For once the subtle Chinese analysis had failed them. Our travail had just begun.
The Transformation of the Nixon Administration
NIXON’S dramatic speech on the evening of April 30 accelerated the disintegration of the Administration. Watergate had begun to turn into a national obsession. No doubt Nixon’s distraught appearance, conveying an impression of both grief and evasion, did not offer the picture of a Chief Executive dominating a crisis. His assertion that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were two of the finest public servants he had known was difficult to reconcile with the decision to let them go; his implication that his closest associates and John Mitchell had kept him uninformed of major events over a period of years did not ring true to some and made him look weak to others. Nixon would probably have been better advised to forgo the speech and simply announce the restructuring of his Administration.
But no change in presentation could have altered the impact of the disclosures that now burst upon the American public: the details of the original Watergate break-in and wiretapping; the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist; the cover-up; the use of governmental investigative agencies to harass political opponents; and the juvenile escapades, such as the so-called enemies list — which in effect really amounted to a list of those not to invite to White House dinners, something that exists tacitly in every administration. The immature second level of the Nixon White House managed to turn this last triviality into another national scandal.
The disintegration of a government that only a few weeks earlier had appeared invulnerable was shocking to observe. The President lived in the stunned lethargy of a man whose nightmares had come true. The constant undercurrent of his life had been the premonition of catastrophe, which seemed to obsess him in direct proportion to his inability to define it and which dominated him especially when things seemed to be going well. Now at what should have been the height of his success it had all really happened; everything was crashing around him. Like a figure in Greek tragedy he was fulfilling his own nature and thus destroying himself. I am convinced that he genuinely believed his version of events, which was essentially that he had been let down by faithless retainers. And there was indeed an incommensurability between his punishment and his intentions. Anyone who knew him realized that the coarse side of his nature was a kind of fantasy in which he acted out his daydreams of how ruthless politicians behaved under stress. He thought he was imitating his predecessors; he had never meant it as a central feature of his Presidency.
In the weeks following Nixon’s April 30 speech, I received many queries from friends, some in hope, others in trepidation, as to when Nixon would launch one of his characteristically vicious counterattacks. But while he occasionally made dark references to doing so, he never considered it seriously. The inchoately expected disaster having finally struck, he seemed unable to do other than endure it, and at the pace set by his critics. He was reluctant to transcend it by putting out the entire truth all at once — because he genuinely did not know it, or had suppressed it in his mind, or knew that he was already technically guilty of obstruction of justice. But he equally resisted entrusting his defense to a lawyer experienced in high-level Washington politics — partly, no doubt, because he was embarrassed to find himself in the position of needing such a lawyer. So he simply endured passively, never sharing his knowledge with anyone, defending himself lackadaisically with evasions and half-truths, going through the motions of governing without the concentration, the attention, or the frenetic bursts of energy that had produced the achievements of his first term.
In the weeks after the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman he appointed John Connally, Melvin Laird, and Bryce Harlow to senior advisory posts on the White House staff. These men, seasoned in the ways of Washington, were supposed to give a sense of professionalism and solidity; they were meant to convey a new, respectable approach to governing. They certainly could have made a major contribution, but Nixon was too shattered to reach out genuinely. He did not institutionalize his government; he withdrew even deeper into his private resentments and terrors. Having invited distinguished leaders to the White House, Nixon could think of nothing for them to do. Without specific assignments they proved of little help. Within months they had all resigned.
In his growing loneliness, what Nixon needed above all was a keeper of the gate, someone to buffer him from the conflict that he now had even less desire to handle directly. This was reflected in the decision to bring in Alexander Haig to replace Haldeman as his chief of staff.
Al Haig and I had been colleagues for over four years. When Nixon had asked me in November 1968 to become Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, I thought it important to have on my National Security Council staff a military assistant whose responsibilities ran to the White House rather than to the Pentagon. Previously there had been a liaison officer from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I proposed to continue that arrangement; but he would necessarily echo the position papers submitted by the Pentagon. What I was looking for, with a war in Vietnam to end, was an officer who belonged to my staff but had the confidence of the military, who could explain the military point of view without being bound by it, and who at the same time would be able to represent White House thinking to the Defense establishment.
It was a delicate assignment. General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was convinced that as a former professor I would be most comfortable with an officer with advanced degrees from world-famous academic institutions. Having taught there, I rated somewhat lower the wisdom evidenced by such degrees; at any rate, I was already reasonably familiar with it. I sought a more rough-cut type, someone with combat experience and therefore familiar with the practical complexities of operational planning. An old mentor, Fritz Kraemer, came up with the name of Alexander M. Haig, Jr., who was then a colonel on the staff of West Point. He was also strongly recommended by friends like Joe Califano and Robert McNamara, under whom he had served at the Pentagon during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. With his endorsement by both conservatives and liberals. I offered Haig the position on the basis of one interview.
