Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

  Actually, he realized, he could use Henry to keep the focus on last night’s triumph.

  “Did you see all the grateful kisses and hugs Dr. Kissinger got from the wives and girlfriends last night? I think he got kissed by a couple of the men, too.”

  Kissinger knew that any reciprocation of levity was, in this instance, out of the question. In responding, he even injected a quaver into his guttural growl. “I have never been more moved in my life, Mr. President.”

  “You may have noticed,” said Nixon, his eyes on some bookshelf high above the group, “that there was no head table last night. The greatest honor that could come to me, I thought, would be dining with all of our guests. You know,” he said, lightening things up again, and wishing he could be gone from this table, “the whole thing was really Sammy Davis’s idea. He was here a couple of months ago and he suggested a big entertainment for the men as soon as they were up to it. Pat loved the idea, but said ‘no girlie shows.’ I mean, from the start we knew that Bob Hope would be the ideal emcee, but the occasion seemed too special for a USO kind of thing. Even so, did you see Joey Heatherton there last night? God bless her. And I’ll bet Henry wasn’t the only one to notice the Playboy gal that one of the guys brought as a date.”

  “There’s a picture of her in the Post this morning,” said George Shultz.

  “The Post isn’t all bad,” added Weinberger.

  After a few seconds of laughter, the men seemed to remember that the appointment of Mrs. Armstrong with cabinet rank had added a woman to the room. They quickly reined in the locker-room talk, and the president changed the subject. “So, Elliot, is it hard to remember where you’re supposed to sit?”

  Richardson was still in the defense secretary’s chair, but an hour from now he would be sworn in to the attorney general’s job—his third cabinet position in six months.

  “It’s only a difference of subject matter,” he replied, repeating a line Nixon had heard him give to the newspapers, which quoted it as if Richardson were goddamned Noël Coward.

  “Well, we know you’ll do a first-rate job. After all, you’ve already managed to do something—twice—that I’ve never accomplished.” Pause for a beat, the way Hope had taught him to, long ago. “Carry Massachusetts!”

  Everyone laughed and then at last got ready to drone through the agenda, fully aware they were working for a president who didn’t believe in cabinet government to begin with, and who, before Watergate began to swallow him, had been intent on combining their domains into three or four super-departments. In less than an hour the meeting was over, with only three of the secretaries having uttered a word.

  “Gentlemen, lady,” said Nixon, rising from the table. “A pleasure, as always.” He left the room alone.

  Those remaining milled about for a minute or two, relieved to be no longer getting on the boss’s nerves. They exchanged stories about last night or, more quietly, swapped the few bits of inside information they’d been getting from Republican staffers on the Ervin Committee. Senator Baker, the ranking minority member, was so eager not to appear the president’s man that only a trickle of leakage had been coming from the GOP side. “I think you need a new set of Plumbers,” Connally was telling Shultz. “This time to loosen the faucets.”

  Haig was supposed to escort Richardson to the Oval Office for a short meeting with Nixon before the swearing-in. The chief of staff had never liked Elliot, not since the first days of the administration, when they were both vying for Kissinger’s favor. But only for the last three weeks had Haig actively detested him, after discovering on his first day in the White House that Attorney General designate Richardson—before his confirmation hearings, let alone a vote!—had taken it upon himself to okay the placement of FBI agents outside the offices of the just-fired Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The Old Man had nearly died of apoplexy when he came in the morning after his speech and saw his ex-aides’ papers being guarded. He’d even shoved one of the poor guys on the detail. Haig, furious himself, had managed to get the G-men out of the West Wing, but when Nixon learned of Richardson’s role in the matter, the president had been curiously passive, so cowed by circumstance that he acted as if Elliot were just doing his job, no matter that the job wasn’t yet his to do.

  “I thought that little flag was marvelous,” Richardson now murmured to Haig, struggling for small talk as they walked the colonnade to the Oval Office. “The plaque, too.”

  “He got another little token of esteem from one of the POWs—a card he’s carrying in his breast pocket.”

