by John W. Dean
Ehrlichman, who had remained in Washington, had himself learned on Saturday evening, June 17, 1972, of the arrests of the five men shortly after midnight that day by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police at the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the Watergate complex, first from Lilburn E. “Pat” Boggs, an assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service. Boggs reported that the men had electronic surveillance and photographic equipment in their possession. He also said that the FBI had found White House consultant E. Howard Hunt’s name with a White House telephone number in an address book, as well as a check drawn on Hunt’s bank account, on one of the burglars.5 Ehrlichman asked Boggs if anybody from the White House was involved, and Boggs responded that, as far as he knew, the only connection to the White House was the material relating to Hunt.6
Boggs also informed him that one of the men arrested was James McCord, the chief of security at the reelection committee and the Republican National Committee. Boggs had earlier shared this information with Ehrlichman’s former White House aide John “Jack” Caulfield, a retired New York Police Department detective, who had undertaken countless clandestine investigations for Ehrlichman, including several wiretappings, while working at the Nixon White House.7 (Caulfield had wanted to be in charge of the 1972 campaign’s political intelligence operation, but he was passed over for the job.8) It was Caulfield who suggested that Boggs call Ehrlichman to report this “fucking disaster.”9 Caulfield himself later called Ehrlichman to assure him, as he did others, that the Watergate matter was not his operation, although he had, in fact, recruited McCord for his position as head of security not only for the CRP but also for the Republican National Committee. He was also planning on going into business with McCord after the election.10 Notwithstanding later statements to the contrary by McCord, Caulfield claimed he had no knowledge of McCord’s involvement in the bungled break-in.
While Ehrlichman was doubtless relieved that Caulfield was not implicated, and that to Caulfield’s knowledge no one in the White House had any relationship with McCord, Howard Hunt was another story. Hunt’s involvement raised serious potential problems for the White House and Ehrlichman. Both Ehrlichman and Haldeman had been directly involved in Hunt’s coming to the White House, at the urging of Charles W. “Chuck” Colson, the latter’s friend and fellow Brown alumni. Colson, a special counsel to the president (a title that enabled lawyers to keep their law licenses active when not practicing at the White House), was actually the president’s special political handyman; he worked at building good relationships with friends while trying to destroy the president’s perceived political enemies. It was Ehrlichman who had assigned Hunt to the Special Investigations Unit, which was created in July 1971 to investigate sensitive information leaks in general and that of the so-called Pentagon Papers (a top secret study of the origins of the Vietnam War prepared for the Johnson administration) in particular. Leaks had long plagued the Nixon presidency, and the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers in June 1971 had pushed the president to take action. When the FBI failed to investigate the matter aggressively, the president created his own clandestine unit within the White House, which later became known as “the plumbers.”11 Ehrlichman had once called the deputy director of the CIA to request that the agency “assist” Hunt (who wanted false identification and disguises as part of his work for Colson and the plumbers), notwithstanding the fact that such domestic activity was a violation of the CIA’s charter.
But Ehrlichman had a far more troubling potential problem involving Hunt: Ehrlichman had approved—for reasons of “national security,” he later claimed—a botched and illegal operation undertaken by Hunt with another White House plumber, G. Gordon Liddy, to obtain information from a psychiatrist (who had turned down the FBI’s inquiries) who had treated the man who had leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. This supposedly covert operation, which took place on September 3, 1971, had been a debacle, a conspicuously overt and unusually sloppy break-in at the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding in Beverly Hills, California, that had produced nothing while putting the White House at considerable risk. After this fiasco Ehrlichman closed down the plumbers’ covert operations and quietly found propitious ways to move both Hunt and Liddy out of the White House.12
After his conversations with Pat Boggs and Jack Caulfield, Ehrlichman called Chuck Colson, because he considered Hunt to be Colson’s man. Or, more specifically, as he later explained, Hunt was a fellow who would do dirty deeds for Colson, and since Colson did dirty deeds for the president, Ehrlichman could not rule out the possibility of Nixon’s involvement.13 But Colson protested innocence regarding Hunt and the Watergate break-in, claiming that Hunt had departed the White House in April, although he could not explain why Hunt still had a White House telephone number and an office in the Executive Office Building (EOB), which was part of the White House complex.
Later on that Saturday evening of June 17, Ehrlichman telephoned Haldeman in Florida to share the facts he had gathered. But Haldeman was out, so he gave Ron Ziegler a bare-bones report so the president’s press secretary would be prepared to handle any news media inquiries.*14
Alex Butterfield, a deputy assistant to the president and Haldeman aide who handled administrative and management matters, such as liaising with the Secret Service, also learned of the arrests on Saturday, June 17, 1972. He was first notified by Secret Service Agent Al Wong, who was in charge of the service’s Technical Security Division, which comprised the electronics experts who made certain no one was bugging the White House or wiretapping its telephone system, and who installed and maintained Nixon’s secret recording system. As it happened, it was Al Wong who had recommended James McCord to Jack Caulfield as someone who could provide security for the CRP and the Republican National Committee, because McCord had held a job similar to Wong’s at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before his recent retirement. Wong, understandably, was troubled that McCord had been arrested in the DNC and was now in jail.
