The Wars of Watergate
Page 68
The White House found ways to excuse even the character and language of the transcripts. White House speechwriter Father John McLaughlin criticized any notion that the tapes were amoral or immoral as “erroneous, unjust [with] elements of hypocrisy.” He thought the President’s language in the tapes constituted “good, valid, sound … emotional drainage.” McLaughlin ecstatically celebrated the President’s suffering as “beautiful,” and insisted that “the more he suffers the more he becomes believable to me.” Such feelings were not shared by all clergymen. Billy Graham, more in sadness than in anger, could not “but deplore the moral tone implied in these papers.” He was dismayed that the prevailing school of “situational ethics” had infected the highest levels of government. Later, Graham sadly reflected that perhaps he had been “used” to bolster the President’s moralistic image.20
Nixon himself realized the damage the tapes might inflict on his carefully nourished image as a moral, upstanding leader. The first drafts of the typed transcripts came to him for editing, and he deleted references to Jesus Christ, changed “god damn” to “damn,” and made marginal notes by way of explanation. For example, at one point in an April 14, 1973 conversation, Ehrlichman said, “pardon?” Clearly, the aide meant “pardon me,” and was not asking about pardon for Watergate offenders, but Nixon himself wrote in the interpretation. Nixon later received some help in expurgating the transcripts from an unexpected quarter when House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino deleted scurrilous references to Italians and Jews.21
In the midst of his travail, some old friends held fast for the President. One told him that he remained loyal “100% rain or shine” and offered two prescriptions: plenty of rest and daily exercise. A law-school friend, Rose Mary Woods’s lawyer, sent word that the Judiciary Committee would be “afraid” to vote for impeachment. Clare Boothe Luce, a prominent and vocal Republican partisan, thought Nixon “should hang on.” She complained that Kissinger received credit for anything good that happened, while Nixon had responsibility for anything that went wrong.22
Editorial opinion widely condemned the President and weighed heavily in the growing coalition ranged against him. The Chicago Tribune, the conservative authority in the nation’s heartland and an ardent Nixon supporter, in a May 9 editorial captured the anger directed against a president who had lowered the dignity and standards of his office. “He is humorless to the point of being inhumane. He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane. He is willing to be led. He displays dismaying gaps in his knowledge.” This was no liberal media conspiracy assaulting the President; it was his own people, painfully expressing their outrage and sense of betrayal. No liberal media conspiracy wrote the words heard on television and printed in the newspapers; they were the President’s own.
The tapes released at this point did not yet provide a “smoking gun” irrefutably linking Nixon with an impeachable crime—at least not for his band of loyalists. But they certainly revealed a sleazy, troubled White House. Things had come to such a point that the burden of proof shifted. The legal and constitutional case for impeachment still had to be made, yet the tapes unleashed a chain reaction of public opinion that increased pressure for Nixon either to prove his innocence, or resign, or suffer the consequences of impeachment.
As the House Judiciary Committee met on May 9 to consider the impeachment resolutions, Congressman John Anderson (IL), chairman of the House Republican Policy Conference, called for the President’s resignation. John Rhodes too thought Nixon should consider that option. Melvin Laird again warned his Republican friends to be “careful” and “cautious” in their support of the President, anxious as he was that they not be embarrassed. For Caldwell Butler (R–VA), a conservative member of the Judiciary Committee, the tapes demonstrated that Nixon had to bear responsibility for his actions. Butler found the President to be “a pretty tough-minded thinker,” one who knew the right direction and considered the right options. Yet, Butler said, “he missed the boat; quite obviously, he missed the boat.” The President’s family believed that the tapes showed how he had been manipulated by his aides, who controlled every situation. But Butler in his own mind had specifically rejected any notion that Nixon had been victimized by unscrupulous supporters.23
Alexander Haig appeared on several news programs following the release of the tapes. On ABC’s Issues and Answers on May 5, he emphasized the need to quell criticism and bring Watergate to an end. He signalled that the House Judiciary Committee had sufficient evidence to bring their inquiry to a conclusion. But the committee did not agree. On May 15 it issued subpoenas for yet more tapes and presidential diaries, and those materials, Rodino told St. Clair, would be the basis for even more demands. In a May 22 letter to Rodino, Nixon firmly refused to comply, although he again offered to accept written interrogatories and to be examined under oath by Rodino and Hutchinson. Rodino declined on May 30. The House alone, he said, had the power to conduct an inquiry and determine what evidence was relevant. Now, he said, the committee had to decide whether to draw “adverse inferences” from the President’s refusal and whether that action itself constituted an impeachable offense.24
After releasing the tape transcripts, the White House issued fewer denials of presidential involvement and instead sought to direct public attention toward the question of whether Nixon’s actions justified impeachment. The President’s support among loyal House Republicans greatly depended on how he responded to the impeachment inquiry. Julie Nixon Eisenhower visited some House members and received hard lessons in institutional loyalty, a loyalty that rivaled, perhaps exceeded, any that House members might have for her father. The congressmen urged the President to comply with the Judiciary Committee subpoenas and to make more material available to the ranking members and the Chief Counsel for both parties. Julie Eisenhower understood that the representatives would have little basis for supporting her father in an impeachment vote “unless they see all the evidence which they feel fits in the category of a legitimate area of inquiry.” They emphasized to her that the issue transcended partisan lines—“even Republicans,” she noted, “sincerely believe compliance necessary, above and beyond politics.”25 The President had heard from his most trustworthy source: the issue had transcended partisan lines; the “enemies” were no longer just the familiar ones.
