Conclusion
MY journey to Asia was my first foreign trip free of the incubus of the Vietnam war. Hanoi had been ominous; Peking was an augury of positive possibilities that lay ahead once we turned our attention to creative foreign policy. We were improving relations with both Moscow and Peking despite the fact that both capitals would have preferred a less ambiguous stance from us — and we were succeeding perhaps for that reason. My report to Nixon drafted on the plane home from the Far East noted:
With conscientious attention to both capitals we should be able to continue to have our mao tai and drink our vodka too. Peking, after all, assuming continued hostility with the USSR, has no real alternative to us as a counterweight (despite its recent reaching out to Japan and Western Europe as insurance). And Moscow needs us in such areas as Europe and economics.
But this is nevertheless a difficult balancing act that will increasingly face us with hard choices. . . . We are useless to Peking as a counterweight to Moscow if we withdraw from the world, lower our defenses, or play a passive international game. Mao and Chou [Zhou] urged a more aggressive American presence — countering Soviet designs in various areas, keeping close ties with our allies, maintaining our defense posture. If the Chinese became convinced that we were heeding the inward impulses of voluble sectors of Congress, the public and the press, we would undoubtedly witness a sharp turn in Peking’s attitude. You and I have, of course, assured the PRC leaders privately, as well as proclaiming publicly, our intentions to maintain a responsible international role.
To ensure the cohesion and self-assurance in America for such a world role had been the preeminent purpose of the policies — and sometimes the anguish — of Nixon’s first term. In the second term we hoped to give perspective and meaning to the struggles of the first. The visit to Peking had marked a great step forward, we thought, toward the better future we sought to build. Instead, it became the last normal diplomatic enterprise before Watergate engulfed us.
* * *
I. Lin Biao, Mao’s former defense minister and heir apparent, died in an air crash in September 1971, allegedly fleeing to the Soviet Union after his plot against Mao had been unmasked.
IV
The Gathering Impact of Watergate
A Rude Awakening
THE moment when all hopes for a period of healing dissolved can be precisely charted. It was on a weekend in the middle of April 1973
On the evening of Friday, the thirteenth of April, the Federal City Club of Washington — its membership predominately Democratic — in a gesture of goodwill, bestowed its public service award on me, a senior representative of the Nixon Administration, and on Senator John Sherman Cooper, a senior Republican Senator. The Federal City Club of Washington was founded in the early 1960s as a protest against the admissions policies of the dominant, prestigious, and staid Metropolitan Club. Leading figures of the Kennedy Administration and sympathetic journalists had resigned from the latter and founded a new club a few blocks away in the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel. Unfortunately, its finances did not equal the idealism of its founders; it consisted essentially of one large dining room, a bar, and a small terrace wedged between high and undistinguished office buildings.
The Nixon Administration did not have much use for either club. Its key members mistrusted the Federal City as too liberal and the Metropolitan as too Establishment. Nothing could better signify their isolation from the permanent community of the nation’s capital and political life — an isolation that contributed to their undoing.
That evening a distinguished group had assembled; nearly everybody of importance in Washington was there to honor two leading Republicans — except for other senior members of the Nixon Administration only recently reelected with the second largest margin in American history. Senator Cooper and I brought to the occasion an appeal for national unity. My theme was the hope that, with Vietnam behind us, the nation’s foreign policy could combine the exuberant idealism of the Kennedy Administration (which I had served briefly and inconspicuously) with the unsentimental emphasis on national interest of the Nixon Administration:
As a nation, we have been shaken by the realization of our fallibility, and it has been painful to grasp that we are no longer pristine, if we ever were. Later than any nation, we have come to the recognition of our limits. In coming to a recognition of our limits, we have achieved one of the definitions of maturity, but the danger is that we will learn that lesson too well; that instead of a recognition that we cannot do everything, we will fall into the illusion that we cannot do anything.
Nothing is more urgent right now than a serious and compassionate debate of where we are going, because if we lose the capacity for great conception, we can be administered but not governed. I first saw government at a high level over a decade ago, at a time which is now occasionally debunked as overly brash, excessively optimistic, even somewhat arrogant. Some of these criticisms are justified, but a spirit prevailed then which was quintessentially American: that problems are a challenge, not an alibi; that men are measured not only by their success, but also by their striving; that it is better to aim grandly than to wallow in mediocre comfort. Above all, the Administration then in office, and its opponents, thought of themselves engaged in a common enterprise, not in a permanent, irreconcilable contest.
At a time which history will surely mark as one of the great revolutions, the world continues to need our idealism and our purpose, and in this respect the spirit of the early 60s was more nearly right than some of the present attitudes.
In the 1920s, we were isolationists because we thought we were too good for this world. We are now in danger of withdrawing from the world because we believe we are not good enough for it. The result is the same, and the consequences would be similar. So it is time to end our own civil war.