  “Oh?” said Richardson.

  “Yeah,” said Haig. “A handwritten note that says ‘Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down.’ ”

  Richardson allowed himself an amused chuckle, as if, Haig thought, he were appreciating a clever locution from the lower orders.

  “Elliot?” he asked, as the Marine opened the door to the office.

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you try not being one of the bastards?”

  As he took his position at the front of the East Room—to warm applause from even the press—Richardson looked around for James O. Eastland, who a couple of weeks before had convulsed his colleagues with laughter when he asked his first question at the confirmation hearing: “Mr. Richardson, have you ever heard of the Watergate affair?”

  Too bad Eastland didn’t seem to be here today. Greeting him might put one more layer of gloss on Richardson’s reputation for exhibiting respect to just about anybody, and a reference to that comic moment in the hearing might ease the tension of this swearing-in. The president had issued an aggressive statement on Watergate only three days ago. It contained seven denials, six of which Richardson suspected were mendacious in the extreme. When Ziegler had gone to the press room after the statement’s release, he’d been nearly eaten alive.

  Now, while hearing the president describe him as “a man of character, one of the finest men ever to be named attorney general,” Richardson caught the eye of Ted Kennedy, whose presence today, a home-state courtesy, clearly displeased Nixon. Nevertheless, the president looked straight at the senator, opened his rictus of a grin, and repeated his joke about not carrying Massachusetts.

  Chief Justice Burger extended a robed arm and directed the nominee and his wife to their places. Richardson could not help but wish that Anne had shed five pounds in advance of all this, or at least worn a darker color for the occasion. But as Burger recited the oath’s repeat-after-me clause, the new attorney general found his thoughts turning to the biggest ham in the whole drama. Sam Ervin, not present here today, was nonetheless threatening to steal what from this point on ought to be Richardson’s show. The only matter that had disrupted the confirmation lovefest was the senator’s insistence upon being able to grant witnesses before his Watergate committee whatever immunity he saw fit—thus increasing the chance that Ervin would get to the bottom of things before Richardson himself.

  The applause following his “so help me God” lasted longer than it would take Richardson to deliver the three sentences of remarks he had prepared. While the clapping subsided, he looked at Agnew’s high, shiny forehead and decided that as soon as he got over to DOJ he would find out what was up with any investigations into the VP, whose transgressions were still rumored to be much simpler and more old-fashioned—a matter of kickbacks and cash—than anything to do with Watergate.

  “… in order to do a job worthy of my predecessors, as well as the American people.”

  He stepped back from the lectern to the most sustained applause yet, and exchanged nods with Nixon.

  Do your job, my boy. It may take you all the way.

  The president returned to the microphone for a single moment to make a joke that sounded like the work of Buchanan: “There’ll now be a reception in honor of the new attorney general down the hall in the State Dining Room, and I hope all those who do not have any matters pending before the courts will be able to attend.”

  The ensuing laughter was fairly robust, and Nixon d
eadpanned his way through it, practicing show business, thought Richardson, the way he must once have tried playing football: via earnest application of the playbook, without any brawn or natural talent.

  Could it actually be the rotors of the helicopter he was now hearing? Would Nixon be departing for his latest Florida sojourn without even clinking glasses? One could hardly expect him to stick around for Archie Cox’s swearing-in as special prosecutor this afternoon, but skipping the reception for his own new AG? That appeared to be the case. Only halfway down the hall to the dining room, the president had stopped at the staircase, and his traveling companions—among them Haig and Miss Woods—seemed to have quit the scene. Incredible: their boss was descending the first stair-step to the floor below, from which he would exit to the helicopter.

  Nixon paused only when Kennedy’s extended hand entered his vision.

  “Ted,” he said, turning around as if pleased.

  “Mr. President,” said Kennedy, who pointed to Richardson beside him. “I’m afraid Elliot will be putting up with more of us Kennedys at the Justice Department in an hour or so. My sister-in-law Ethel is coming over to hear Cox take the oath. General Richardson here has been thoughtful enough to schedule the ceremony in the office Archie used to occupy when he served under my brother Bob.”

