“How about Sirica?” Hank inquired, glancing at me as if to say, “Watch this, Jim’s higher than a kite.”
“Well, I was worried about him at first,” Jim declared, “but now I’ve decided he’s a hell of a good judge. Yes, sir, he’s a good judge. And I don’t say that because he rules whenever I want him to rule. He reads all the homework we give him, and he relies on us to help him. What I do is let most things pass now, so when I do object to something he knows it’s important. He trusts us now, and he damn sure doesn’t want this case reversed because of him.”
Jim ran through why things were swinging to the government’s favor—expressions on the jurors’ faces, rulings, dramas, miscues by the defense, the overall “feel” of the courtroom.
Mid-December 1974
Larry Iason walked into his office, where I worked when Neal had me down at the courthouse, laid a big pile of documents on my desk, puffed out his cheeks, and blew a long, exasperated breath. “Look at all that stuff. That’s what Jim just gave me to finish by tomorrow. I tell you, I feel like Neal’s Higby. We’ve got a bunch of real egos on this trial team, and I get all the dirty work. I’m nothing but a, a, what do you call it?”
“A gopher,” I said gently.
“Yeah, a gopher.” He paused, and then exclaimed, “We’re like the White House. You ever think about that?”
“Well, yes, but don’t tell anybody. You’ve got power, ambitions, office shuffles, news summaries, and a tickler system. But at least your bosses temper you. That might keep you out of jail. Ours used to egg us on.”
Larry smiled. “That’s for sure!”
“I’m having a lot of trouble with Mardian,” said Vollner wearily. “He still denies ever having seen the FBI reports, the 302s you testified he looked at in your office. Is there anything you can think of to help draw him out?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” I went back over the details, and nothing helped. Then I had an idea. “How about fingerprints, Jill? Have you tried that?”
She was intrigued. “No, we haven’t checked them. You think he left any?”
“He must have. Mardian’s got a thumb as big as the palm of your hand. And I tell you, I can see him sitting in my office with those things, and he’d always lick his thumb before he’d turn the pages. You know how he moves when he’s excited. Slap. Lick. Slap. Lick. He must have left some big wet prints on there you can almost see with the naked eye.”
FBI agents handed me rubber gloves and a stack of the original Watergate FBI reports a foot high. I was uncomfortable, sensing that the agents must dislike me for the black eye my testimony had helped give the Bureau. My marshals sensed it, too. The agents let me choose only a few pages out of the thousands for lab tests. It was a hopeless task. Reduced to guesswork, I failed.
“Goddammit, Jill,” Jim roared. “You should have checked with me before you went off on a long shot like that! If Mardian’s lawyers get wind of it, they could try to use that piddly little test to make it look like he never touched the stuff.”
“I thought it was worth it,” she said, standing her ground.
December 16, 1974
The Special Prosecutor’s office sent a letter to the supervisor at Holabird. I was finally allowed out of my room. No more guards posted at my door. No more restrictions on my conversations.
December 17–23, 1974
Chuck and I compared notes on the Watergate mysteries. We sat up late trading information, and we commented on how much better it felt to do so without worrying about protecting anyone.
“Chuck, why do you figure Liddy bugged the DNC instead of the Democratic candidates? It doesn’t make much sense. I sat in Mitchell’s office when Liddy gave us his show, and he only mentioned Larry O’Brien in passing as a target. I confess that Magruder once told me you were pushing for information on O’Brien because of the ITT case, and I—”
“Magruder’s full of shit,” Chuck interrupted. “That bastard tests my Christian patience to the breaking point. I have to say special prayers to temper my feelings about that asshole. I’d like to hear him say that to my face.”
“Why don’t we ask Jeb to come over?” I suggested. “And I’ll ask him why the hell Liddy went after O’Brien. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a capital idea,” Chuck replied. “I’ve got some ideas of my own, but I’d like to hear Jeb’s explanation.”