As the day progressed, Butterfield learned more. Late Saturday afternoon the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia obtained a subpoena to search the Watergate Hotel rooms occupied by the burglary team, and it was there they found the address book with Hunt’s name and White House telephone number, as well as a sealed envelope addressed to the Lakewood Country Club, Rockville, Maryland, with a $6.36 check drawn by Hunt (to pay far less costly his out-of-state dues; because he lived in-state he had given one of the burglars the check to mail from Miami). The FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) quickly found Hunt’s name in their indices, signaling that they had recently completed a background check on him for a staff position at the White House. This prompted the FBI WFO supervisor to contact Butterfield at 7:11 P.M., according to the FBI’s records, to advise him of Hunt’s possible connection to one of the men arrested at the DNC. Butterfield, who was home by this hour, knew that Hunt had been a consultant but thought he no longer worked at the White House.15
On Sunday morning, June 18, 1972, The Washington Post front-page headline reported 5 HELD IN PLOT TO BUG DEMOCRATS’ OFFICE HERE. The Post story had the names of the men arrested and said that they had all been wearing rubber surgical gloves and were carrying lock-picking equipment, a walkie-talkie, forty rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras and twenty-three hundred dollars in cash, most in sequentially numbered one-hundred-dollar bills. The story further reported that four of the men arrested had rented rooms 214 and 314 at the Watergate Hotel around noon on Friday using fictitious names. They had all dined on lobster at the Watergate Restaurant on Friday night, and after the U.S. Attorney’s Office obtained search warrants, the FBI “found another $4,200 in $100 bills of the same serial number sequence as the money taken from the suspects, [and] more burglary tools and electronic bugging equipment stashed in six suitcases.”16 At the end of the account, inside the Post on page 23, another headline read INTRUDERS FOILED BY SECURITY GUARD. This second story reported that Frank Wills, a security
guard, noticed two doors had been taped so the latches would not lock. He removed the tape. When he rechecked ten minutes later, new tape had been placed on the doors, so he went to the lobby and telephoned the police, who arrived fifteen minutes later.17
Ehrlichman read the Post’s accounts, and after church, he called Haldeman.18 According to Haldeman’s diary, “Ehrlichman was very concerned about the whole thing.” At Ehrlichman’s suggestion, Haldeman spoke with Magruder, who was in California for a CRP event with its director, former attorney general John Mitchell, and other CRP officials, including First Lady Pat Nixon. Haldeman learned from Magruder that an Associated Press (AP) reporter had told the CRP’s press man that McCord had been identified as their chief of security, so a public statement was being prepared by Mitchell. Magruder said it “was not a good one,” although it would distance the CRP from McCord and condemn such illegal behavior as having “no place” in a campaign. Jeb said the “real problem” was the fact that the break-in and bugging operation was the work of the CRP’s finance committee general counsel, G. Gordon Liddy (a former White House plumber), and they were worried that it was “traceable to Liddy.” Liddy claimed it was not, but “Magruder is not too confident,” Haldeman noted. Magruder said their plan was for former assistant attorney general Robert Mardian, a Mitchell campaign assistant with them in California, to return to Washington to keep an eye on Liddy.19 Haldeman, not a Mardian fan, instructed Magruder to get back to Washington immediately to deal with the problem.20
Haldeman and Ehrlichman discussed and approved the statement released by Mitchell on behalf of the CRP, which (falsely) denied any knowledge of or involvement with the illegal entry at the DNC. Ehrlichman later recalled that “we discussed the public statement that was going to be made on it.”21 Haldeman added in his diary that Ehrlichman thought “the statement is OK and we should get it out.”22 Haldeman said he also talked with Colson and told him “to keep quiet.” He noted that Howard Hunt had been implicated, identifying Hunt as “the guy Colson was using on some of his Pentagon Papers and other research type stuff.” He further wrote, “Colson agreed to stay out of it and I think maybe he really will. I don’t think he is actually involved, so that helps.” Finally, he added that the president was “not aware of all this, unless he read something in the paper, but he didn’t mention it to me.”23
President Nixon returned to his Key Biscayne compound from Grand Cay by helicopter on Sunday morning, June 18, 1972, touching down at 11:51 A.M. Rebozo returned with him, and they went to their nearby residences. In his memoir, Nixon recalled that when he arrived at his home he could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, so he went to get a cup. There he noticed the Miami Herald front page, with a small story in the middle on the left side: MIAMIANS HELD IN D.C. TRY TO BUG DEMO HEADQUARTERS. He scanned the opening paragraphs, which said that four of the five men arrested in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate were from Miami. After reading that they had all been wearing surgical gloves, he “dismissed it as some sort of prank.”24
Absent from his memoir, however, is what appears to have been his delayed reaction to the Watergate story, which occurred a few hours later, when he learned more from Rebozo and then spoke with Colson. After an hour and a half of telephone calls on other business and lunch, Nixon strolled over to Rebozo’s house at 2:45 P.M. But they visited for only fifteen minutes before returning to the president’s house to call Colson. Rebozo, who was very active with the Miami Cuban community, knew most, if not all, of the men arrested at the Watergate, for their names had been listed in the Herald story: Bernard L. Barker, a real-estate broker; Eugenio Martinez, one of Barker’s salesmen; Virgilio Gonzales, a locksmith; and Frank Sturgis, a soldier of fortune—all well-known anti-Castro activists who were respected in the Cuban community. After talking with Rebozo, Nixon understood that this was no prank.