Senator James Buckley’s defection underscored the President’s serious problems with his conservative constituents. The Republican conservative wing devoutly believed that the nation preferred a rightward course; with equal fervor, many of them believed that Richard Nixon had betrayed what they called the conservative “mandate of 1968.” His rapprochement with the Chinese Communists, his imposition of wage-and-price controls in 1971, his support for détente with the Soviet Union, and his consequent reduction in military spending, periodically sparked revolts on the part of the conservatives. In the summer of 1971, twelve leading conservatives had announced an indefinite “suspension of support” for the President. This led to Congressman John Ashbrook’s insurgency in the 1972 primary campaign. But little else had happened, other than bitter attacks by conservative ideologues on their own leaders, including Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, for steadfastly supporting the President.
As Nixon’s Watergate troubles deepened, conservatives began boldly to express their contempt. In December 1973, Human Events, a leading spokesman for the cause, referred to the President as “our ceremonial chief of state.” Conservatives cared little about Nixon personally, it seemed; he disturbed them deeply, however, with his attempts to appease liberal critics by supporting their programs. Thus Goldwater in March 1974 publicly warned that such efforts were futile; in the meantime, the Senator thought that Nixon’s budget only contributed to the current inflationary spiral.26
The President’s own conservative advisers grew disenchanted. Patrick Buchanan recalled that he disagreed with more than half of Nixon’s program. In foreign policy, the conservatives believed that Henry Kissinger had filled a vacuum of power while the
President found himself distracted by Watergate. Suspicions that Kissinger was really a Soviet agent, under the nom de guerre of “Colonel Boar,” floated throughout right-wing circles and eventually into the higher echelons of the intelligence community. James Jesus Angleton, head of counterespionage in the CIA, reportedly “objectively” believed Kissinger to be a Soviet spy. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who resigned from the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of his dissatisfaction with the Administration, thought that Kissinger, true to the “dynamics of history,” believed that the Soviet Union eventually would surpass the United States and that it was best for the U.S. government now to arrange the best deal it could. Zumwalt specifically referred to the “deliberate, systematic, and unfortunately, extremely successful efforts” of Nixon and Kissinger to conceal their “real policies about the most critical matters of national security.” Others heaped scorn on Kissinger’s grasp of the issues. “The master delusion of our time,” columnist M. Stanton Evans wrote in March 1972, “is the idea that Henry Kissinger actually knows what he’s doing.”
As such beliefs gathered momentum, the President found little help from conservative quarters. Conservative organizer Howard Phillips charged in April 1974 that Nixon’s main “ambition had been toward becoming a President and not being one.” At the same time, other conservatives anticipated the Buckley announcement, anxious for the preservation of the “mandate of 1972,” which they felt was endangered unless Nixon resigned. The President also threatened the conservatives’ moral self-image and commitments; James Kilpatrick, for example, denounced the “record of cynicism and amorality” demonstrated in the tapes. Shortly after the release of the transcripts, Nixon prepared for a summit in the Soviet Union. For conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., the prospect was too much. He quoted liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits, who accused the President of playing “impeachment politics.” Buckley believed that Nixon had been “morally fleeced” by the Soviets; now, he was so anxious to bolster his image, Buckley thought, that he might be ready to give the Russians the U.S. Marine Band.
Occasionally, however, Nixon still received some comfort from the Right. As late as May 1974, William Buckley believed that Nixon should destroy tapes to protect his office. Even if the nation concluded that such action proved guilt, and even if it resulted in impeachment, Buckley thought, it would save the presidency. Besides, with no tapes, the charges would remain inconclusive.27 (The President’s moral critics apparently claimed no monopoly on morality.) Still, by May 1974, a good part of the conservative establishment had abandoned the President.
The publication of the tape transcripts coincided with that of advance excerpts from a long-awaited book by two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had written extensively on Watergate since the June 17, 1972 break-in. Early in April 1974, Playboy magazine published the first excerpts from All the President’s Men, nearly two months prior to the appearance of the book. The Playboy excerpts were widely reported throughout the media.
