“What’s up?”
“Jane’s really upset. She said that just after she talked to you this afternoon a bunch of FBI agents marched into your office. They asked where your files were and then put metal bands around them. They’re standing in your office, guarding them.”
“Holy Christ, you’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not!”
“Sweetheart, this is important. There’s a box of documents up in the bedroom. It’s not very heavy, and I want you to carry it to the attic. Leave it there until I come home, or until Charlie comes over to pick it up. In that box there’s a sealed brown envelope. Take it out and hide it somewhere.”
“John, what’s wrong?” Mo had fear in her voice.
“Nothing, sweetheart, please be brave. It’s very important. Also don’t answer the door for anyone. Not anyone.” We went over again what she was to do, and I told her to call me back after she had done it.
Charlie was pacing the floor; he wanted to know what I was instructing Mo to do. I told him about my office files and the copy of the Huston Plan. “Charlie, this is like something out of the Third Reich. I’m actually worried that Nixon might send FBI or Secret Service agents out to the house to see what they can find. Nixon, obviously, is playing very hard ball. That’s evident from his speech and sending agents to my office. I believe the man is capable of anything.”
Charlie knew me well enough by now to know I was not paranoid. He seldom drank, but that night he did.
“Charlie, all this has got to change,” I told him. “This is bigger than both of us, but I’m in a position to do something, I think—if people will believe what I have to say, and that’s a big if.”
* Later I discovered that G. Gordon Liddy had never talked to Silbert on or off the record. This was a prosecutor’s ploy.
* In fact, Krogh had told me it came from the Oval Office, but I was still keeping the President out of things.
* Twenty days later, Judge Matthew Byrne dismissed the case against Daniel Ellsberg, citing government misconduct.
* When Henry Petersen asked for the tape, the President backed down, claiming it was only his dictation of the meeting, which had now been misplaced. Months later, after disclosure of a taping system, the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office subpoenaed the tape of this conversation, on July 23, 1973. On October 31, 1973, the President’s lawyers announced to the court that it was missing, because of mechanical failure.
Chapter Nine
GOING PUBLIC
Charlie and I went back to Washington the next day, May 1. We didn’t say much on the trip; we were in shock. I was now just a private citizen guilty of crime, up against a battery of prosecutors who wanted to nail me. The President of the United States wanted to nail me. All I had going for me was my word that there were bigger people involved.
By the time the plane landed, both of us had to come back to life. I invited Charlie to my home for a strategy session. “If there are reporters around the house, we can slip in the back,” I told him in the taxi.
“No sir,” he declared. “Those bastards aren’t going to make me use back doors. If they ask me for a comment on your firing, I’ll stop and say, ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself? Now print that, and remember my name is spelled with two f’s.’” I knew this was only tough talk. Charlie did refuse to talk to reporters, but he was too much a gentleman to insult them and he was always polite when he told them to go to hell.
Charlie made himself comfortable in the living room while I went upstairs to reassure Mo that everything was all right. I found her calmly reading. After my “scapegoat” statement I had warned her that I might be canned, but I had really been bracing myself. I returned to find Charlie searching the living room for a match.
“How would you like to get into a pissing match with the President of the United States?” I asked Charlie.
“I think we are already in one,” he answered. “It looks like the P is going to keep walking with his German shepherds.”
“No, I mean directly.”
He shrugged. “Why not? What do you have in mind?”
“Well, we’ve never really talked about the President, but I think you know there is no way I can testify completely about the cover-up without telling you about my dealings with him.”
“Right. I’d like to hear about the P if you’re ready to tell me.”
“Let me begin with some of the things I heard when I first went to the White House.” Charlie was still reluctant to hear details of the Huston Plan, but he agreed now that, as my attorney, he had to advise me on what he thought was or was not “national security.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve got memos showing that the President approved illegal taps, mail opening and break-ins?” he reacted angrily.
“That’s right. Mo hid them last night. You want to see them?”
“No, I don’t want to touch them. I don’t like you having them here in your house, either. You are no longer a government employee, so you’re not authorized to have them. You’ve got to get them back to the White House in the morning. I don’t want you to commit another crime accidentally.”
“If I send them back, they’ll disappear forever. That’s why I took them. I figured nobody would ever believe me if I said there was such a plan. It shows the kind of thinking that produced Watergate.”
“Okay. I’ve got an idea. I want you to get a safe-deposit box. Tomorrow. Understand? And put that stuff in the box. Then I’ll draw up some papers, and we’ll turn the key to the box over to Sirica. He can decide what should be done with them.”
“Charlie, I don’t have any evidence that the President knew what Liddy and Hunt were up to once they went over to the Re-election Committee. But, goddammit, I know the way that place works, and Haldeman must have told him something. Ain’t no one ever going to be able to prove that, though, I assure you.”
I took Charlie step by step through my dealings with the President on the cover-up, from the first meeting, on September 15, 1972, through the last. Charlie’s cigar went out somewhere along the line, but he didn’t notice.
“What do you think?” I asked finally.