  Nixon’s hand, through with shaking Kennedy’s, went back into his pocket and visibly clenched into a fist. “Good, good!” he exclaimed, as if the chosen location at Justice were a capital idea and the more Kennedys the merrier. The rictus opened again and Richardson noted how a cap on one of the president’s front teeth seemed infinitesimally whiter, and curiously more sincere, than the rest of his smile.

  Cox of course pushed every irritating button on Nixon’s thin, ever-crawling skin: Harvard, the Kennedys, all of it. But who, Richardson had asked himself, was better credentialed? And what choice, really, did the president have? I’m not sure you need a special prosecutor … But whatever you want.

  Kennedy withdrew, leaving Richardson just enough time and space for the briefest private word with Nixon.

  “I can only repeat what I said weeks ago, when you honored me with this appointment, Mr. President. There’s no ‘they’ out there. No one’s out to destroy you, and we’ll get to the truth.”

  Nixon smiled and took a second step down the stairs. “Will you be having a second reception over there?” he asked. “For Cox? You know, Martha redid the whole dining room at Justice. Her idea of Colonial Williamsburg, or something like that. Drove Mitchell crazy!”

  With a last wave, he was off to Key Biscayne.

  “How dare he make love to me and not be a married man!”

  Julie Eisenhower looked up from her embroidery and laughed at Ingrid Bergman’s reaction to this revelation about Cary Grant.

  Pat joined in. She and her younger daughter were the only two people really paying attention to the movie. Eddie and Tricia had gone out to the patio; David was flipping through a magazine, and Rose was dozing. Dick, just in front of Julie, had his glasses far down his nose, eyes trained on a legal pad. They’d all been here in the Florida house since mid-afternoon, too exhausted from the celebration last night to do any more than they were doing now.

  What an operation it had been! When she first recommended they use her strawberry mousse recipe for the dessert, she hadn’t imagined its being prepared by the barrelful over at the Pentagon. For weeks in advance of the dinner, she and Lucy Winchester and the girls in the East Wing had had to scrounge china from every department of the government; the resulting mismatches hadn’t been too bad, except for the awful stuff from Justice that looked like pewter.

  Well, better Martha’s china than Martha herself. It had been a real relief not to have her over at the State Department yesterday afternoon when the Cabinet wives gave a tea for the wives of the POWs. To think that not so very long ago she would have been there, sloshed and squawking, gobbling up all the attention. Not that the ladies of the press had themselves paid much attention to the purpose of the tea. Sure as shooting, all the questions had been about Watergate, until one of the POW wives interrupted to ask if the reporters wouldn’t like to hear what the guests thought of the great president who’d managed to secure their husbands’ release.

  Did they ever find out who that gal was? Pat didn’t want to wake Rose by asking, but she made a mental note to get the name and to handwrite the woman a thank-you letter.

  The sight of Rose with her mouth half open provoked a feeling of tenderness. God, she had danced up a storm last night! For once there’d been no need for the younger staffers to go on “wallflower patrol” in search of the shy or unaccompanied. People were grabbing one another like it was Times Square on V-J Day.

  For a week ahead of time, absolutely everybody, from the ushers’ staff to the kitchen potato peelers to the volunteers in the correspondence office had been keyed up with an excitement she couldn’t remember for any other event they’d hosted. Even a couple of secretaries who she bet secretly regarded the POW pilots as the worst “baby-killers” of all couldn’t help but feel moved by their homecoming.

  Turning her attention back to the movie, Pat felt that she could, in all seriousness, understand Ingrid Bergman’s position here. If only Tom Garahan had been married! The whole affair (she still hated the word) would have been easier, because it would never have gotten started in the first place: it would have been beyond the pale. How odd that she should be the only one in this room, or in Washington, to know of his existence. Or was she? Had Hoover perhaps started a file back in ’66? She wouldn’t put it past his reach or his appetite.

