For a moment his round eyes in his boyish face grew wide. “At the bugging incident?” he asked, slightly choked.
“No, you were in Florida weren’t you?” I said, and laughed out loud.
“Did you mean was I at the Watergate, Mr. President?” he repeated as he, too, started to laugh.
“Oh, I’ll tell you,” I said, adding that somebody should say the arrested men were just trying to win a Pulitzer Prize.
When I went into the press conference on the afternoon of June 22, there were two things about Watergate I was prepared to say: that no one in the White House had been involved in the break-in, and that I absolutely believed John Mitchell’s statement denying that he had known anything about it. Of the seventeen questions asked that afternoon, only one involved the break-in, and my prediction about it turned out to be completely accurate:
Q: Mr. O’Brien has said that the people who bugged his headquarters had a direct link to the White House. Have you had any sort of investigation made to determine whether this is true?
A: Mr. Ziegler and also Mr. Mitchell, speaking for the campaign committee, have responded to questions on this in great detail. They have stated my position and have also stated the facts accurately.
This kind of activity, as Mr. Ziegler has indicated, has no place whatever in our electoral process or in our governmental process. And, as Mr. Ziegler has stated, the White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident.
As far as the matter now is concerned, it is under investigation, as it should be, by the proper legal authorities, by the District of Columbia police, and by the FBI. I will not comment on those matters, particularly since possible criminal charges are involved.
On Friday, June 23, 1972, I had breakfast with Jerry Ford and Hale Boggs, who were leaving on a trip to the People’s Republic of China. After breakfast I went to the Oval Office and Alex Butterfield, one of Haldeman’s assistants, brought in several routine papers and documents. Then Haldeman came in as he did every morning, unhurried, ready to begin the day.
We talked about the schedule for Kissinger’s return from China that afternoon and about plans for a meeting with Rogers. Then we turned to what Haldeman referred to as the “Democratic break-in thing.”
All the good news of the previous day had gone bad, and we were back in what Haldeman called “the problem area.” The FBI, he said, was not under control because Acting Director Pat Gray did not know how to control it, and the investigation was leading into some productive areas. In particular, the FBI was apparently going to be able to trace the money after all. “And it goes in some directions we don’t want it to go,” Haldeman said. As I understood it, unless we could find some way to limit the investigation the trail would lead directly to the CRP, and our political containment would go by the boards.
Haldeman said that Mitchell and John Dean had come up with an idea on how to deal with this problem. Dean was a bright young man who had worked at the Justice Department until 1970, when he succeeded Ehrlichman as White House Counsel. In this capacity Dean had the responsibility for keeping track of and attending to any legal problems affecting the President or the White House.
As Haldeman explained it, General Vernon Walters, the Deputy Director of the CIA, was to call Pat Gray and tell him to “stay the hell out of this . . . business here. We don’t want you to go any further on it.” The FBI and the CIA had a longstanding agreement not to interfere in each other’s secret operations. Haldeman said that this call would not be unusual. He said that Pat Gray wanted to limit the investigation but simply didn’t have a basis on which to do so; this would give him his basis. Haldeman said that this would work well because the FBI agents on the case had already come to the conclusion that the CIA was involved in some way.
Haldeman explained that unless something was done, the money would be traced to the contributors who had given it and from there to the CRP. I asked what the contributors would say if they did not cooperate with the investigation—they would have to say that they had been approached by the Cubans. I asked if that was the idea. Haldeman said it was if they would go along; but that would mean relying on more and more people all the time, and the plan to call in Walters would prevent having to do that, and all it would take to set the plan in motion would be an instruction from the White House.
I asked how Haldeman planned to handle it and then observed that we had protected CIA Director Richard Helms from a lot of things. Helms had rarely approached me personally for any kind of assistance or intervention, but I remembered the visible concern on his face less than a year earlier over the possible publication of a book by two disaffected CIA agents. Helms had asked if I would back up legal action by the CIA, despite the fact that there would be cries of “suppression.” I had told him that I would.
I mentioned Hunt; he had been involved in a lot of earlier CIA operations, including the Bay of Pigs. I postulated an approach by which we would say to Helms and Walters, “You open that scab and there’s a hell of a lot of things.” I told Haldeman to say that we felt it would be very detrimental to have the investigation go any further, alluding to the Cubans, to Hunt, and to “a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.”
I asked again what had become an almost ritual question: “Did Mitchell know about this thing to any much of a degree?”
“I think so,” Haldeman answered. “I don’t think he knew the details, but I think he knew.”
I said I was sure that he could not have known how it was going to be handled—that had to have been Liddy. Haldeman speculated that the pressure on Liddy to get intelligence might have come from Mitchell.
“All right, fine, I understand it all,” I said abruptly. “We won’t second-guess Mitchell and the rest. Thank God it wasn’t Colson.”
Haldeman reassured me that the FBI, after interviewing Colson, had concluded that the White House had had no role in Watergate; they were convinced it was a CIA operation. I said that I was not sure of their analysis, but I was not going to get involved.
