While Nixon regarded his trips as an attempt to “restore some respect for the office as well as the man,” he had few illusions about their effectiveness in distracting attention from the “merciless onslaught” besieging him. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, however, dramatically sought to mark Watergate’s corrosive effects on foreign policy when he threatened to resign because of a New York Times editorial charging that he had lied to congressional investigators about his role in authorizing wiretaps of his aides. In a stopover in Salzburg, Austria, on June 11, Kissinger said he would not have his “public honor” discussed. With his credibility in question, he found it impossible to conduct foreign policy. If the matter were not cleared up, he warned, “I will resign.” The President apparently dismissed Kissinger’s predicament as an amusing ploy. “A Times editorial is not a charge,” he told Haig. He nevertheless assured Kissinger of his support. He also reinforced himself during the journey to the Mideast, convinced that his “terrible battering” over Watergate was “really pygmy-sized” compared to what he had done for world peace.32
The President’s journey came on the heels of a cease-fire arrangement between Israel and Syria. The Gallup poll showed a three-point rise in Nixon’s approval rating, and by the end of June, support for his removal had declined from 48 to 44 percent of polled respondents, with 41 percent opposing such action.
The Mideast visit also rekindled some optimism in Nixon. Banking on the euphoria of the trip, the President and his supporters believed that a combination of Republicans and Southern Democrats could stave off impeachment in the House. Haldeman and Haig both conveyed a buoyant confidence to the President. Joe Waggoner (D-LA), a longtime congressional supporter, told Nixon he would not be impeached as long as the Supreme Court did not hold him in contempt. According to Nixon’s memoirs, his family’s confrontations with the media over Watergate troubled him most. He ignored the fact, however, that his attempts to use his family in his defense put them at risk.33
At the end of June, Nixon flew to Moscow to meet with Leonid Brezhnev. Criticism from conservatives in both parties mounted, fearful as they were that the President would fail to bargain effectively because of his political weakness, even desperation. Critics deplored his willingness to engage in further arms agreements with the Soviets and also prodded him to press Moscow for the release of Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger insulted the President at a National Security Council meeting, when he proposed a SALT agreement that assured overwhelming American nuclear superiority.
The effect of Watergate on other affairs of state is elusive; even the President had his moments of confusion. At one point he said that his domestic problems severely damaged his ability “to defuse, or at least to circumvent” the opponents of détente. Yet at other times he readily denied the effects of Watergate and thought that limiting détente might serve his domestic political needs. Nixon did not secure any agreement on offensive nuclear weapons, but he carefully refrained from blaming that on Watergate. “I think that it came out about right,” he remembered. It was just as well that we had not reached any agreement on nuclear weapons, he wrote, because an agreement would invite opposition from “some of our best friends prior to the impeachment vote.”
By the time Nixon returned from the Soviet Union on July 4, he realized that he had serious problems in the House of Representatives. The President discounted his aides’ optimism. He canceled a speech that would have summarized the development of détente. Was Nixon afraid of alienating his right-wing supporters? Certainly, his well-honed political instincts told him that “on some subsurface level, the political tide was flowing fast, and flowing against me.”34
James St. Clair finally appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on behalf of the President in late June. Members desperately trying to find a way to support the President had eagerly anticipated the lawyer’s appearance. Flowers expected St. Clair to contrast sharply with the tedious performances of Doar and Jenner, and Cohen thought that St. Clair opened with a skillful presentation. But both quickly realized that St. Clair made a damning mistake in his first appearance when he introduced a partial tape transcript that the committee long had sought without success. The tape had been subpoenaed, but the President had not complied. Outraged, Cohen thought that in one brief moment St. Clair had totally nullified his earlier effectiveness. Butler was equally annoyed. He thought that St. Clair had been “trifling with us. When he has the things in his safe and just dribbles them out,… it’s just unprofessional.” Flowers deplored the tactic but acknowledged that St. Clair was handicapped by lack of cooperation from the White House. The President’s most ardent liberal antagonists, such as Waldie and Elizabeth Holtzman, openly assailed St. Clair. A broader array of Democrats argued that his presentation had gone beyond the factual and had provided conclusions, contrary to the committee’s rules.
