Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

  And so now it was time to learn the identity of Agnew’s successor. Over the last two days, whenever reporters asked, Richardson had professed indifference to the prospect of being named vice president himself. The indifference, alas, stemmed mostly from the impossibility of its occurring. There would be a kind of banana-republican preposterousness in having one man serve as secretary of HEW, secretary of defense, attorney general, and then vice president in the space of ten months. And Agnew would be able to complain of a certain unseemliness should he be replaced by the man who’d removed him.

  But Richardson was not indifferent to whoever would be the president’s choice. In fact, he had fervent hopes that this lackluster office would go to one lackluster man in particular. It simply had to be Ford, he now thought, as he painted one of the sandpiper’s wing tips. Was his hand, he wondered, shaking with the intensity of his hopes for dumb, affable Jerry? Or was it the martini? He decided he would stop for the night; he needed to be on his game.

  Nixon wanted everyone caught up in the suspense he’d been creating about the choice, as if all the improvised hoopla would make people forget that he was having to choose at all only because he’d picked so badly the first time. Connally of course would be his heart’s desire now, but the Democratic convert was simply not confirmable, and the other “big” men, Reagan and Rockefeller, presented ideological problems. Rogers? wondered Richardson. High-minded (up to a point), but too much of a crony. No, if his own long-term strategy was to bear fruit, it had to be Ford, who would be acceptable, as the law demanded, to both the Senate and the House. Members of that lower chamber would see themselves in Jerry, and thus feel worthy and enhanced—just as Nixon had tried to make the state party chairmen feel “included” during the past forty-eight hours, conducting a pseudo-survey of their preferences on the VP question.

  The television now showed little Carl Albert, the Democratic speaker from Bugtussle, Oklahoma, who would remain next in line for the presidency until Agnew’s replacement could be sworn in. This was a matter of genuine worry. With the Israelis and Arabs at war again, one could at least count on Nixon to keep the combatants straight; Albert might be too sloshed to tell them apart. Rumors even had him in treatment.

  “Are you going to shave?” asked Anne, again at the door.

  “In a minute, dear.”

  Richardson was closing the paint box as the TV turned its attention to Rockefeller’s afternoon press conference. The governor spoke sorrowfully of Agnew—who had tried to get him into the presidential race in ’68—before commenting on his own vice-presidential prospects. They were nil, he claimed, since he didn’t want the job. “There’s an old South American saying that nobody climbs to the top on the dead bodies of his friends.”

  Really? thought Richardson. The quotation seemed too cumbersome to be a “saying.” Perhaps it sounded different in the original Spanish; or perhaps Nelson had concocted the line himself.

  The attorney general rose from his chair, turned off the television, and went up to the bathroom to shave, humming “Climb Every Mountain” as he ascended the stairs.

  Richardson and his wife entered the East Room at 8:45, passing under TV lights that stood on the edges of the room like giant flamingoes. Outside, on the White House lawn, the network reporters vamped and speculated through their live feeds, repeating the word “unprecedented” until it seemed a synonym for “routine.”

  As the Richardsons reached their seats, the attorney general looked at the Joint Chiefs and tried to remember the Marine Corps commandant’s name; he hadn’t, he realized, been secretary of defense long enough for it to register fully. He sat down next to his silver-haired successor in that post, Jim Schlesinger.

  “How goes Armageddon?” Richardson asked.

  Schlesinger frowned. Word had gotten out that he was on the carpet for not getting the Israelis resupplied fast enough against the Arabs, who looked as if they might succeed in driving the Jews straight into the Mediterranean. “Every hour I get a call from him telling me to hurry, move faster, get everything that can fly into the air. Well, if he doesn’t think this is going to provoke his pal Brezhnev, he’s kidding himself.”

  Richardson shook his head sympathetically as tiny Bryce Harlow, two inches shorter than Carl Albert, waved hello. The White House’s liaison to the Hill, another throwback to the Eisenhower years, had been part of the operation that pushed Agnew out, and there was an element of mutual congratulation in the smiles he and Richardson now exchanged.