“You call them in. Good. Good deal,” I said as we brought our discussion of the subject to a close. I told Haldeman to “play it tough,” because that was the way the Democrats always played it “and that’s the way we are going to play it.”
We moved on and talked about the resignation of our Chief of Protocol, a congressional effort to attach a Social Security benefits increase to the bill extending the temporary national debt ceiling, the devaluation of the British pound, the media coverage of my press conference, and busing. Then I came back to the idea to call in Helms and Walters. Howard Hunt clearly provided the best justification for approaching Helms. Hunt’s CIA background would give Helms and Walters a plausible reason for going to the FBI; and Hunt’s involvement in the planning of the Bay of Pigs would give Helms added incentive.
I thought back again to the time I had instructed Ehrlichman to ask Helms for the CIA’s files on the Bay of Pigs, and the Diem assassination. I remembered how he had been unwilling to give them up. Even after I had personally requested that he do so, the Bay of Pigs report he turned over to us was not complete. I saw that Howard Hunt would give us a chance to turn Helms’s extreme sensitivity about the Bay of Pigs to good advantage. I was not sure whether the CIA actually had any bona fide reasons to intervene with the FBI. There was enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that they might. But, in any case, Howard Hunt would provide a good way of suggesting that they do so. If the CIA would deflect the FBI from Hunt, they would thereby protect us from the only White House vulnerability involving Watergate that I was worried about exposing—not the break-in, but the political activities Hunt had undertaken for Colson.
I was concerned that Haldeman handle the matter deftly. I did not want him to strong-arm Helms and Walters, nor did I want him to lie and say there was no involvement. I wanted him to set out the situation in such a way that Helms and Walters would take the initiative and go to the FBI on their own. I told Haldeman
to say that I believed this thing would open up the whole Bay of Pigs matter—to say that the whole thing was a sort of comedy of errors and that they should call the FBI in and say that for the sake of the country they should go no further into this case.
After this half-hour meeting with Haldeman I held a ninety-minute session on the economy and then conducted several brief ceremonial meetings. When I had finished, I buzzed for Haldeman to come in again. I wanted him to understand that I was not interested in concealing Hunt’s involvement in Watergate from Helms and Walters or even from the FBI; in fact, I said that he should level with Helms and Walters and tell them that we knew Hunt had been involved in Watergate. But then he should point out that the whole Cuban involvement in Watergate would make the CIA and Hunt look bad; and the whole thing might possibly reopen the Bay of Pigs controversy, and that would be bad for the CIA, for the country, and for American foreign policy. I also did not want Helms and Walters to get the idea that our concern was political—which, of course, it was. However, I also did not want Haldeman actually to misrepresent to them that our concern was not political. He should simply say that our concern was because of “the Hunt involvement.”
When Haldeman came back from his meeting with Helms and Walters that afternoon, he said that he had not mentioned Hunt at the outset. He had simply raised the possibility that the FBI was exploring leads that would be harmful to the CIA and to the government. Helms had volunteered the information that he had in fact already received a call from Pat Gray expressing fear that the FBI investigation had run into a CIA operation. Helms said he had told Gray that there was nothing that the CIA knew of at that point, but Gray had asserted that that was what it looked like to him.
Haldeman said he had gone on to point out that the problem was that this matter would track back to the Bay of Pigs and to people who had no involvement in the Watergate matter except by contacts or connections. That was when he mentioned Hunt. At this point, Haldeman said that Helms got the picture and said he would be happy to be helpful but would like to know the reason. Haldeman said he made it clear to Helms that he was not going to get specifics but rather generalities. It had been left that Walters would go to see Gray and take care of the matter. It seemed that our intervention had worked easily. As far as I was concerned, this was the end of our worries about Watergate.
During the remaining few days in June when I discussed the Watergate break-in it was mainly to express my irritation that nothing seemed to be happening to settle the case and remove it from the public eye. Until that was done the media and the Democrats would continue to batter us with it. On June 26 I asked Haldeman if there was any way to get the people involved to plead guilty so that the White House could forget about the case and not have it hanging over us. I asked who was keeping track of the situation for us. He told me that it was being watched by John Dean, John Mitchell, and others.
Haldeman said that guilty pleas would have to await the indictments, and the indictments were being delayed because the FBI kept investigating and uncovering new things. But, he said, we could hope we had turned that off. Later in the day Haldeman said that one of the problems was that the CRP had used the men involved in the Watergate bugging on other standard intelligence and political projects as well. Otherwise, he said, we could cut them loose and sink them without a trace. Haldeman said that he did not know what the other projects were.
For all my concern about Mitchell’s vulnerability and despite occasional doubts by me and others about the extent to which he might have been involved, I was still basically convinced of his innocence. I assumed that he had known about the campaign intelligence operations in general, but not about the bugging in particular.
On June 28 I said to Haldeman that, as I understood it, Mitchell had not known specifically about the bugging. Haldeman answered that, as he understood it, that was correct. The next day I said my hunch was that one of the lower-level people at the CRP had said to Mitchell that they were trying to get information. That was standard political practice by both sides. Mitchell would have assumed that they were talking about planting an informant and said, “Don’t tell me anything about it.” Instead, they had gone and bugged the DNC.