Charlie stood up and walked across the room. He stopped and turned. His head was shaking and his lips were tight, as if they were fighting to hold back the words: “The President is a goddam criminal, that’s what I think.”
I nodded.
Charlie began pacing. “Now, listen, I want to go back over a couple of points. I want you to tell me again what he said about it being no problem to get a million bucks, and what you told him about laundering money. That’s the damnedest conversation I’ve ever heard. The P sounds like the Godfather, for Christ’s sake.”
He sat back down in the easy chair beside our fireplace and listened as I repeated the conversation.
“Now tell me about the clemency offers again,” he said.
I repeated it.
“The P’s in big trouble. Big trouble,” he concluded and was off pacing again. Then, as he lit his cigar, “The P needs a lawyer and he better get himself a good one.”
“Well, now you can understand why I suggested that Silbert and Glanzer get that tape of my meeting with Nixon on April fifteenth,” I said.
“Yeah, I see.” Charlie sat down again with a sigh. He was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his mood had changed. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but I voted for Nixon last time. Everybody, I guess, figures that an old Kennedy Democrat like me would love to nail Nixon, but I’d figured the bastard would make a better President than McGovern. You know,” he continued as he watched the smoke from his cigar swirl up toward the lamp beside him, “it’s damn depressing, what you just told me.” He was silent again.
“Would you like a drink?” Mo asked Charlie as she came down the stairs to check on us.
“I’ll have a little brandy if you’ve got some, thanks.” Charlie waited until she was out of the room and then spoke to me softly. “I don’t think you ought to tell
McCandless about the P. I don’t think this stuff should be leaked to the press. He’ll learn about it in due time, but not now. Okay?”
“I agree.”
Charlie sighed again. “You against the President. Shit, I can’t believe it. I knew you were carrying a load around in your head, but I didn’t realize it was a goddam atom bomb. I want to think about this for a while. We’re going to take this one step at a time. It may be your word against Nixon’s and the rest of ’em, and that doesn’t make me very comfortable.”
“It doesn’t make me very comfortable, either.”
“Not that I don’t believe you,” Charlie reassured me, and I knew he meant it.
He had said the same thing to me a few weeks earlier, at a time when he had had doubts. It had been an awkward situation for him and most uncomfortable for me. I had gone to his office to meet with him and had found that something was bothering him. “I had a talk today with Silbert and Glanzer,” he had said. “John, they don’t believe your story about Gray destroying documents, which makes them very leery of what else you told them.” Charlie’s worried tone upset me. He always sounded confident, about everything. “They say Petersen talked to Gray, and Gray has denied ever receiving any documents from you and Ehrlichman, let alone destroying them.” Charlie shifted in his chair. “Now, I believe you,” he added hastily, “but …” He was struggling for the right words. I knew my face must be registering my concern, and Charlie was trying to comfort me, but his words didn’t offer solace. “… but I’m not the prosecutor in this case.”
“Charlie, I’m telling you the truth. Gray told me he’d destroyed those documents. I’d swear to it under oath,” I pleaded, looking for stronger assurance than the mere fact that my own lawyer believed me.
“Here’s the problem. They say, ‘Why should we believe Dean?’ You see, it’s your word against his, and just because I tell them Gray’s a damn liar doesn’t help us a bit. We’ve got to convince them, and I’ve got an idea I’d like to run by you.” Charlie was more fidgety than I’d ever seen him. He spun a pencil with his hand as he spoke.
“Sure,” I said, but I felt desperate. I’d been trying to convince myself that if I said what had happened I’d be believed. Now even Charlie wants more, I thought.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but it might be a good idea if you took a lie-detector test. If the results don’t come out right, we’ll put the goddam report in the bottom drawer and bury it.” Charlie was testing me.
“Hell, Charlie, I’m ready. Gray’s lying, and if that’s what I’ve got to do to prove it, fine.”
“Terrific. That’s terrific. I’ll set it up for you as soon as we can do it. I’ve got the man.” He was smiling for the first time since I had arrived, which made me feel better.
Charlie called a private investigator and made the arrangements. The next day I would “get on the box,” as he called it.
Charlie’s investigator friend and the lie-detector expert were waiting for me in the uninviting back room of a sterile prefabricated office building in suburban Maryland. What if I fail, I kept thinking; then I’m going to be in really big trouble. I had nearly convinced myself that no machine could register anything about me because my central nervous system was carrying more voltage than it was built to handle. The tester tried to put me at ease. The purpose, he explained, was not to trick or surprise me. We reviewed the questions carefully.
There was no way to get comfortable in the hardwood chair, with terminals attached to my fingers, a blood-pressure tourniquet around one of my arms, and a rubber belt around my chest. Wires ran behind me to the “box.” The tourniquet cut off the circulation in my arm. I felt a tingling feeling as my fingers fell asleep, then pain. This was normal, the tester said when I complained. He kept asking questions: “Did you turn documents from Hunt’s safe over to Pat Gray?… Did Mr. Gray tell you he had destroyed the documents from Hunt’s safe you had given him?”
