by John W. Dean
“Mr. President, yesterday at the Gray hearings, Senator Tunney suggested he might ask the committee to ask for John Dean to appear before that hearing to talk about the Watergate case and the FBI–White House relationship. Would you object to that?” “Of course,” Nixon responded, but then he was asked why. This question had not been anticipated, so the president had to wing it, but it gave him the opportunity to bring up his position on executive privilege, just as he had wanted, without having to do so via a formal statement. “Well, because it is executive privilege. I mean you can’t, of course, no president could ever agree to allow the counsel to the president to go down and testify before a committee. On the other hand, as far as any committee of the Congress is concerned, where information is requested that a member of the White House staff may have, we will make arrangements to provide that information, but members of the White House staff, in that position at least, cannot be brought before a congressional committee in a formal hearing for testimony. I stand on the same position there that every president has stood on.”
Frank Cormier, the senior Associate Press reporter in the White House press corps, thanked the president, signaling the end of the session, but Clark Mollenhoff, always something of a bull-in-a-china-shop sort with his booming voice, asked another question. The president could have walked out without responding, given that Cormier had formally ended the conference, but after hearing its gist, Nixon decided he wanted to take the question. Mollenhoff had shouted, “Mr. President, on that particular point, if the counsel was involved, if the counsel was involved in an illegal or improper act and the prima facie case came to light, then would you change the rules relative to the White House counsel?” Nixon answered: “I do not expect that to happen, and if it should happen, I would have to answer that question at that point,” and then, a bit annoyed with Mollenhoff, he continued. “Let me say, too, that I know that, since you are on your feet, Clark, that you had asked about the executive privilege statement, and we will have that available toward the end of next week or the first of the following week, for sure, because obviously, the Ervin committee is interested in that statement, and that will answer, I think, some of the questions with regard to how information can be obtained from a member of the White House staff, but consistent with executive privilege.”*
Back in the Oval Office, Ziegler told the president he thought the Watergate material would be buried in any story about the press conference.17 Ziegler was mostly correct, although the Post did feature a page-three story by its legal reporter, John MacKenzie, noting that the president would not permit me to testify at the Gray hearings. MacKenzie further reported that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, James Eastland (D-MI), did not believe a majority of the committee would vote to call me during the Gray hearings.18 But I was very uncomfortable at being thrust further into the limelight, for I was already certain that public attention regarding anyone connected with Watergate was not good, and Gray, in testifying he had given me FBI reports, had pulled me into the fray.19
In the early afternoon of March 2 Haldeman told Nixon that he had been talking with John Mitchell, who brought up a delicate matter of some significance regarding the convicted Watergate defendants still awaiting sentencing.20 “Mitchell raised, which I don’t think he raised with anybody else, I don’t know if John Dean’s filled you in on one of the major problems on the business John’s [referring to me] working on, is the question of continuing financial activity in order to keep those people on base. And the way he’s working on that is via Mitchell to Tom Pappas,” Haldeman reported. Pappas, a longtime Nixon supporter and fundraiser, was a wealthy Greek-American businessman.21 The president indicated he understood, so Haldeman added, “Wh[o] is the best source we’ve got for that kind of a thing. Pappas is extremely anxious that [Ambassador] Tasca stay in Greece.” Nixon answered immediately, “Let him stay.” Haldeman continued, “And our plan, you know, was to move him and put someone else in Greece, but Mitchell says it would be a very useful thing to just not disrupt that.”
“Good. Let him stay. No problem. Pappas has raised the money thing for this other activity, or whatever it is? How does he do it?” Haldeman said that Pappas had sold his oil company and was now “just sort of one of the unknown John Paul Gettys of the world, or something.” Nixon replied, in a thoughtful manner, “I’m just glad for him.” More important, Haldeman explained, “and he’s able to deal in cash.” With that comment, this remarkable exchange ended, the conversation moving on to other matters before returning to Watergate, and me. Nixon told Haldeman, “Hell, I’m convinced that Dean is really a gem. I’ve talked to him two or three times about—” Talking over the president, Haldeman said, “He’s a real cool cookie, isn’t he?” Nixon continued, “He might be cool, but he’s awfully smart. God damn, there’s judgment there, you know. He thinks things through [and all that]. He’s really not cocky. You see, the trouble with a cocky guy who’ll come in and have a lot of bravado, but God damn it, he won’t check his facts.” Haldeman agreed, saying, “But not Dean. He’s just the other way. He hasn’t always checked his facts, but he never covers up if he hasn’t. He just says he doesn’t know. And God, he’s been through the wringer in trying to keep all this pieced together, you know, as everything’s straying out from under him in every direction. The great thing is, he’s been [great dealing with] Mitchell, in dealing with people. Because all this is a people game, trying to keep these people on an even keel and not having someone break and go rattling on. And all these God damn Watergate seven guys, he’s had to nursemaid all these months.”