  But the attorney general’s face fell when he noticed Jerry and Betty Ford sitting here in the room with the rest of the House delegation. Would it after all be someone else who came through the doors by Richard Nixon’s side? With a dismayed tilt of his head, Richardson pointed the Fords out to Anne. “Oh, dear,” she whispered.

  The Marine Band started in on “Hail to the Chief” just before 9:05 p.m. They might as well, thought Richardson, be playing it for whoever would enter with Nixon, so sure was that man’s eventual ascent to the presidency.

  But only Pat Nixon came down the center aisle with her husband.

  Richardson looked over at Ford and for one last time ran through the personal possibilities that depended on Jerry’s selection: Yes, Nixon had outlasted Agnew, but Nixon was going, too. And once he was gone, then it would be Ford who needed a vice president. And since he’d have come in under a cloud—owing his elevation to a man in disgrace—he would pick Elliot Richardson, the man who had brought Richard Nixon to justice via Archibald Cox. Elliot Richardson, the very perfume of probity, would take enough stink off Ford so that he could at least govern as a caretaker. But enough stink would cling to him to make his nomination in ’76 out of the question—at which point the penitential party would nominate Vice President Elliot Richardson for president.

  Nixon, now at the podium, looked less like a president than the host of an awards show, milking the suspense. After talking about all the qualities he had looked for in a new vice president, he announced that he had selected “a man who has served for twenty-five years in the House of Representatives with great distinction.”

  The applause swelled and all eyes, including Richardson’s, went to Ford. Anne grasped his hand in relief.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Nixon, just like Ralph Edwards on This Is Your Life, “please don’t be premature! There are several men here who have served twenty-five years in the House.” Pleased with his joke, he flashed that madly dissociative smile. Richardson had long suspected that Haig was lying, and that there’d been more than pneumonia to Nixon’s July hospitalization. The sight of this mirthless mechanical grin was doing nothing to change his mind. But his own relief was right now too enormous for him to dwell on the president’s mental condition.

  “I proudly present to you the man whose name I will submit to the Congress of the United States for confirmation as the next vice president of the United States, Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan!”

  Well, thank goodness, thought Richardson, returning Anne’s squeeze.

  The Fords moved from the audience to the front of the room, acknowledging the cheers like victors in a ballroom-dance contest. There would be, needless to say, no mention of Agnew, whose liquidation already included the removal, from the White House entrance hall, of any pictures he’d been in. Before long, Richardson mused, it would be the same for Nixon, whose name would not be uttered in this room, or this house, or on any GOP convention rostrum, for years to come.

  For the moment all was jolly. Even Ford was smart enough to understand the importance of his honest-Joe, regular-guy credentials. He reassured everyone in the great American viewing public that tomorrow morning would find him in Cedar Springs, Michigan, marching in the town’s Red Flannel Day Parade, same as he had for the past twenty-five years.

  As everyone laughed, Richardson could see at least three senators—Baker, Percy, and Hatfield—who would want the ’76 nomination for themselves. But that wouldn’t stop them from first having to vote him
into the front runner’s position, before very long, as Ford’s VP.

  He returned his eyes to the front of the room for an appraisal of Mrs. Ford’s proud, glazed expression. He knew that Anne, always over-vigilant about him, would be appraising it, too. He’d bet that at the reception starting a few minutes from now, the nominee’s spouse would limit herself to a glass of tonic water and then, once home in Alexandria, make herself a couple of stiff ones. He’d also wager that she’d be sleeping in tomorrow while Jerry flew off to Red Flannel Day.

  At least Nixon was willing to attend this reception, unlike the one for his new attorney general back in May. The Blue Room was full to bursting by the time the Richardsons made their way into it.

  Haig was chatting with Rose Mary Woods, who pointedly moved away when Richardson drew near.