On Friday morning, June 30, a newspaper story attributed to unidentified sources said that Howard Hunt’s safe at the White House had been opened and among the contents turned over to the FBI were the architectural plans of the DNC offices, wiretapping equipment, and a gun. Ziegler immediately checked the story and found that there had been an unloaded gun. But there were no such plans, and the so-called wiretap equipment was a walkie-talkie. Haldeman said that some other things in the safe had been handled at a high, discreet level in the Bureau. I asked why Hunt had a safe at the White House if, as I had been told, he had not actually worked as a consultant for several months. Haldeman said that he had simply left these things behind. At one point Haldeman said that the whole thing was so ludicrous that Dean had not discounted the possibility that we were dealing with a double agent who purposely blew the operation. Otherwise it was just too hard to figure out.
I was surprised because this story indicated that the FBI was still going after Hunt. I had thought that they were going to keep away from him as a result of Haldeman’s meeting with Helms and Walters. Haldeman said that apparently Pat Gray did not know how to follow through. The U.S. Attorney’s office at the Justice Department was pushing hard, making it difficult for them to limit the investigation. I said that Walters should go see the Justice Department officials, too.
The story about Hunt’s safe raised my concern that Colson might have had something to do with Hunt on the bugging project. But once again Haldeman said that Colson had told the FBI “the straight truth” —that he had worked with Hunt only on matters totally unrelated to the bugging.
Haldeman had informed me the day before that Liddy had been fired from the CRP after he refused to talk to the FBI investigators; Liddy had understood that this would happen and agreed to it. I asked again whether Haldeman thought Mitchell knew in advance of Liddy’s bugging plans. Haldeman said he did not think Mitchell had known specifically but that Liddy had worked on general intelligence and counterintelligence activity for Mitchell. I observed that such practices were standard in campaigns.
Then Haldeman told me that Gordon Liddy had once worked at the White House on narcotics problems for Bud Krogh on Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council. Haldeman was not sure whether it was just Hunt or Liddy too who had worked on the Pentagon Papers investigations. I said that these were perfectly legitimate projects, and we went on to other things.
Later in the day Haldeman told me about the latest ideas for dealing with the Watergate matter. Liddy was going to write a “scenario” that would tie together all the loose ends: he would take responsibility for planning the entire Watergate operation and say that no one higher up had authorized it. As for the money used to finance his activities, he would explain that he had obtained it by cashing a check that he was supposed to have returned to the campaign contributor who wrote it. When I asked why Liddy had in fact been given this campaign check, Haldeman said that apparently Liddy was supposed to have converted it into cash in Mexico, exactly as he had done, but then had gone the further step of using it for his own covert operation. Haldeman said that they had not yet worked out how to handle the issue of Hunt’s role.
I told Haldeman that I really believed that Mitchell was telling the truth—that he had not known. Haldeman agreed that he had probably ordered an information-gathering operation, not knowing that bugs were going to be planted.
I expressed my hope that some Cuban motive could be retained in our explanations of the origins of the break-in. I said that the story had to be true to some extent—why else would the Cubans have risked so much? Most of all, I urged Haldeman to move quickly on the whole matter. We should cut our losses and “get the damn thing done.”
I was particularly concerned that Colson not get dragged in, which was almost bound to happen i
f the investigation continued as an endless fishing expedition. Haldeman, however, said that the problem went beyond Colson, because Hunt and Liddy were tied to Krogh, and all of them were tied to Ehrlichman and his aide David Young.
I replied that if this connection was because of our Pentagon Papers investigations, there was nothing the matter with that. Haldeman said that it was the investigation itself—“the process,” he called it—that was the problem. I asked what he meant. He said again that it was just “the process” that they had used. I did not pursue the question, but I repeated emphatically that in my view, it was perfectly all right.
My thoughts turned back to Liddy. Earlier I had asked Haldeman about his family, and Haldeman said that whatever needs they had, we would take care of them. Haldeman ventured that if Liddy were saddled with a very long sentence—which would clearly be unfair when measured against all precedents—we could wait a discreet interval and then parole or pardon him after the election. I agreed.
As the meeting was ending, I came back to the matter of Liddy’s confession and urged that we get it over with. It would involve the CRP, and I didn’t like it. But it wouldn’t cripple us in the campaign; the Bobby Baker scandal had not hurt Johnson’s margin. “You can’t cover this,” I said to Haldeman, adding that the best thing was just to get the guy in charge to go ahead and accept the blame. “It’s just such a ridiculous goddamn thing,” I said.
Shortly before I left Washington to spend the week of July 4 in California, Colson and I talked again about the exaggerated news coverage that was being given to the break-in. In sheer exasperation, I said it would help if someone broke into our headquarters and did a lot of damage—then we could launch a counterattack. Colson agreed and pointed out that several of our campaign files actually had been missing. I re-emphasized my desire to get the break-in off our backs because of the impression it would leave, if it lingered, that the White House had ordered bugging and snooping. I observed that Bobby Kennedy had actually done it; but we could not afford even the impression of having done it.
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