  Dick flipped a page of his legal pad more loudly than necessary—the kind of thing that had made her grind her teeth ever since the girls were babies. But she needed now to be much more than annoyed. She needed to get titanically, openly angry with him, as she’d been only two or three times in the past thirty years. She needed to do it, soon, if she was going to get through what they were facing. She couldn’t fight his enemies, not to the finish, unless she first fought with him, got it out of her system, the way she had in ’62, when he made things hellishly worse than they needed to be.

  Last night they’d gone upstairs a little after midnight, and he’d kissed her before going off to the Lincoln Sitting Room. No Victory at Sea, thank God, so she’d been able to lie in bed a couple of doors down and hear, without interference, the strains of dance music from below. She’d felt almost peaceful.

  But an explosion—one that she would detonate, between the two of them—was coming. She could feel the signs of it the way an Eskimo can smell the approaching snowstorm. Even today, at that swearing-in, she’d felt fury rising inside her when he made that joke about people with “matters pending before the courts”—right in front of Kennedy!—after laying it on so much thicker than he’d needed to about Richardson. A “man of character” and all the rest. The weakness of it, the placating, had disgusted her.

  She was too restless to stick with this movie. She’d be better off going back to her book in the bedroom. But as she got up to do that, she saw Julie trying to catch her eye, motioning for the two of them to go out to the kitchen. Okay, she nodded, picking up an empty bowl of potato chips that could use refilling. What a pleasure to do such things, to make her own drink, whenever they were down here, the only place that wasn’t staffed up to the eyeballs. Not being waited on was like—being waited on.

  What did Julie want? Maybe there was baby news at last? When her daughter said nothing, Pat began the conversation by asking, “What’s your father working on?”

  “The yellow pad? Tallies. Which senators would vote to confirm Connally as secretary of state—if he finally lets Bill Rogers go.”

  “Well, that would freak out Dr. Kissinger, wouldn’t it?” asked Pat, replacing the cap on a bottle of tonic.

  “I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you about last night,” said Julie.

  “I know.” They’d both fallen asleep on the plane, and eaten d
inner in a tired silence.

  “Tricia and I went in and talked to Daddy in the Lincoln room last night. He was smoking his pipe,” she said, nervously laughing. “With his feet up on the hassock.”

  Pat didn’t know what to say. The pipe, the hassock—somehow it all brought to mind not Dick but Tom, whom she badly needed.

  “Mother, he asked us if he should resign.”

  Pat shook her head in disgust, not at Dick’s tormentors but at Dick himself. “What did you say?”

  “We said, ‘Don’t you dare!’ of course!”

  She lit a cigarette. “He was just letting off steam, Julie.” And, she thought, extracting testimonials to his worth and valor from his own daughters. She wanted to go back into the living room and tell him: For God’s sake, do that with Bebe; do it with Kissinger—but don’t do it with the girls.

  Her anger was caged but flying, like the doves at the reception yesterday afternoon. One of them had nearly gotten out.

  “What do I say the next time he asks?” wondered Julie.

  Pat crumpled an empty bag of chips and threw it into the garbage pail.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  Hidden beneath the pitifully thin pillow with its volume turned low, Hunt’s radio could make itself heard to his own ear without disturbing the snores of his cellmate or drawing attention from the lights-out guard. At ten p.m. the news announcer was still offering tidbits about last night’s POW dinner, making Hunt wonder, not for the first time today, whether his own time in jail might eventually exceed the median figure served by men in Hanoi.

  It was his first night here in Danbury. He’d been transferred up to Connecticut early this morning, in leg irons. The new prison promised to be a vast improvement over his D.C. dungeon. It had light and air and even a baseball diamond. But he’d been told to expect plenty of trips back to Washington, as a kind of commuter in chains, whenever the DOJ and Senate investigators needed to summon him. They’d have to rely on his memory, since his own papers were mostly destroyed or subpoenaed—whatever had been in the EOB safe; his desk in Potomac; his box at the bank; the file cabinet at Mullen.