From another perspective, Richard Cates thought that St. Clair had failed to grasp what may have been the last opportunity to save the President. In no way did St. Clair appeal to sympathy or humanity in pleading Nixon’s cause, nor did he attempt to elicit any responses of compassion and understanding—responses that might have kindled latent support for the President. St. Clair’s reputation for “all case and no cause” haunted him. Overall, among committee members, especially Republicans, the feeling was that he had offered many conclusions, but little in the way of exculpatory evidence.35
During St. Clair’s presentation, Rodino conducted the proceedings with his customary calmness and evenhandedness; indeed, for many of the liberals he may have been too evenhanded. But Rodino perhaps sensed that St. Clair had done the President little good and might even have clinched the case against him. Following St. Clair’s appearance on June 27, Rodino said in the presence of reporters that all twenty-one Democrats would vote for impeachment. The remark touched the raw nerves of conservative Southern Democrats who were not yet ready to commit themselves, either in or out of the committee. Rodino took the floor to deny his statement. Interestingly, Hutchinson, sensitive to the courtesies of the House, promptly defended Rodino, while committee member Hogan, one of the most politically calculating of the Republicans, who had his eye on the Maryland gubernatorial race and who later voted for impeachment, denounced the entire inquiry as “biased” and “unfair.” Rodino, in predicting a partisan vote to impeach, also may have been guilty of simple inattention or of unwillingness to confront reality, for some of his Democratic colleagues, including Flowers, Jordan, Mann, and Thornton, complained that the case against Nixon had not been made and criticized Doar’s “slow movement.”36
After extended discussions with Doar and St. Clair, and among themselves, the committee members finally agreed in July to hear additional testimony from nine witnesses. Alexander Butterfield appeared to discuss the President’s work habits. He portrayed Nixon as the man in charge; Haldeman and other aides did nothing without the President’s knowledge, and Haldeman himself was nothing more than “an implementer.” St. Clair tried to discredit Butterfield, but the testimony fit the image the President himself had fashioned in his various image-building efforts. Nixon’s lawyers had more success in insulating the President when Fred LaRue testified that John Mitchell knew money had been paid to the burglary defendants. St. Clair and several Republican congressmen focused on the President’s knowledge of events, something LaRue knew, or would admit to knowing, nothing of. The procedural limitations of the committee hearings were all too apparent. When Cohen questioned LaRue about raising money from Thomas Pappas, LaRue denied doing so but acknowledged that he had seen Pappas for other reasons. Cohen’s time for questioning then expired, and no one else pursued the question of why LaRue met with the shadowy Pappas—“the Greek bearing gifts,” as Dean and Mitchell had described him.37
Mitchell, then preparing for his own trial, appeared, but his lawyer warned the committee that Mitchell would have to be selective in his answers. Mitchell’s’ most important revelation i
nvolved a February 1973 visit from Richard Moore, then a White House special assistant, who was personally close to Mitchell. Moore had been deputized—by whom specifically was never revealed—to visit Mitchell, discuss the forthcoming Senate Select Committee hearings, and request his aid in raising money for the Watergate burglars. Mitchell refused, according to his own version of events.38
Once again, John Dean provided the most interest and generated the most heat. For more than a year Nixon’s defenders had argued that Dean was a loose cannon, that he had instigated and carried out the cover-up on his own, to protect himself and a few others—but not the President. Charles Colson later testified that Dean ran the cover-up, even exerting pressure on Colson to cooperate in the effort. Dean admitted to St. Clair that Nixon did not specifically instruct him in the cover-up, but the former aide insisted that his conversations with Haldeman and Ehrlichman demonstrated both “concern and instructions” regarding the cover-up; “it was not quite willy-nilly, as you have tried to portray,” Dean retorted to a hostile questioner. After he returned to the White House from a Far East trip just after the break-in, he investigated matters for Haldeman and determined that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Magruder, and Strachan all were “vulnerable and I felt that it was my responsibility to assist.” Congressman Butler had been trying to determine the moment of “conception” of the cover-up; for himself, Dean said that had he stayed in Manila, he might not have been “raped.”39
Dean’s appearance provided dramatic evidence pointing to the erosion of the President’s public standing. After Dean testified for the Ervin Committee in July 1973, opinion-poll respondents narrowly expressed a belief that Nixon had been more truthful. A year later, by a 46–29 margin, they found Dean to be the more credible.
Henry Petersen vigorously defended the early stage of the Watergate investigation by the Justice Department, and, for the record, noted the U.S. Attorneys’ role in exposing the cover-up. Petersen’s most devastating remarks centered on his trust in the President and his willingness to share privileged information with him. The tapes, of course, revealed that Nixon had improperly provided his aides with Petersen’s reports; the President’s own words, together with Petersen’s testimony, offered a substantial case for obstruction of justice.40
Under St. Clair’s prodding, Charles Colson said that the President had no advance knowledge of the break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. He cited a tape transcript of his telephone conversation with John Ehrlichman in which he had recommended that executive privilege be waived and that the President appoint a Special Prosecutor, recommendations that Colson claimed Ehrlichman had not relayed to Nixon. He also claimed that Dean opposed a Special Prosecutor unless the new appointee reported directly to him.
Colson revived the finger-pointing that had characterized Oval Office discussions in early 1973. He claimed he told the President to urge Mitchell—“the guy who was responsible”—to come forward “and take the consequences.” At that point—mid-February 1973—Colson said, Nixon responded angrily, insisting that “I am not about to take an innocent person [Mitchell] and make him a scapegoat.”
Colson also raised what came to be another favorite White House explanation of events: the CIA had played a decisive role in the events of Watergate. By December 1973, Colson believed that the CIA and the Hughes Tool Company had “unexplained connections” to the affair. He discussed his theory with the President and then talked to Haig about it. As they concluded their conversation, Haig phoned Nixon and relayed the message to Colson that his chief would not harm the nation’s foreign policy, yet the President encouraged Colson to dig further and “be careful to get the facts first.” Colson concluded that the White House would do nothing. He remembered Haig saying, “Chuck, we may [g]o down and be impeached, but we simply can’t drag down the Government of the United States with us.” That remark apparently confirmed Colson’s faith in the CIA conspiracy theories, but he did not question Haig’s shadowy role. In later years, he described Haig as “loyal” to the President, but “never unmindful of his military background.”