I went down to Jeb’s room, thinking about Chuck’s remarks. I knew Chuck had been struggling with himself in an effort to be supportive of Jeb in prison. Jeb had become extremely depressed during the past few weeks. “He’s got the prison shuffle,” Chuck had told me, pointing out how Jeb barely lifted his head or feet as he walked the halls. “I’m worried about him, and remember, John, he’s only got a month or so on us in here. We could be shuffling around like that pretty soon, so we’ve all got to help each other.” I had no idea what Jeb would think of our probing, but he seemed to be anxious for conversation. I invited him back to Chuck’s room.
“Jeb, we’ve been trying to put some pieces together about why we’re here,” I began, “and one of the questions we can’t answer is why Larry O’Brien was targeted. I guess you and Mitchell agreed to that in Florida. But why O’Brien?”
Jeb froze. His pallid face flushed crimson. He tried to find words, but only stuttered. The question had more than caught him off guard. It had overwhelmed him. “Why do you want to know?” he asked haltingly.
“Just curiosity,” Chuck said.
“Well, it just seemed like a good idea,” Jeb said evasively.
“Well then, why was Spencer Oliver’s phone bugged?” Chuck pressed. Chuck was implying that the testimony that Oliver, another official of the DNC, had been bugged by accident was not true, that there had been deeper motives.
Jeb looked at me. Then at Colson. “Why? Who wants to know?” he asked as his confusion turned to suspicion and headed toward anger. “I don’t think we ought to talk about that stuff,” he said sharply. Jeb turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Chuck and me staring at each other in dismay.
Chuck broke our silence. “You know, I think I know why Jeb’s so damn depressed. I think he’s still holding back what he knows.”
“You think maybe Mitchell didn’t approve O’Brien as a target?”
“No. Well, I’m not sure. Maybe indirectly, or after the fact. I’ll tell you what I think happened. I don’t know exactly how it worked, but I’ve got good reason to believe that Bob Bennett was somehow involved in the decision to go after O’Brien.”
“Bennett? Why Bennett?”
“Have you read Howard Baker’s minority report on Watergate?”
“No, I haven’t seen it,” I said, wondering where Chuck was heading.
“You should read it. It’s pretty good on the CIA angle in Watergate, and that includes Bennett. You’ll see for yourself the fine hand of Bob Bennett in Hunt’s activities. Like the plan to have Hunt and Liddy break in on Hank Greenspun’s office out in Las Vegas. Hunt was working with Bennett’s help and encouragement on that. He put them in touch with the Hughes people, who wanted anything Greenspun had on Hughes.”
I remembered Greenspun, a Las Vegas newspaper publisher who, like Larry O’Brien, had had business dealings with Robert Maheu, the deposed chief of Howard Hughes’s Las Vegas empire. Jeb had testified that Mitchell had raised the potential danger of Greenspun at the February 4 meeting with Liddy, but I didn’t remember it. Perhaps he mentioned it when I wasn’t there.
Chuck had more. “You remember when Bennett came over to the White House in January of ’seventy-two all worked up about Clifford Irving’s book on Howard Hughes?”
“Sure,” I answered. “He came to see me. He wanted me to have the Justice Department investigate Irving. I passed, but I remember that Haldeman wanted to find out what was in the Irving manuscript. And somebody from the White House got a copy from the publisher. Why the hell do you think there was all that frenzy over a bogus autobiography?”
> “Well, I can only speculate,” said Chuck. “Everyone figured Maheu might have supplied Irving with information one way or another. And Maheu had supplied the one hundred thousand of Hughes money to Nixon through Bebe Rebozo. The way I see it, Haldeman was worried about that coming out. Another messy Hughes scandal.”
“If that’s true, Chuck, I’ll tell you Haldeman may have been just as worried it might come out through O’Brien. I had a few meetings with Bennett when the President wanted to find out about O’Brien’s retainer from the Hughes people. Bennett expressed no love for O’Brien. He said O’Brien probably knew everything about Hughes that Maheu did.” Chuck’s eyebrows went up at this news. I went on. “You think Bennett might have suggested to Hunt that they bug O’Brien?”
“I don’t know,” Chuck sighed. “I’m supposed to be the White House expert on Hunt and Bennett, and I don’t know. You can twist your head into a pretzel with this stuff. But I think Bennett sure would have reason to go after O’Brien—for the Hughes people, to curry favor with us, or even for the CIA. Who knows? But I’m sure he had a lot of influence over Hunt, even though they didn’t seem to like each other particularly.”
