. “I know him, know him quite well, I’ve had a lot of dealings with Seymour and respect him. I think he respects me, too.” Charlie was pacing the apartment now. He had taken his suit jacket off earlier, unbuttoned his vest, and had his hands deep in his pockets and his head down as he walked about. “Here’s the way I analyze the situation. First, you don’t have a problem with what happened before June seventeenth, with the original Watergate break-in. You were a part of that conspiracy, but you clearly withdrew and renounced it to Haldeman. Would Haldeman testify to that?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I would think so.”

  “Well, it’s not really important anyway, because you can make the case against Mitchell and Magruder. I’m not worried about pre–June seventeenth, but post–. There, as far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty as hell of conspiring to obstruct justice. You may like to think of yourself as just a little guy carrying out orders, but the counsel to the President is no little guy outside the White House. Technically, you’re just as much a part of the conspiracy to cover up as Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and whoever.” He was still pacing, and he fell silent from time to time, somewhat theatrically, I thought. He was the first of many criminal lawyers I would encounter in the months, and years, ahead whose courtroom mannerisms often became a part of their personality, at least when they were playing criminal lawyer.