Colson’s hints tantalized. He reminded the committee that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had spied on the President; why not then believe the CIA had undermined Nixon? (Colson eventually acknowledged that internal spying was widespread: Nixon had used both Haig and Colson to spy on Kissinger.) The President, furthermore, could not “crack down” on the military, “because of what they knew and what they had taken”—a dark hint, never really pursued by the committee. It was not Colson’s last attempt to till revisionist soil.41
The House Judiciary Committee Democrats, supported by Hutchinson and Lott, two of the President’s most committed defenders, decided to hear the witnesses in executive session, ostensibly because their testimony might jeopardize pending cases. Most Republican members objected to closing the proceedings, with McClory reminding the Democrats that many people believed they could not impeach the President in the open.42 But the secret testimony proved rather tepid, except for that provided by Colson and Butterfield. Much of it reiterated what had been tendered to the Senate Select Committee the previous summer. Unlike the Select Committee’s senators, the House members had little opportunity to develop any line of inquiry in depth; moreover, the committee and its staff had no inclination for further investigation. A year earlier, Howard Baker had established the basic criteria for determining the meaning of events: what did the President know, and when did he know it? The answers—for some, at least—lay embedded in the tapes, and they had been dissected and analyzed in microscopic detail by the staff. By then, Richard Nixon was the most relevant witness.
As the witnesses testified, the committee released more than 4,000 pages of evidence, including St. Clair’s rebuttal. The staff also issued a separate document detailing its corrections and additions to the White House transcripts. In his June 27 presentation to the committee, St. Clair repeatedly remarked that different people would make different transcriptions, given the poor quality of the tapes. As if anticipating some difficulty, St. Clair stressed that transcribing the tapes had become “quite an art.” He also gave the impression that the White House had been overly severe in its rendition, as he noted that the committee’s transcripts “are more favorable to the President than our own.” But the committee found significant discrepancies in the Administration’s transcripts; the White House versions had not in fact been less favorable. For example, the committee found a clear indication in the March 13, 1973 tape that Nixon had rejected the “hang-out road”—that is, a full revelation of the truth—in a conversation with Dean. Again, in his March 22, 1973 talk with Mitchell, the President repudiated Eisenhower’s scrupulous standards for the conduct of subordinates; more important, in this exchange, he told Mitchell to “stonewall” and to take the Fifth Amendment. In other ways, it is true, the committee’s transcripts spared the President. Specifically, Rodino and Hutchinson agreed to delete some of the President’s racial and ethnic slurs, although leaks eventually made many of them public. The arbitrary omissions troubled members from different parts of the political spectrum.43
The release of the committee’s version of the tapes resulted in another publicity disaster for the White House. One staff member, who assisted Buzhardt in listening to the tapes, gave Haig a detailed rebuttal. He admitted that few of his changes had significance, but he contended that the committee’s decision to offer its own version was “terribly prejudicial” in itself. He also knew that the White House could not quibble with the transcripts so long as Nixon refused to release tapes and let the public itself judge. The President himself knew the meaning of his predicament: “this innocent discrepancy,” he realized, made him “look both sinister and foolish.”
One presidential speechwriter complained to Haig that the White House had permitted the public to believe that the committee’s transcripts amounted to “the King James version of the tapes—infallible and devinely [sic] inspired.” Altogether, he lamented, the White House had been p
laying “catchup ball, leading with our chin, and letting the opposition shape the news.” The President needed a more vigorous “political defense,” otherwise his legal defense was meaningless. The glory days of 1972 offered instruction: “we waxed McGovern,” by repeating over and over the attacks on the Democratic candidate’s vulnerabilities; the same was needed for Nixon’s enemies within the committee. The pliable “enemy,” as always, was the media: convince the public that coverage was excessive and that consequently any impeachment or trial would be unfair. A “ ‘sick and tired of Watergate’ ” theme, the aide believed, might be the most powerful weapon for the Administration. White House publicists and legislative-liaison staff played that message hard in the materials they transmitted to friendly members of the committee. But, above all, the speechwriter concluded, Nixon himself must lead the charge; only his personal leadership could provide the people with “a reason to believe in and trust the President.” He had to win both respect and sympathy. It was not to be: by now, Richard Nixon had abandoned the field to surrogates.44
Vice President Ford remained dutiful, despite warnings from his aides to maintain distance between himself and the President. On July 12, a day after the House committee made its evidence public, Ford stated that the “new evidence as well as the old evidence” exonerated Nixon. Ford may have been obtuse, as some critics charged, but he apparently had no knowledge of the extent to which the White House had played with the evidence. For example, the White House and the Special Prosecutor both furnished the committee with copies of Ehrlichman’s handwritten notes. But the White House compilation included nearly double the number of blank pages, including ones that in the other copies of the same notes described the conversations between Nixon and Ehrlichman respecting the Ellsberg prosecution.45
The Wars of Watergate Page 73