“Incredible. What a mess!” I laughed. “I can see why you’ve started your ministry.”
“Well, religion is complicated, too.” He smiled. “But let me give you another brain squeezer. Do you have any idea why it was Spencer Oliver’s phone in the DNC that wound up getting bugged? That’s why I asked Jeb.”
“No, I don’t know. I assumed it was a comic error.”
“Maybe so. But did you know Spencer Oliver was once planning to go into business with Bennett at the Mullen Company? Or that his father worked for Bennett at the Mullen Company on the Howard Hughes account? Or that Hunt says Spencer Oliver worked for the CIA?” (Which Oliver denies vehemently.)
“No, I didn’t. But what does it add up to?”
“You tell me,” Chuck suggested. “Maybe one can overcomplicate things. Maybe the Sino–Soviet split started because Mao Tse-tung just got sick of Russian vodka one day. I don’t know. But it looks suspicious to me. It’s incredible. Millions of dollars have been spent investigating Watergate. A President has been forced out of office. Dozens of lives have been ruined. We’re sitting in the can. And still nobody can explain why they bugged the place to begin with. It’s unbelievable to me that Bob Bennett has waltzed through this thing. He’s got the answers to a lot of unanswered questions.”
We had reached a dead end. “A lot of people have gone through this mess untouched besides Bennett,” I observed. “Just look at Paul O’Brien. Hell, Ken Parkinson was only in the cover-up up to his ankles. O’Brien was in up to his knees. Paul got a walk. Ken got indicted. I’m happy for Paul, but everything is backwards.”
“How come Paul never got indicted?” Chuck asked.
“Because Silbert and Glanzer gave him immunity early on. Neal told me it was just another example of how they blew it. He says as soon as Paul got immunized his memory went bad. They’ve never even used him as a witness.”
“I wonder if Bennett’s been immunized,” Chuck said.
“I don’t think so. I think I’d have heard.”
“I tell you, John,” Chuck went on. “I turned into something of a CIA freak on Watergate for a while, you know, and I still think there’s something there. I haven’t figured out how it all adds up, but I know one thing: the people with CIA connections sure did better than the rest of us. Paul O’Brien’s an old CIA man, and he walked. David Young was Kissinger’s CIA liaison, and he ran off to England when he got immunity. Bennett worked for the CIA, and he ran back to Hughes. And Dick Helms skated through the whole thing somehow. Maybe those guys just knew how to play the game better than we did.”
“Maybe so,” I allowed. “I tell you what. I’ll ask our Mafia friend Joey what he thinks of CIA people in his business.”
Chuck laughed. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Old Joey’s been telling me he lost all faith in Nixon when he didn’t destroy the tapes. He says Nixon is a weak leader and a bad criminal. He thinks the two are the same.”
“Well, I agree with him in a way,” Chuck replied. “I still don’t know why he didn’t burn those things early.”
“Well, I think he loved having the tapes at first, Chuck. He thought he could use them selectively to prove his case. And by the time he found out he couldn’t, he would have been impeached if he’d destroyed them. And a lot of people would have had to go to jail to let him do it. A lot of them would have been in contempt of court, because Sirica had made them responsible for procedure in handling the tapes.”
“Well, maybe so,” Chuck mused. “But it doesn’t make sense. I think Bob Bennett must have told Nixon to hang on to them. How’s that?”
We laughed.
December 24, 1974
Holabird was astir on Christmas Eve. Our top hit man was baking cookies and bread; he had learned the skill in another prison. A multimillionaire heroin dealer from South America was in charge of preparing a turkey dinner for about two thirds of the principals. A spirited and talented Italian crew of Mafia men was busy preparing a lasagna feast for the others, who planned to eat a separate Italian Christmas dinner in the pingpong room, which they had decorated by draping sheets over the table and the holes in the walls. I helped decorate the tree in the main dining area, picking up an extra chore when one of the Latin heroin traffickers couldn’t read the instructions on how to put up the cardboard angels. When everything was ready, I went up to my room.