  “That was a long day, Wednesday,” observed the chief of staff. “While you were taking care of things in Baltimore, over here we had first Mobutu and then the National Medal of Science winners. The witch doctor and the wizards.”

  Richardson smiled before saying, with a kind of pained wistfulness, “Agnew didn’t seem willing to shake my hand once it was over. I would have preferred things to end a little more civilly than they did.”

  “Elliot, he didn’t like shaking your hand before all that started.”

  It was true, of course. The two of them had fought on the Domestic Council, and even before that, Agnew had been furious with Richardson for leading a doomed little rebellion against his selection at the ’68 convention, when Richardson helped persuade a couple hundred delegates to vote against the race-baiting parvenu Nixon had chosen. Still, it didn’t have to be personal.

  “In fact,” said Haig, “Agnew used to do a mean imitation of you.” The implication seemed clear that the chief of staff had enjoyed watching it.

  Richardson and Haig had made useful common cause since July, when the attorney general had shown him the whole range of evidence against Agnew. For months after that, Haig had maintained a tough approach whenever Agnew complained—even to Nixon, on those rare occasions when he was granted a meeting—about the leaks coming from Justice. Through it all, both of them had tried to scare the vice president into quitting, jail or no jail, though if Agnew had known as much about Nixon’s guilt as Richardson now did, he might have held out longer, kept fighting even after Justice began threatening plump little Mrs. Agnew. Tough tactics, but the tax fraud at issue had been committed on a joint return—something Haig had noted as well.

  At this moment, however, in the Blue Room’s good-humored hubbub, it was clear that any alliance between Haig and Richardson was finished. For lack of another thing to say, the attorney general remarked: “Jim Schlesinger tells me he’s under a lot of pressure from the president about the airlift.”

  Haig replied with speed and spirit: “What the president is doing is bigger than Berlin in ’48, and just as important. It’s why Henry’s already left this party. Believe it or not, there’s still a Free World to lead.”

  Richard Nixon, who presumably should be allowed to continue leading it, locked eyes with Richardson from several feet away, but then pretended he didn’t see him. Haig also turned to someone else, leaving the attorney general stranded between two other conversations. Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador, was telling John Scali, the administration’s man at the UN, that the Fords would be “the first truly normal people to live in this house since the Trumans.” Dobrynin then, diplomatically, caught himself: “If it comes to that.” Not far away, Richardson could also overhear Betty Ford telling Mrs. George Shultz about Jerry’s promise to her to retire in ’77.

  She really didn’t get it, Richardson thought. She didn’t realize that between now and then there would occur a brief presidency that hadn’t yet started; that after tomorrow, for the next couple of years, there would be no more Red Flannel Days for Jerry to march in and for her to sleep through. Within months, maybe even weeks, she and her husband would be moving their things upstairs.

  The Court of Appeals had, after all, just ordered that the eight tapes be surrendered. The White House had seven days to turn them over, one desperate week in which they would have to seek a compromise with the special prosecutor and the Ervin Committee. If they defied the order, there would be chaos, and if they took the matter to the Supreme Court, they would lose.

  Haig, taking leave of the Blue Room, found himself forced into exchanging a few words of goodbye with Richardson.

  “Well,” said the chief of staff, “at least we can now get back to the main business.”

  “Yes,” said Richardson, “the main business.”

  One of them meant the business of saving Richard Nixon; the other meant the business of finishing him off.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  OCTOBER 19–23, 1973

  THE WHITE HOUSE; THE MCLEAN TENNIS CLUB; THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

  “I’m feeling like a goddamned president again!” Nixon told Kissinger over Friday-evening cocktails in the Residence.

  “You have never failed to function, through all of this, at a supremely high level,” replied the secretary of state.

  Ignoring the auto-flattery, Nixon asked, “When do you actually leave?”

  “A little after midnight.”

  “Play it hard with them, Henry. Don’t hesitate to let Brezhnev know there’s been considerable improvement in my position over here.”

  “That will be an enormous factor, Mr. President.”