To be sure, we should leaven our optimism with a sense of tragedy, and temper our idealism with humility and realism. But we have had enough of the liturgies of debate, and what we need most is the unity of which Senator Cooper spoke, which is the prerequisite for mastering the future and overcoming the past.
My remarks were received warmly. There was in the room a glow of goodwill, conciliation, and budding optimism.
My awakening the next day, Saturday, April 14, was rude. I was still buoyed by the evening’s mood of reconciliation and the geniality of the audience when Leonard Garment called at my office at the White House. What he told me shattered everything.
Len Garment was one of that small group of liberal Republicans whom Nixon had added to his entourage partly for protective coloration, partly because they genuinely appealed to his gentler and more sensitive side. Like their conservative counterparts — the speechwriter Patrick Buchanan, for example — some of the “liberals” imagined that they alone represented the “true” Nixon, although Garment was too perceptive for such a sentimental misjudgment. The fact was that there was no true Nixon; several warring personalities struggled for preeminence in the same individual. One was idealistic, thoughtful, generous; another was vindictive, petty, emotional. There was a reflective, philosophical, stoical Nixon; and there was an impetuous, impulsive, and erratic one. Sometimes one set of traits prevailed; sometimes another; occasionally they were in uneasy balance. One could never be certain which Nixon was dominant from meeting to meeting. Nor was it wise to act upon an impulsive instruction without making sure that the reflective Nixon had had a crack at it. Indeed, it was the failure of some more literal-minded White House advisers to understand the requirements of his complex personality that gave such momentum to Watergate. Strangely enough, the thoughtful analytical side of Nixon was most in evidence during crises, while periods of calm seemed to unleash the darker passions of his nature.
Garment had met Nixon when they were partners in a New York law firm. Len was a man of many talents. He was at ease in the world of the arts as in that of the law — he was himself an enthusiastic clarinet player — and credit for the Nixon Administration’s enormousl
y expanded federal support for the humanities is due to him as to no other single person. If his decency reduced his effectiveness in the more brutal sparring of high-level government, it also gave depth to his role as a conscience for the President and as confidant to his friends. His title, Special Consultant to the President, was grand enough, but without a specific area of responsibility; he had no regular access to the President or a day-to-day schedule.
As a general rule, influence in the White House must not be judged by job descriptions. Many unwary neophytes are enticed into service by promises of constant contact with the President. But influence on Presidential decisions depends more on the substantive mandate than on theoretical access to the Oval Office. Whatever the President’s intentions, he is usually overscheduled. Inevitably, he faces problems requiring more decisions than he can comfortably handle. Conversation not related to his agenda, no matter how stimulating or instructive, soon becomes a burden. If the adviser agrees with the bureaucracy, he is a waste of time. If he disagrees and even if he should convince the President, he raises the problem of how to marshal bureaucratic support so as to implement the suggested course. I can think of no exception to the rule that advisers without a clear-cut area of responsibility eventually are pushed to the periphery by day-to-day operators. The other White House aides resent interference in their spheres. The schedulers become increasingly hesitant in finding time on the President’s calendar.
Garment had reduced these inherent disabilities to the maximum degree possible through unselfish conduct and the high regard others had for him. Still, his emergence into prominence was usually a good signal that Nixon was in some distress and required a steadying hand. It was also noticeable that in recent days he had spent an increasing amount of time with Nixon, though it was not clear what matters were discussed. To explain why was the purpose of Garment’s visit to my office on April 14.
In his deceptively casual manner he slumped into the blue-covered couch against the wall that faced the ceiling-to-floor windows overlooking the White House front lawn and Pennsylvania Avenue. I sat in an easy chair at right angles to the sofa, next to my desk. Never one to beat around the bush, Garment opened the conversation by raising a question unlikely to receive an objective answer: “Have you lost your mind?”
Without waiting for a reply, Garment somewhat wearily unfolded an astonishing and shattering tale: Within a matter of days my evocation of national reconciliation would look like a plea for mercy and be submerged in a crisis that would make the turmoil over Vietnam seem trivial. Nixon’s lifelong enemies were about to be handed the weapon that they had been seeking. In the tornado of suspicion about to overwhelm us, my appeal to idealism tempered by a stern perception of national purpose would sound vacuous if not cynical. The outcome of the recent election might well be reversed; there was likely to be a battle to the death.
“Watergate” was about to blow up; its ramifications went far beyond the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Apartment complex. There had been other break-ins sanctioned from the White House for several different purposes, some as yet unclear. Also, a plan had existed to kidnap presumptive leaders of potential demonstrations against the Republican National Convention and to fly them to Central America. Prostitutes were to be used to compromise and to blackmail delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Garment said the “sordid mess” had many dimensions, only part of which he knew himself. It could not have developed without the cooperation of the highest levels of the Administration. Garment thought that Special Counsel to the President Charles W. Colson had probably been the “evil genius” behind it. Yet the scale of the wrongdoing really made it impossible to imagine that Assistants to the President H. R. (Bob) Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, whom the press had nicknamed “the Germans,” had been unaware. There was a puzzle here, for Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s dislike of Colson was proverbial. And if Haldeman and Ehrlichman were involved, it was nearly inconceivable that the President had been completely ignorant.