“You ain’t going to read all night, are you, Dean?” Vinny said as he stuck his head into my room.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Grump, Tom and me is going to work out in about an hour. It don’t make no difference this is Christmas Eve, unless you’re going to Mass tonight?”
“I’m not going anywhere. The old man turned down the request Chuck and I put in to go to church. What time you going to start?”
“At eleven. Remember, you got to keep your body in shape when you’re in the can.” We had been lifting weights together for several weeks.
“Okay. See you at eleven.”
The four of us stripped down for the workout. Grump, a hit man, was small, wiry and quiet. Tom, another hit man, was enormous. He had a “MOTHER” tattoo on his chest. Having learned to be a hairdresser in another prison, he wore his hair long, immaculate and fluffy. Vinny and I did most of the talking, between groans and the clanking of weights.
“You guys in your business have a lot of trouble with your contracts, don’t you, Dean?” he asked.
“Not always,” I said. “Besides, that’s how we lawyers make our money. Except I’m not a lawyer anymore.”
“Lotsa trouble, lotsa trouble,” he said. “You guys have to go to court and mess around and pussyfoot with the fucking judges all the time. We’ve got a better system. I just send a guy like Grump over to see a gentleman I’ve got a contract with, and if he don’t come to terms Grump breaks his back. I tell you, it works.”
“Terrific,” I said with a smile.
“Not cut out for that kind of efficiency, are you? Let me ask you something, if you don’t mind. You look a little wet behind the ears to be the President’s lawyer. How’d you get there so young? Your old man put in the fix?”
“No. I just kissed a lot of ass, Vinny. A lot of it.”
“I’ll bet you did.” He grinned. “So did I.”
Late December 1974
“Hi, Hank, how’s the Special Prosecutor?” I asked cheerily as Henry Ruth ambled into the conference room to get his brown lunch bag out of the drawer.
“Wonderful,” he replied dryly. “I’m just pulling for Neal to get that trial over so we can start thinking about shutting down our operation.”
“What are you going to do when you’re out of here, Hank?”
“I tell you,” he sighed with a wry smile, “what I’m going to do is go out and make American Express ads. That’s what I�
�m going to do.”
“What do you mean?” I laughed.
“You know, like the guy who does Bugs Bunny’s voice or that other guy. What’s his name? Miller. The one who ran for Vice-President with Goldwater. I’m going to go on TV and say, ‘You may not remember me, but I’m the Watergate Special Prosecutor.’ Then I’ll hold up my American Express card and say, ‘I used American Express all through Watergate, because nobody knew who I was. And they still don’t know who I am.’” He sighed again and walked out with his lunch.
“You know, John, I really don’t want to see any of those defendants go to jail. It’s not going to do a damn bit of good for any of those guys,” Neal said reflectively. We’d been talking about the trial; it was almost over.
“You surprise me, Jim. I thought you were itching for us all to do a stretch—as deterrent.”
“Hell, no. The worst part of being a prosecutor for me is a case like this, where I don’t really want the guys to go to jail. That’s why I like defending guilty men. It’s not right sometimes. There’s nobody the government can’t nail if it really goes after him. Shit, they could get me within a year if they wanted to.”
January 1, 1975
Weekends seemed particularly long when Mo was in California and I had no visitor. I was spending New Year’s Day reading a book, Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up, poring over it, escaping my loneliness. There was a knock at the door. It was Vinny.
“Hey, listen, I thought you might like a little of this,” he said, lifting his sweater shirt so that I could see the pint of vodka tucked into his pants. “You know, a little cheer for the New Year.”
“No, thanks. It’s a little early in the day for me,” I said. The last thing in the world I needed was to break some prison rule. Even a sip to convince him I was okay was a risk I was not about to take. Vinny was really offering his friendship, which I appreciated. “Where the hell did you get that?” I asked to be friendly.
“My old lady snuck it in. If ya’d like a cocktail, come on down to the room later. My old lady thinks you’re a hell of a guy. She’d get her rocks off shooting the shit with you.”
Blind Ambition Page 47