  In a matter of days, thanks to the airlift, the Israelis had bounced back. It was the Arabs who were now on the run and the Russians who were calling, preposterously, for a cease-fire at the pre-1967 borders. Well, Kissinger would go to Moscow and get them to drop that. Then, once a more realistic cease-fire was in place and Congress had voted the two billion dollars in aid he’d just requested for Israel, the president would tilt to the Arabs and get them to turn the oil back on. The Israelis would be unable to resist his pressures for a real peace settlement, and pressure them he would. They had no choice: he’d saved their country! Golda Meir said there’d be statues of him dotting the landscape someday.

  After twenty-five years, he would get this goddamned thing solved, and the solution would be bigger than China, Vietnam, and arms control put together. Watergate would at last, to anyone but a lunatic, seem a shameful obsession.

  “You know,” he told Kissinger, “Ervin admitted he’s actually relieved.”

  The committee chairman had been in the Oval Office an hour ago with Howard Baker and had agreed to a compromise: the White House would turn over summaries of the eight tapes after John Stennis—a Democrat, it should be remembered—had listened to them and verified the accuracy of the synopses. And Stennis would do just that: not because he was hard of hearing, but because he had a sense of proportion. He would understand that the cover-up had essentially been Dean’s doing, and that the president’s little verbal flights of complicity had been more apparent than real.

  “Mr. President, we are all relieved,” said Kissinger.

  “Hell, once Ervin agreed, I even apologized for chewing him out over the phone this summer.”

  “That was just the pneumonia talking.”

  “Talking pneumonia!” said Nixon, with a laugh. He hadn’t been this cheerful in months. “You know, Taft Schreiber was in this afternoon. He brought in some movie they haven’t even released yet—not like those moth-eaten old reels up at Camp David. We’re going to run it tonight, right after Ziegler announces the compromise.”

  “Will they go ‘live’ with Ron?” asked Kissinger. “If they do, Professor Cox will be switching to Sanford and Son to cheer himself up.”

  “That son of a bitch is on his way out. Christ, he’s been into my taxes, the San Clemente deal, Bebe’s businesses! Richardson says he even wanted in on Agnew.”

  “He was foolish to reject this compromise.”

  “Well, he’s going to be canned for it. Richardson was over here with Al and Garment and Buzhardt this morning,
and he agreed to get rid of him.”

  “He’s been conducting a persecution, not a prosecution,” observed the secretary of state.

  Abruptly, as if Kissinger had been forcing him to discuss the petty business of Watergate, the president changed the subject. “Henry, you’re to make it clear to Brezhnev that everything you say comes from me personally, and that I’ll now be strong enough to follow through on it.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Good. And by the way, did you notice Dean pleaded guilty this morning? I don’t give a damn if it was to just one count and he’s been immunized up to his eyeballs on the rest. The history books can now say the president’s accuser was a convicted felon.”

  “Mr. President, the history books will not be mentioning John Dean at all.”

  Two hours later, as Taft Schreiber’s movie, The Sting, was being readied in the projection room, Haig called the Residence. “The bastard stiffed us,” he informed the president.

  “Which bastard?” asked Nixon.

  “Richardson. I called him a minute ago, after Ziegler’s announcement. I don’t know if I did it to celebrate or because my instincts told me he needed checking on, but he said, ‘I can’t fire Cox.’ No, actually, he said, ‘I cannot fire Cox.’ Contractions are beneath Elliot.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Nixon, with a sigh.

  “I told him we had his word—not to mention witnesses: me, Buzhardt, Garment.”

  In a voice that was even, but hollowed out, Nixon asked, “What exactly was his explanation?”

  “That he couldn’t possibly have agreed to Cox’s firing. That it would break a promise he’d made to the Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings—not to get rid of the special prosecutor except for ‘extraordinary improprieties.’ He could barely get the two words out tonight; they kept slurring over each other. He admitted to me that he was tired and had had ‘a’ drink.”