In terms of constant dollars, defense spending in 1973 was actually $10 billion less than it had been in 1964 before the Vietnam war began. The draft had been ended and our defense forces were numerically lower than at any time since before the Korean war. Yet the Senate was moving to cut overseas troop strength by nearly 25 percent—without demanding any corresponding cuts by the Soviets. We were winning only narrowly in the congressional appropriations battle for the Trident nuclear submarine and the other important weaponry we needed to give us leverage in SALT.
During the past three years I had sent Congress seven proposals dealing with energy policy and legislation. Congress had not yet acted on any of them. This inaction, I warned, was keeping us at the mercy of the producers of oil in the Mideast, and I asked that immediate attention be paid to this vitally important area of national and international concern. The message described many of the more than fifty bills and programs that I had sent to Congress in 1973 alone and that had been ignored or brushed aside. These included a new federal housing program; proposals for trade reform; proposals for tax reform, particularly in the form of property tax relief for the elderly; environmental bills; education, health, and human affairs bills; and bills relating to crime prevention and control.
On August 22 I announced that I would nominate Henry Kissinger to succeed Bill Rogers as Secretary of State. On September 22 we held the swearing-in ceremony in the East Room, and after Chief Justice Burger had administered the oath, Kissinger talked about our discussion five years earlier during the transition—my insistence that we should not be hampered by preconceptions, or avoid any new departure in the effort to bring peace. He said our objective—achieving a structure of peace—was the same today as then:
We mean a world which had not just eased tensions but overcome them; a world not based on strength but on justice; a relationship among nations based on cooperation and not equilibrium alone.
Then he added movingly:
There is no country in the world where it is conceivable that a man of my origin could be standing here next to the President of the United States.
During this period I took stock of the situation within the White House staff. What I saw disturbed me, but I had no solution. Despite my determination that it should not happen, Haig had become bogged down in Watergate; it was like quicksand pulling him back each time he tried to get free to work on foreign and domestic policy problems.
Al Haig, I am sure, would be the first to acknowledge that he ran a very protective White House. It probably would have surprised the press corps to hear the assessments from Cabinet and staff that beneath Haig’s far more affable and accessible exterior he was in many ways a more rigid administrator than Bob Haldeman. In fact, Haig purposely set out to structure this kind of White House operation because he felt that during the first term we had made our big mistakes over little things. Watergate was the most obvious case in point: if it had been handled effectively at the outset, it would never have reached this point. Haig was determined not to let this kind of mistake happen again. To prevent it, he drew more and more authority and responsibility to himself.
One problem that Haig had to deal with immediately was that the morale of the White House staff had begun to sink seriously. For many it was a case of sheer physical exhaustion: people who had been used to working ten-hour days were now working twelve and fourteen and seventeen hours a day, trying to handle their own work as well as pitching in on Watergate. But there was also a growing sense that no matter how hard we worked or what we did, we did not gain any ground. Each answer to each charge simply led to another charge requiring another answer—Watergate had become a bottomless pit. We now had a Watergate staff of twelve pitted against the opposition’s two hundred. We had no comparable task forces of researchers and investigators to challenge theirs. We needed a well-planned overall strategy, but our lawyers were pulled from case to case with little time to think much beyond the next day’s tactics. And I knew that among my lawyers and staff as well there was already a haunting uncertainty about the truth: they recognized that some of my defenses did not hold up to good logic or common sense, and they were naturally reluctant to go out on a limb to expound them.
John Connally soon became disenchanted with his role at the White House. We had planned to match his duties to his talents, but because of Watergate there was never time, and his actual duties as Counsellor to the President remained undefined. While we were in San Clemente in June, Connally told me that he would be leaving before long. He said that he was still supportive but he felt that he had to move on. I tried to talk him into staying, but my heart was not in it; I could not ask a man I liked and respected—and who I hoped would succeed me in the White House in 1976—to tie himself to my troubles.
In a parting press conference Connally told reporters how he felt about their attitudes toward me. “I frankly feel like at this moment if he flew to the moon that you all wouldn’t give him credit for courage,” he said. “You would say he was fleeing out of fear.”
I was also concerned about signs of dissatisfaction in Shultz, Laird, and Harlow. Shultz was discouraged by the downturn in the economy and disillusioned by my handling of Watergate. I considered him one of the ablest members of the Cabinet and asked him to stay on. He did for six months, but finally he said, “I can’t, Mr. President. I’m just pooped.” I understood. I could not bring myself to urge him to continue to go through the fire that was raging around us. Laird and Harlow felt I was not consulting with them enough on Watergate. There were two reasons that I did not like to discuss the subject with them. First, I felt that it was important for as many people on the staff as possible to stay away from Watergate; second, it was simply a painful subject for me to discuss with anyone. After a while it became easier and easier for me to rely solely on Haig, Ziegler, and the lawyers in dealing with Watergate, even though I knew that this further contributed to the frustration and isolation felt by Laird, Harlow, and others.