The president sighed, and asked, “What are we going to do?” Rather than respond, Haldeman continued offering his assessment of how I handled problems, as with a chuckle in his voice he said, “Because he is a character. I think he takes out all his frustrations in just pure, raw, animal, unadulterated sex.” “Is that right? Is he quite a—” the president began to ask, as he and Haldeman talked over each other. Haldeman continued, “I guess he just solves all of his hang-ups that way. And then he can nail all the rest of this with real finesse.” Nixon asked, “He just got married pretty early, didn’t he?” Haldeman thought not, saying, “I think he was living with her for two years before he married her.” That was fine with Nixon, who said, “Fair enough, he knew who was he was getting.” Haldeman added, “He’s completely in love with her, makes no bones about it.”
“Well, I must say, I’m impressed by him,” the president added, instructing Haldeman to have Colson speak to me about any Watergate-related matter in the future rather than with Haldeman, Ehrlichman or him. “I think it’s very important we get to Chuck funneled into Dean’s shop, don’t you agree?” Haldeman said that was already occurring. Then the president added, “It’s just better, Bob, that, for example, I have not talked to anybody but Dean. Do you agree on this? He’s a lawyer, and all that.” Haldeman agreed, because he felt that the president would keep getting all the information from a centralized place instead of in bits and pieces.
March 3, 1973, the White House
On Saturday morning, when meeting with Haldeman in the Oval Office, Gray was still on the president’s mind: “So what’s your judgment as to how Gray is handling himself?”22 Haldeman instead gave the president my take, “Dean said he’s not doing well. He’s letting too much out. Gray’s line is that this is all a tactic, that he’s doing it on purpose. For instance, his offer to let them look at the raw files, he’s doing it because he’s convinced that [Sam] Ervin won’t allow that to happen, and that this is all a clever thing, and that Gray then turns it all off on Tuesday [March 6, , when the Gray confirmation hearing was scheduled to end].” Haldeman reported that while Chairman Eastland was sure he had the votes to move Gray’s nomination to the Senate floor, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVA) was taking such a strong anti-Gray position that Haldeman himself was less certain. Haldeman also noted, “And Eastland’s advice to us on tactics has been almost as wrong as Mitchell’s, and Mitchell’s has, of
course, always been based on Eastland.” Neither Haldeman nor the president had confidence in Kleindienst, Mitchell or Eastland, for they had been consistently wrong on confirmation proceedings in Eastland’s Judiciary Committee, from Supreme Court nominations to those of attorneys general.
That afternoon Ron Ziegler dropped by the Oval Office and announced that “the Dean-Watergate thing” had come up in a press inquiry, with follow-up questions about the president’s position of not allowing his counsel to testify. Ziegler wanted to know if he could say that, if it was appropriate, I would cooperate. Nixon reminded Ziegler that Harry Truman had cut him off from the Justice Department and FBI during the Hiss investigation. “We are doing exactly the opposite,” Nixon stressed. “We’re saying we will cooperate with them. The FBI will cooperate, and the White House staff will cooperate. We’ll furnish any information,” he said, when it was relevant, “But we will not agree to the appearance of White House staff members before a congressional committee’s informal sessions.” Nixon then clarified, “Basically, what we want to do here is to keep the position, but we’re not covering up. We should constantly say, ‘We’re ready to cooperate, but we cannot cooperate on their terms. And we’re not withholding. We’re not covering up. We’re ready to [assist]. If they want to ask anything, ask it.” The president said this was “a great departure” from the policies of his predecessors.23
March 6, 1973, the White House
Back from two days at Camp David, the president scanned the front-page of The Washington Post while eating breakfast, and he read that Pat Gray had provided the Senate Judiciary Committee with a July 21, 1972, letter to me summarizing the FBI’s investigation, which included the fact that Nixon’s reelection committee had been less than cooperative.24 I was not surprised when I was summoned to the Oval Office later that morning and asked by the president how we were doing with Pat Gray.25 I had not yet received a report from Capitol Hill, where Gray was in his second day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but I did report that I had spoken with him maybe four or five times since his first day of testimony, on March 1: “His policy had been one to cooperate all the way with the committee up to this point. He’s turned over for the record everything that was requested, including the things that hit the papers this morning, which I think he should have deferred on. Kleindienst told me that Gray isn’t touching base with him, despite his efforts to get him to explain the timing on when he’s turned things over.”