Haig soon became indispensable. He disciplined my anarchic tendencies and established coherence and procedure in an NSC staff of talented prima donnas. By the end of the year I had made him formally my deputy. Over the course of Nixon’s first term he acted as my partner, strong in crises, decisive in judgment, skillful in bureaucratic infighting, indefatigable in his labors.
To be sure, nobody survives in the rough-and-tumble of White House politics — especially of the Nixon White House — without a good measure of ruthlessness. I could not help noticing that Haig was implacable in squeezing to the sidelines potential competitors for my attention. He was not averse to restricting the staff’s direct access to me or at least making himself the principal intermediary to the outside world — even if I partly encouraged the practice in order to husband my time to concentrate on the major issues. At the same time, I am sure, he was not above presenting himself to my subordinates as the good guy tempering my demanding, somewhat unbalanced, nature. He worked assiduously at establishing his own personal relationship first with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, then with Nixon. I did not doubt that they considered him more of a loyalist than me. As time went on, I began to wonder whether Haig always resisted Nixon’s version that I was a temperamental genius in need of reining in by stabler personalities; or whether Haig objected to the proposition that he could be helpful to my chief in fulfilling that need, making them partners in tranquilizing me, so to speak.
Yet this is no more than saying that I recognized Haig as formidable. One of the most useful tools of the trade of chiefs of staff is to present unpleasant orders as emanating from an implacable superior who has already been softened to the limit; it was a tactic I used myself in my relationship to Nixon. Nor had I strenuously objected when others had put me in the position of the good guy in the White House. In that sense Haig
hoisted me with my own petard.
As for Haig’s relations with Nixon and his entourage, in the context of White House psychology it was not easy to determine the dividing line between going along with the minimum prejudices required for the effective operation of my office and encouraging these prejudices to advance personal ambition; probably the dividing line occasionally became blurred even in Haig’s mind. During the stormy closing phase of the Vietnam negotiations in 1972 and my gradual emergence as a public figure, making my relations with Nixon difficult, Haig drew closer to Nixon — partly out of genuine conviction (he probably would have preferred a purely military outcome), partly as a response to the conflicting pulls of loyalty to his immediate superior (me) and duty to his Com-mander-in-Chief, the President. This caused moments of extreme exasperation in my relationship with Haig and some tense long-distance exchanges. And yet in the end they were always superseded by my admiration for Haig’s integrity, courage, intelligence, and patriotism.
At the beginning of Nixon’s second term, Haig wanted to — and Nixon and I reluctantly agreed that he should — resume his Army career. Too long a period in a staff job, no matter how exalted, could only damage Haig’s future advancement. He was made Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, a four-star rank culminating a spectacularly rapid rise from colonel within four years.
On the evening of May 2, 1973, I received a phone call from Rose Mary Woods. Nixon wanted to bring Haig in as chief of staff, she told me, for a week or two. He was afraid of my reaction; I might resent seeing my former subordinate in a technically superior position. She hoped that when Nixon told me the next morning I would not give him a hard time; I should remember that he was still distraught over the departure of Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he needed bolstering and support. She was, of course (she said), calling on her own without her boss’s knowledge. (The odds were that he was standing beside her, prompting her while she talked.)
It was vintage Nixon: the fear of confrontation; the indirect approach; the acute insight into my probable reaction; and the attempt to soften it through a preposterous charade that would get him over the first hurdle. Anyone familiar with Nixon knew that his need for a chief of staff could not possibly end in a week or two. In the midst of Watergate the need would be greater than ever. I had often witnessed, and occasionally participated in, little games just like this: the sugarcoating of unpalatable decisions, first establishing the principle and then obtaining acquiescence in the measures it inevitably implied.
Nixon was right, as usual, in his psychological estimate of me. It is always difficult to reverse the relationship with a subordinate. And given Haig’s interest in national security matters, there was the potential for rivalry on substance. Yet I realized, too, that the situation had gone far beyond normal bureaucratic rules or White House jockeying for position. If a national catastrophe was to be avoided, coherence had to be restored to the government and especially to its center in the White House. Nixon had depended on Haldeman during his entire first term; he clearly could not function without a strong chief of staff to shield him from the day-to-day management of the bureaucracy and to implement his decisions. Watergate made it impossible to bring in a completely new personality. In any event, no one was so well qualified as Haig, who was familiar with Nixon’s personality, his style of operation, and his psychological needs. I therefore decided to put the best face on the situation and to make the inevitable easy on everybody.
Haig tactfully called on me the next morning. He would not accept the position without my blessing, he said; it was only for a week or so anyway. This was, of course, as much nonsense as Rose Woods’s original proposition. Given his high commitment to service, Haig would not refuse a request by the President no matter how I might feel about it. Nor once established at the White House would he be able to leave after a few days; there could be no rapid change in the necessity that had brought him there. In any case Haig was the only possible choice. I told Haig with conviction that he had to accept, even though it would probably mean the end of his military career. Haig replied that when he had gone on patrol in Vietnam he risked not only his career but his life; he had no right to abandon his Commander-in-Chief in distress. He was shamingly right.