On August 29 District Judge John Sirica ruled against us in the Special Prosecutor’s suit for nine tapes. No court had ever before in our history compelled a President to produce documents that he had determined not to surrender. Because of the principle of separation of powers, a court can issue an order, but a President has a right—and some scholars would argue, a responsibility—not to obey that order if it infringes on the prerogatives of his independent branch of government. I felt then, and I feel now, that it was fully within my power to refuse to obey Sirica’s ruling. In any other case, that is what I would have done. But I recognized the political reality of the Watergate situation, and instead of defying Sirica’s order on constitutional principles, I decided to observe the regular procedures of the judicial system and appeal his decision to a higher court.
From the first time that the idea was suggested to me, I had objected to the creation of an independent Watergate Special Prosecutor. For one thing, I thought it was a slap at the ability of the Justice Department to do the job; for another, it was all but inevitable that under the warm glow of press attention and adulation by the Washington establishment, prosecutorial zeal would assume a life of its own.
Unfortunately, in my April 30 speech I had said that I was giving Elliot Richardson “absolute authority to make all decisions bearing upon the prosecution of the Watergate case and related matters.” I had, in essence, and as events turned out, put the survival of my administration in his hands. From the time Richardson’s confirmation hearings as Attorney General began it was clear that the Senate would hold his nomination hostage until an independent Watergate Special Prosecutor was appointed. Richardson felt compelled to yield to the pressure and began conducting a search for a candidate to fill the position. It took him two weeks and several refusals before he finally selected Professor Archibald Cox of the Harvard Law School.
If Richardson had searched specifically for the man whom I would have least trusted to conduct so politically sensitive an investigation in an unbiased way, he c
ould hardly have done better than choose Archibald Cox. The Washington Post described Cox as having “longstanding ties to the Kennedy family.” The Boston Globe reported that he had actually been recommended to Richardson by Teddy Kennedy. During the 1960 campaign Cox had been in charge of preparing John Kennedy’s position papers; he had been a Muskie alternate delegate at the Democratic National Convention in 1972; and he publicly acknowledged that he had voted for McGovern. In a newspaper interview only two weeks before his appointment Cox had caustically criticized John Mitchell as “insensitive” to the importance of civil liberties and mentioned that he had sharp “philosophical and ideological” differences with my administration. When Kissinger learned of the Cox appointment he was shocked. He told me, “Cox will be a disaster. He has been fanatically anti-Nixon all the years I’ve known him.”
Cox was sworn in as Special Prosecutor on May 24. Teddy Kennedy and Mrs. Robert Kennedy were among his guests at the ceremony.
The Special Prosecutor was supposed to supervise the investigation into Watergate and initiate prosecutions if they were justified or required. But shortly after his appointment in May, Cox may have subconsciously revealed his ultimate intention when he told reporters that his great-grandfather had taken part in Andrew Johnson’s defense against impeachment. The news reports noted that he smiled as he observed that this family history was “a funny little quirk—or I should say, could become a funny little quirk.”
Appointing Archibald Cox was bad enough. But Richardson then compounded the mistake by approving a charter for the Special Prosecution Force that, instead of limiting its responsibility to the area of Watergate, gave it virtual carte blanche to investigate the executive branch. Because of the arm’s-length position that we had to observe if the Special Prosecutor was to have any credibility as an independent investigator, we had no role in formulating this charter, which began quite properly by granting him full powers in “investigating and prosecuting offenses against the United States arising out of unauthorized entry into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate.” But then it went on to include “all offenses arising out of the 1972 Presidential Election for which the Special Prosecutor deems it necessary and appropriate to assume responsibility, allegations involving the President, members of the White House staff, or Presidential appointees, and any other matters which he consents to have assigned to him by the Attorney General.” In addition the charter extended full authority for conducting grand jury proceedings, determining whether to grant immunity, initiating prosecutions, and framing indictments. The Special Prosecution Force was granted virtually unlimited funds, and there was no time limit placed on its activities. It was specifically stated that the Special Prosecutor could be removed only if he were to commit “extraordinary improprieties.”
I was shocked and angry when I learned the extent of this charter. Haig talked to Richardson, who insisted that the phrases “allegations involving the President” and “members of the White House staff or Presidential appointees” should be read only in connection with the earlier reference to the 1972 presidential campaign. Of course, it did not work out that way, and Richardson later conceded that he had not foreseen the problems that would arise from giving the Special Prosecutor such unrestricted power.
It did not take long for my worst fears about the Special Prosecution Force to be realized. Of the eleven senior staff members Cox chose, seven had been associated with John, Bobby, or Teddy Kennedy. They included a former Special Assistant to Ramsey Clark, who also served as the head of George McGovern’s task force on crime, a former Democratic congressional candidate, and a researcher and speechwriter for Sargent Shriver. The Chicago Tribune reported that only one of the top ten staff men was a Republican.
The partisan attitude that permeated the top ranks of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force was exceeded by the fervor of the junior members of its staff, most of whom were brash young lawyers intoxicated with their first real taste of power and with the attention being paid to them by a flattering and fawning press. Reports came back to me of arrogant young men using unsubstantiated charges to threaten and intimidate my personal friends and members of my staff.