Colson was later unable to recall either of his two conversations with Nixon on June 18, 1972, but he did testify that one of his assistants recalled what was said, because Colson had told him about it after he talked to Nixon. Nixon, he said, “was so furious that he had thrown an ashtray across the room at Key Biscayne and thought it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard of and was just outraged over the fact that anybody even remotely connected with the campaign organization would have anything to do . . . with something like Watergate.”25 Colson was mistaken when he also testified he believed Nixon had learned of McCord’s role from the newspaper on June 18, 1972, for that information was not publicly reported until Monday, June 19, 1972. It is more likely that Colson, who learned from Ehrlichman, told the president about McCord and Nixon exploded. Although when Nixon later thought about his reaction, he walked it back to a nonreaction, so that he appeared unconcerned, as his later behavior showed. But in the larger picture, Nixon’s first reaction is not particularly important. No doubt he was trying to establish for doubters that he had no direct connection with the Watergate break-in, which I am confident was true.
Because of a passing hurricane late Sunday afternoon, the president decided to not return to Washington until Monday, June 19, 1972, but when the weather turned beautiful Monday morning, he decided to spend the day in Key Biscayne, for more boating and swimming, and to return to the White House that evening. Given the limited information the president had received, there was no reason he would have been particularly concerned about the events at the Watergate. So Nixon spent that Monday morning on the telephone with his personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and his daughters, Tricia and Julie; he called Haldeman to advise him of his decision to spend the day in Key Biscayne; he talked with Kissinger’s assistant Al Haig, and then with Reverend Billy Graham—which was the longest of his calls—discussing efforts to keep Governor George Wallace from undertaking a third-party run for the presidency, which posed a threat to Nixon’s reelection, as it could split the conservative vote. Reverend Graham was close to Wallace’s wife and thought he could help out.26 At 11:50 A.M. the president met with Haldeman for an hour and fifteen minutes to discuss campaign logistics and the need to place someone in the CRP to handle the administrative details for Mitchell, but there is no evidence that Watergate was discussed.
Back in Washington, Ehrlichman was further assessing the problem. He called me, requesting I speak with Chuck Colson to see what I could learn, and he asked me to talk with Attorney General Dick Kleindienst to see if he knew where all the Watergate investigation leaks in The Washington Post had come from. I told Ehrlichman that Magruder had called me to tell me that the break-in was Liddy’s work and that Magruder had requested I meet with Liddy, since they could barely communicate (Magruder claimed Liddy had threatened to kill him). Ehrlichman instructed me to do so and report back to him.
In a walk down Seventeenth Street NW (which is on the west side of the White House grounds), a shaken, slightly disheveled-looking Liddy apologized for his team’s arrest at the Watergate, explaining that they had gone back into the DNC to fix bugs that were not working properly, because Magruder had pushed him for more and better information. He also apologized for using McCord, since he had promised that none of his activities would ever be traceable. He said that with Howard Hunt’s assistance he had recruited the team in Miami, and he was concerned that they were now in jail, although he assured me they would not talk. Liddy said I needed to know that two of the men in jail had been used in an earlier effort—a “national security operation” at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in California. I asked him if anyone from the White House was involved; he said that no one at the White House had knowledge of his activities, with the possible exception of Haldeman’s aide and liaison to the CRP, Gordon Strachan. As our walk ended, Liddy offered to have himself shot on any street corner if the White House wished to take him out. I told him I did not think that would be necessary.27
At noon I met with Ehrlichman to report all I had learned. Concerned with my own exposure, I also told Ehrlichman that I had been asked to attend two meetin
gs in Mitchell’s office, while he was still attorney general, at which Liddy had presented absurd plans for campaign intelligence gathering that involved kidnapping, prostitutes, chase planes and electronic surveillance. I said Mitchell had turned him down at the first meeting. I arrived late to the second, and when I heard talk of illegal activities, I had thrown cold water on it all by saying I did not believe such matters should be discussed in the office of the attorney general.28 I told Ehrlichman I had reported this information to Haldeman, who had instructed me to have nothing further to do with these activities. I assured Ehrlichman that I believed Liddy’s scheme had been turned off but clearly that had not happened. It was at this time I mentioned in passing that maybe we should hire an experienced criminal law attorney for the staff, for I had no such experience and was unaware of anyone on the staff who did, but he completely dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.