After the book appeared in June, it received extensive attention, generally gaining good notices for the reporters’ role (and the Washington Post’s) in ferreting out and publishing the Watergate story for nearly two years. Some prominent reviewers criticized the authors’ tendency to favor the style of a detective story rather than seeking the introspective level of historical analysis, and critics questioned as well Woodward and Bernstein’s failure to address any of the ethical deficiencies of their investigative reporting, including offering of bribes, illegally gaining access to telephone numbers, and talking to members of the grand jury. One reviewer lamented the barrenness of ideas and essentially boring quality of the reporters’ narrative; still, he somehow praised the work as “authoritative.”28
All the President’s Men certainly had its shortcomings, but in a sense they became virtues that promoted the book, dramatized the story, and compounded the perils of Richard Nixon. The authors’ purported reliance upon an unnamed individual cleverly tagged as “Deep Throat” for information on the inner workings of the Nixon Administration, as well as the attribution of pungent, salty observations to unidentified Administration officials, gave the work a special intimacy and appeal. However self-serving or exaggerated the work, it undeniably gave an added impetus to the growing understanding and awareness of Watergate. Newspapers throughout the nation serialized the book, giving it an enormous audience. Within weeks of its publication in June, All the President’s Men was a best-seller, and it remained so throughout most of the summer. In an important sense, the book offered a journalistic brief to the nation as it prepared to understand and judge for itself the impending formal bill of particulars against the President of the United States.
As John Dean recounted his story to the prosecutors in April 1973, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert realized that he must consider the possibility of indicting the President of the United States. He asked an aide to research the constitutional issues involved in that step. The conclusion: “practical reasons” suggested that no president should be indicted without first allowing the process of impeachment to run. Silbert’s aide contended that a president might forbid any government attorney from signing an indictment (an argument that anticipated those who believed that the Special Prosecutor, as an executive officer, was subject to presidential command). Furthermore, a president might pardon himself pending trial. In any case, an indictment could devastate the nation, especially if a president insisted on maintaining office—and he could be convicted and still sit pending impeachment. Finally, the precedent of indicting the Chief Executive might be capriciously invoked by “irresponsible or politically motivated” prosecutors. Instead of indictment, the report to Silbert suggested naming President Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator or having the grand jury make its report and the evidence available to the public and the House of Representatives. With the advent of the Special Prosecutor, Silbert left the case, but transmitted the report to Archibald Cox.29 The possible scenarios may have been exaggerated, but again, such were the times.
The report to Silbert chiefly relied on practical considerations; after all, no precedents existed for prosecuting a sitting president. In early January 1974, researchers in the Special Prosecutor’s office came to substantially similar conclusions. But in this office the staff and senior officials were not as sanguine that the House of Representatives would carry out its responsibilities for impeachment. Indeed, references to the “ponderous nature of impeachment proceedings,” the “painfully slow rumination of impeachment allegations,” and the “tortuous course inherent in impeachment” reflected a belief in the Special Prosecutor’s office that the criminal-justice course provided the quicker, more practical method of dealing with presidential misbehavior. Philip Lacovara, a Jaworski aide, concluded that the Special Prosecutor’s office could not “totally abstain from coming to grips” with the possibility of presidential involvement—either through providing evidence to the House of Representatives or in a criminal proceeding.
But the prosecutors had practical problems of their own. Henry Ruth, deputy to both Cox and Jaworski, noted that the Special Prosecutor’s evidence and witnesses would be involved in any House proceeding, thus presenting “the possibility of interference with our own investigations and trials.” Ruth believed that if they did not immediately aid the then-forming House Judiciary Committee staff with evidence, they could find that pending criminal cases might preclude any assistance to the impeachment process. Ruth took seriously recent assertions by both Nixon and Haig that the President never would resign; he thought decisions had to be made on that basis, “and we must face the choices of action immediately.” He was convinced that the White House intended to exclude the Judiciary Committee from evidence provided to the Special Prosecutor. Indeed, St. Clair had forwarded tape transcripts with the understanding that the material would remain secret to all but the grand jurors and the Special Prosecutor. Jaworski thought that furnishing information to the House committee might v
iolate a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. Yet withholding the evidence would effectively throttle the impeachment inquiry. Coupled with a decision not to indict, the result would be to subject subordinates to the criminal process while permitting “the boss,” as Ruth described Nixon, “to walk free among us with undisturbed wealth and dignity.” No impeachment, no indictment, Ruth concluded, offered damaging precedents for the future of presidential accountability.30
By February 12 Jaworski had received what his staff called the “clear and compelling prima facie evidence of the President’s participation in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.” The staff now moved more aggressively for a grand-jury indictment or presentment. Those making the recommendation to Jaworski believed that the Special Prosecutor had “overwhelming public support for committing the decision of the President’s criminal guilt or innocence to the traditional processes of law enforcement.” By their oath, the grand jury, too, had an obligation not to allow anyone to go free out of “fear, favor, affection, reward or hope of reward.” Finally, the staff urged the preservation of the rule of law and the necessity for maintaining the longstanding principle that “no man in this country is so high that he is above the law.” The Special Prosecutor’s staff concluded that the responsibilities and character of impeachment were utterly unique and independent from those of the criminal process. They no longer would accept the “responsibility” for leaving the determination of the President’s guilt or innocence exclusively to the “political” process in a judgment of impeachment. The advocates of divorcing the criminal proceeding against the President from the impeachment proceedings forcefully stated their conclusion: “We and the Grand Jury do not exist merely for the purpose of assuring that debate on impeachment is fully informed.” In other words, merely transmitting the evidence to Congress no longer was adequate. Prosecutors prosecute.