Immediately after Cox was appointed, he began his inquiries about White House files. On May 30 he asked about the status of eight files; on June 5 he added six more; on June 11 he wrote asking for the tape of the April 15 conversation with John Dean that I had mentioned to Henry Petersen; the same day he asked for an inventory of twelve files. Then he requested my daily appointment logs covering all my meetings with fifteen different people; then he asked for ITT materials; and then narrative testimony from me. In July there was a leak caused by his staff that he was starting to look into the purchase of my house in San Clemente to see if any union, corporate, or campaign money had been used. His staff asked for information on government wiretapping and tried to call Secret Service agents to find out the details of their operations. Cox himself acknowledged that this went overboard.
Even though Cox’s charter presumably restricted him to the 1972 campaign, he launched an investigation into 1970 campaign funds. He began investigating Secret Service personnel for their handling of demonstrators at rallies even as Richardson pointed out that the Justice Department was already defending some of the men involved in civil actions arising from these incidents. Ranging still further afield, Cox investigated the Plumbers and then launched an investigation of Bebe Rebozo.
By October 12, four months after the Special Prosecutor took over the case that the Justice Department had said was already 90 percent completed, they had brought only one indictment, and that one did not even relate to Watergate. It did not take long to see that they interpreted their power to investigate “all offenses arising out of the 1972 Presidential Election” to mean primarily those alleged to have been committed by the Nixon camp. For example, in 1974 the Special Prosecution Force let the statute of limitations lapse on a campaign fund-raising violation committed by Democratic Finance Chairman Robert Strauss. When a similar situation arose with our Finance Chairman Maury Stans, they asked the court for a waiver of the statute to prevent it from running while proceedings were pending.
No White House in history could have survived the kind of operation Cox was planning. If he were determined to get me, as I was certain that he and his staff were, then given the terms of their charter it would be only a matter of time until they had bored like termites through the whole executive branch. The frustrating thing was that while I saw them as partisan zealots abusing the power I had given them in order to destroy me unfairly, the media presented them and the public largely perceived them as the keepers of the sacred flame of American justice against a wicked President and his corrupt administration. Whenever I tried to state my point of view, I was inevitably discounted as being self-interested and self-serving. I could not imagine any other President allowing a man who derived his authority from the White House to use that power independently to conduct a partisan inquisition at the administration’s expense. I certainly did not intend to be the first. Thus, by fall a clash was inevitable, and, thanks to the charter Richardson had given him, Cox was so powerful that the outcome was far from predictable.
AGNEW ACCUSED
Ted Agnew’s problems with the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore had remained a peripheral concern of mine ever since April 1973, when Haldeman had first mentioned to me that Agnew was afraid of being embarrassed by the investigations under way there.
In June Elliot Richardson had informed Haig that serious allegations were being made about Agnew; by the middle of July the vague allegations had become a series of specific charges that Agnew while governor of Maryland had taken money in return for granting state contracts. There were also charges that he continued to receive money in return for these past favors while he was Vice President. Agnew was convinced that the young Baltimore prosecutors were out to make a name for themselves at his expense; he pointed out that one of them had worked in Muskie’s 197
2 campaign—a credential that hardly bespoke detachment.
By the end of July Haig had another report from Richardson. This time it was unequivocal. Haig quoted Richardson as having said that he had never seen such a cut-and-dried case. He said that Agnew was potentially indictable on more than forty counts.
On August 1 Richardson sent Agnew a letter informing him that he was being investigated on allegations of conspiracy, extortion, bribery, and tax fraud. When Haig told me this, I felt that it was time for me to become involved. I arranged to meet with Richardson on Monday, August 6; I asked Buzhardt and Garment to see him before this meeting because I wanted their independent analyses of the case against Agnew. I knew that we were dealing with political dynamite and that I had to be scrupulously careful about the information I was receiving and how it was assessed. After their meeting with Richardson, Buzhardt and Garment sent back gloomy evaluations: they agreed with Richardson that this was one of the most solid cases they had ever seen.
John Mitchell had already sent word to me that Agnew felt that Richardson was out to get him. Agnew remembered that Richardson had opposed his nomination in 1968, and he pointed out that they had disagreed repeatedly on policy matters during meetings of the Domestic Council. Agnew also was convinced that Richardson saw himself as a potential presidential candidate.
Half an hour before my meeting with Richardson on Monday morning, August 6, the White House press office received the first inquiry about rumors that the Vice President was under investigation. We knew that it would be only a matter of time before the story broke.
After a general review of the allegations against Agnew, Richardson told me that the witnesses were believable and in some cases had irrefutable documents. He said there were accusations that the payments had continued through the vice presidential years. Objectively I recognized the weight of Richardson’s evidence, but emotionally I was still on Agnew’s side. I wanted to believe him. I told Richardson that I expected him to assume full responsibility for seeing to it that Agnew was not railroaded by biased U.S. Attorneys and a predatory press corps.
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