“We’re amost finished,” he said. “But I want to do one more test. Please select a card.” He held out a fan of half a dozen playing cards. “Now, remember the card you selected. I’m going to call off all the cards, and I want you to lie to me about which card you selected.” He read off the cards and I picked the wrong one. He peered at his instruments, laughing. “That’s a good sign. You damn near broke my machine when you lied.” I felt better as he unhooked me from the straps and wires.
Charlie called when he received the report the next day. He was riding high again. “Son, from now on whenever there’s any doubt about who’s telling the truth, you’re going to get on the box. I already called Silbert and told him to get Gray on the box, because my man passed with flying colors.” Gray, of course, never took a lie-detector test; he finally confessed that he had destroyed the documents.
The polygraph test was not wasted. It led us to an important decision: I would testify only to facts on which I was prepared to take a lie-detector test. Often when we were preparing testimony in sensitive areas, Charlie would lean over, smiling, and ask whether I was ready to go on the box about it. It would give us a boost as we squared off against the President.
Now Charlie quickly decided what to do with the new information about the President. “We’re going to see how serious those fellows downtown are about seeing justice done,” he told me, dialing Silbert’s number. “I want to put a little more coal on the fire we’ve got under them.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I want to find out what those bastards are made of,” he said as he let the phone ring. “And I may want you to tell them of your dealings with the P, at least those I don’t believe are privileged.” Charlie had decided that any dealing I had with the President in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy would not be subject to attorney-client or executive privilege.
“Hello, Earl my boy, how’s my favorite prosecutor?”
Silence. Laughter.
“Of course. That’s why I’m calling. I think you should talk to Dean one more time, before I meet with Sam Dash, up there with that Senate committee. Dash sure is interested in talking to us.”
Silence. Charlie’s eyes were smiling as he listened.
“Right, and I think you guys should come out here, particularly because of what I want my man to tell you about.”
Silence. Then Charlie put his hand over the mouthpiece and told me Silbert was bucking a private meeting now that our dealings were known.
“Listen, goddammit, he’s going to tell you about the P,” he said into the phone.
A very brief silence and Charlie erupted. “The P, goddammit. The Man. Your top boss who lives down the street in the big house. You know now?” Silence. “Good. I always knew you were a bright fellow. I want to find out if you fellows plan to really prosecute this case. Otherwise, I don’t want my man to throw in with you. I know a lot of U.S. attorneys around the country that would love to talk to my man, and I—”
Silence. Now Charlie could not keep from smiling. Again he covered the mouthpiece as he nodded and said to me, “They’ll meet with us. I’ve got poor Earl so high in the air he’s afraid to come back down.” Then to Silbert: “Okay, I’ll wait to hear back from you. But don’t waste our time if you’re not interested in taking this case all the way.”
Charlie hung up. He stood up, stretched, and plopped back down. “They want you to plead guilty to a one-count felony—”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Don’t get excited. I refused to even discuss it with them. I’ve just upped the ante, but they’re almost afraid to talk with you. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Earl can’t make a move, I suspect, without talking to Petersen now. I want old Henry to know this is the biggest fucking case he’s ever touched. Earl’s going to have to meet with us, and I want you to tell him of the highlights of your dealings with the P, the money and clemency stuff.”
“You think that’s wise? Petersen’s going to pass it righ
t on to the President, I suspect.”
“That’s fine. I think Nixon should get the message that you’re not going to lie for his ass. He’d better fess up before he’s in jail.”
Earl called back, and a meeting was arranged for May 3. But it was different from what Charlie and I expected. The prosecutors listened to my details on the President’s complicity as if I were talking about something of historical value rather than immediate interest. At one point, I thought Earl might fall asleep. Only Seymour Glanzer seemed to be absorbing every word, his eyebrows rising and falling. He seemed to be plotting how the facts I was relating fit with the law.
“John, I want you to listen to me,” Glanzer said as I concluded. “We need more details, more facts, more specifics, more proof. Not impressions, opinions and conclusions. This information is amazing, but it is not strong enough.”
“I understand, but—”
“Hold it, son,” Charlie interrupted. “You don’t need to give these fellows any ‘buts.’ You’ve already given them enough. Maybe too much. Now if they want to do their jobs they know where to come for the information. If they’re not interested, well, the United States Senate is very interested. I suggest we adjourn. If you guys want to talk further, you’ve got my phone number.”
I didn’t know where we were now. Charlie was playing the heavy negotiator, and I relied on him to handle it. He knew how prosecutors thought and acted, I didn’t. Charlie reported to me almost daily, but gave me few details. I was growing less convinced they would grant me immunity, but the negotiations gave us time to figure out what I should do, and Charlie was more optimistic than I was about the prosecutors. He felt that Seymour Glanzer was far ahead of Earl Silbert in analyzing the situation. Glanzer had told Charlie privately that I should be granted immunity because I was telling the truth and would make a key witness for unraveling the entire mess. He seemed to understand my position—it was my word against Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman and the President. Glanzer had asked a private law firm to prepare a brief on whether a sitting President could be indicted. Clearly he saw where all this was headed, but he was not in charge.
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