Whoever was the culprit, in Garment’s view, only radical surgery and the fullest admission of error could avert catastrophe. But if the President was involved even indirectly, full disclosure would not be the course selected; hence the Administration might bleed to death amidst a cascade of revelations gleefully exploited by the host of opponents Nixon had managed to acquire over the years. Garment was convinced that the Administration would have to be ripped apart and reconstituted in procedures as well as personnel. Nixon would have to put himself at the head of this movement of reform, brutally eradicate the rot, and rally the American people for a fresh start.
I was stunned. From the White House, somebody had implemented Presidential musings that could only be regarded as juvenile; had adopted the tawdriest practices of the hated antiwar radicals; and had set at risk both our social cohesion and our ability to fulfill our international responsibilities. For four years I had sustained myself through the anguishing turmoil of Vietnam with the vision of a united America turning at last to tasks of construction. And now through acts that made no sense, discord would descend once again on a society already weakened by ten years of upheaval. I felt like a swimmer who had survived dangerous currents only to be plucked from apparent safety by unexpected and even more violent riptides toward uncharted seas.
As I considered what this portended for foreign policy, my heart sank. A nation’s capacity to act is based on an intangible amalgam of strength, reputation, and commitment to principle. To be harnessed, and applied with care and discrimination, these qualities require authority, backed by public confidence. But if Garment was right, political and moral authority inexorably would start draining from the Presidency. The dream of a new era of creativity would in all probability evaporate. Even preserving what we had achieved — the Indochina settlement, for example — would become precarious. There was real peril. Without the impression of American authority, aggressors would be tempted. Delicate balances in regions where American commitments were crucial to peace would be less stable. Our ability to mediate conflicts, or to inspire friends, would erode. We were threatened with stagnation in our foreign policy, and a rearguard struggle to avert a wholesale unraveling.
Exactly what had triggered this avalanche? When the Watergate break-in occurred in June 1972 I had been en route to China. I had paid little heed to the sparse news reports I read. I could not imagine that a President as politically experienced as Nixon would permit the White House to be involved in so pointless an exercise. I thought that at worst some egregious minion had conducted a childish private enterprise.
In the months that followed, Watergate — then specifically associated in the public mind, as in mine, with the June 17 break-in — was never discussed at the White House meetings I attended. The White House assistants are both partners in a joint endeavor and competitors for the President’s attention and favor. The latter consideration often predominates — at least it tended to in the Nixon White House. Each Assistant tenaciously defends his turf, which is best accomplished by maintaining some exclusive jurisdiction.
Thus in the Nixon White House there was an almost total separation between the domestic and the foreign policy sides. The relation of the various Nixon aides to one another was like that of prisoners in adjoining cells. They might hear something about the scale of the activity; proximity did not invite participation or intimate knowledge. To all practical purposes I was excluded from domestic issues and Ehrlichman, who handled domestic policy, from foreign policy discussions. Haldeman, who attended both, invariably confined himself to political and public relations concerns. There were large daily staff meetings, which both foreign and domestic advisers attended, but they were preoccupied with public relations; sensitive matters were never discussed there.
I was aware, of course, of the pervasive sense of beleaguerment that resulted from a combination of the President’s personality and the violent, occasionally extralegal assaults of the antiwar critics. And
I had come to know a dark side of Nixon. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1972 I did not believe it possible that the White House was involved in the Watergate affair; I accepted Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler’s public position that it was a “third-rate burglary attempt” involving no White House personnel. The morning staff meetings seemed to bear this out. The few references to Watergate were always by junior staff members who complained of the media’s unfairness. The avuncular approval this elicited from Haldeman, who presided, reinforced the sense that nothing serious had occurred.
Once, in the summer of 1972, I asked Haldeman what Watergate was all about. “I wish I knew,” he replied; and changed the subject. On another occasion I mentioned Watergate to John Ehrlichman. In late January 1973 I had run into Joseph Califano, a former Johnson aide and old friend from the other side of politics, and gossiped on the street for a few minutes with him. To my smug remark that I did not see how the Democrats could recover from their electoral debacle, Califano said Watergate would bring a Democratic revival. It was wrong to think of judges as unaffected by the public mood. Enough media attention had been focused on Watergate to make it extremely likely that the forthcoming trial of the Watergate burglars could cause the judge to crack down and force further revelations. I passed this view on to Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman, smarting under the media’s tendency to contrast me favorably with “the Germans,” tended to give me short shrift whenever I ventured within the three-mile limit of domestic jurisdiction. He snorted, “Wishful thinking! If that is what they are counting on, they will be out of office for thirty years.”
Years of Upheaval Page 12