After these preliminaries were over, Nixon called me on the telephone (he was not yet ready to face a direct confrontation). Infinitely ingenious, he had come up with an irresistible argument for Haig’s appointment: It was designed to enhance my influence; it was aimed at, of all people, Agnew. Haig was essential, said the President, to keep Agnew from “trying to step into things. Well, Agnew can’t — we just can’t allow that to happen.” It was mind-boggling to think that a Chief Executive needed a high-powered chief of staff to control a Vice President who had been given little to do, had a skeleton staff, and was in no position to “step into things.” At any rate, Nixon insisted, I should have no concern about my continued paramount role in foreign policy-making: “You and I are going to handle it. I’ve just got to get somebody that can — it’s a curious thing — that can handle that so that you and I can do the other, see.” I replied that the various functions would all sort themselves out in practice. Nixon seemed vastly relieved when I told him that I had urged Haig to accept.
So Haig became White House chief of staff. It was fortunate for the nation. His strength and discipline preserved cohesion in the executive branch and helped the government to traverse Watergate without totally disintegrating. He furnished psychological ballast to a desperate President. He did so without catering to Nixon’s every prejudice; he ensured that Nixon’s preferences and orders would be screened by a governmental structure capable of advising the President in a mature way about the national interest.
Haig’s first act was to abolish arbitrary procedures. He understood that it was no longer possible — as it had never been desirable — to present decisions as emanating from Presidential fiat. He made a major effort to broaden participation in decision-making. By May 18 he reported to a rump session of the Cabinet that the Cabinet members’ status had been raised, the profile of the White House staff lowered. A shake-up of White House personnel was under way. A sincere attempt would be made to improve relations with the Congress.
To be sure, Watergate imposed some of these measures. The fact remains that Haig gave substance to a vague necessity and a sense of direction to a demoralized Administration. No internal reorganization could ever quite catch up with the rate of disintegration impelled by the seemingly endless revelations, crises, and investigations; still, Haig served his country well and honorably in its extremity.
For the next fifteen months Haig and I worked in closest harmony. It did not exclude occasional petty squabbles over status — such as a debate over who got the bedroom closer to the President’s in the Kremlin during Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1974 — but those were minor. Haig dealt with domestic issues; I was responsible for foreign policy and national security. I made no major recommendations to Nixon without discussing them with Haig; he kept me generally informed of key developments on the domestic side, and especially Watergate, that might affect foreign policy. Together with others we sought to hold the ship of state steady even while its captain was gradually being pushed from the bridge. And noble service was performed by people like George Shultz, Arthur Burns, William Simon, Leonard Garment, James Schlesinger, Anne Armstrong, and others, who considered our national tragedy as a call to duty, affirming through their conduct the continuing and overriding values of our nation.
The Taping System
IT was like living on a volcano: Those of us who sought to keep the government going had no idea when another eruption would start. Almost every meeting with Haig or Garment or the various lawyers ended with the query: Is it all out yet? To which the invariable answer was that no one knew. It was impossible to guess what other obscure staff member had sought to prove his dedication by extralegal or improper activities. For nearly two months the torrent of revelations seemed unending.
Amon
g the most startling was the disclosure that Nixon had been tape-recording all his conversations since early 1971. I learned about it a few weeks after Haig took over as chief of staff. He told me to be careful about anything I said in the Oval Office; it contained a voice-activated tape-recording system.
Only Haldeman and Alexander Butterfield, his deputy who operated the system, seem to have known of its existence. Even Ehrlichman appears to have been kept in the dark. The idea was first suggested when Nixon found in the White House a taping system installed by President Johnson. He had it removed then, but he obviously looked more favorably on it as he found himself engulfed in leaks painting him as the villain of the Administration. (He forgot that Johnson’s system was controlled from the President’s desk and thus permitted selectivity before, during, and, if necessary, after a conversation.) Some taping seems to have taken place also during the Kennedy period.4
Nixon’s tapes were made to be deposited in the Nixon Presidential Library for the use of future researchers. Haldeman has written that Nixon’s motive was to protect himself against associates who might seek to disavow discussions in which they had participated. It was a high price to pay for insurance. Insofar as the Cambodia incursions gave impetus to his decision, I was apparently an unwitting cause as well as target. The purpose was to prevent me from emerging as the “good guy” on decisions in which I had taken part.5 Obviously, Nixon had no idea that his own style of conversation, the degree to which the romantic and the real merged in his mind, would place him in jeopardy — not so much legal as historical. Even men less complex than Nixon might have trouble surviving so pitiless and literal a record as years of transcribed offhand comments or extended conversations separated from context — especially after the witnesses who might explain their real significance have passed from the scene. Since the tapes were activated by sound, the system was beyond the control of even its originator. This was ironically symbolic of a White House mood that had run essentially out of control: an excess of faith in mechanical procedure compounded by a literal-mindedness that, assigned the task of producing a record, did so with a vengeance — in a manner certain eventually to destroy the image Nixon was so passionately cultivating.
Years of Upheaval Page 17