I shared with the president Gray’s theory, which was to cooperate right down the line, to this point. “Today, when he goes up, draw the line. He’ll talk about, you know, he’s infringing upon the rights of individuals. He’s not going to open sensitive files that have not been groomed for public consumption, if they’re going to be put in the public forum, they’ll harm innocent people, and really close the store down today. That’s what he’s supposed to do. Now, he mentioned it to me, he said, ‘I know my nomination can be withdrawn.’” This caught Nixon by surprise, and I rephrased it: “Gray said to me, when I talked to him on Friday, ‘John,’ he said, ‘I appreciate the fact that my nomination can be withdrawn at any point in time if you all see what I’m doing as improper.’” The president seemed pleased that Gray had not forgotten this fact, and I continued with my report. “Kleindienst talked to Eastland this morning,” who had signaled he still had the votes, and that Senators Hart, Bayh, Kennedy and Tunney had indicated they did not plan to prolong the hearings until the Watergate investigation had been completed. I reported, “Now, Ervin gave an interview this morning with WTOP, the local station out here, saying that he would support the request of Tunney that I appear before they proceed with Gray,” although Ervin, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, did not say how far he would push this issue.
Senator Ervin had used the analogy of White House aide Peter Flanagan, who had been forced to testify during the Kleindienst confirmation hearings, and intimated that I might be the hostage for Gray as Flanagan had been for Kleindienst. “I’ve already answered that, though,” the president said, referring to his press conference statement. “We’re not going to give an inch on that. We’re not going to give an inch,” he repeated.
The conversation later turned to the Post story. It reported that people at the reelection committee had been mentioned in the FBI’s summary reported as complaining to the FBI that they had felt intimidated about talking to them with the committee’s lawyer present during the interviews, and it had caught the president’s attention. He wanted to know who. I explained, “It was a girl by the name of Penny Gleason,” the daughter of a Republican Montgomery County government official. The president asked, “So, so what happened? What does she know? Who’d she work for?” When I reported, “She worked for McCord,” Nixon asked, “She wanted to talk?” “She wanted to talk. Didn’t know anything, but she wanted to talk, and it was all hearsay. Her statements were her own impressions.” Nixon wanted to know why Gray had not addressed such matters in his opening statement to make them a nonissue. Before I could respond that Gray was refusing to take advice from anyone, Nixon answered his question with “stupid ass.” We discussed how raw FBI reports were less than accurate, and how Gray’s continuing to drag me into his confirmation was also dragging the White House into Watergate. I made the point that we only wanted him to withhold information he should properly withhold, and Nixon said no nominee should be “confirmed at the expense of everybody here” in the White House, adding, “Oh, no. That can’t be done.” He felt the threat to call me to Gray’s hearings had not been fair, and boasted, “Well, you noticed the way I kicked the little bitch in the ass” at the press conference. As our discussion continued, the president said he wondered if “Gray’s smart enough. I’m just not sure. I hope he is.” I said we would know by week’s end, because Gray was scheduled to testify for two more days. He was making his second appearance today, March 6, and then he would appear again on March 7 and 8.
March 7, 1973, the White House
Gray’s testimony of the previous day—claiming that he had not been happy that I had sat in on FBI interviews of White House staff, although he also said that I had in no way hindered the FBI’s questioning26—had once again landed me on the front page of The Washington Post. The president called me to the Oval Office early that morning, and when I arrived, he was writing out questions.27 When he finished he asked me who was on our team supporting Gray on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I reported that the two Republicans being most helpful were Senators Roman Hruska (R-NE) and Edward Gurney (R-FL). The president said he wanted to have a question planted with a friendly senator, who would ask Gray if he had investigated whether or not presidential candidate Richard Nixon had been bugged in 1968. He wanted the sort of questions posed that would reflect on the material he had read to me about Kennedy’s White House mistakes and that I had gathered from Sullivan about Democratic presidents who had abused the FBI. “It does not make any difference whether this material is hearsay or not. The game is not played according to the rules. It’s played according to the headlines and the rest. You understand?” he asked.
After discussing with whom the questions might be planted, and the questions themselves, he said he wanted to put it to Gray: “I’m going to make him lie, because I think Gray’s not handling himself well. What he said yesterday with regard to the fact that this ‘jolly well’ bullshit, and all that sort of thing, that it was highly improper for you to be present [during the FBI interviews]. Now, God damn it, we’re not going to let him get away with that.” I explained that I was reading the daily transcripts of Gray’s hearings, and he had falsely claimed he had objected to my sitting in on the FBI’s interviews. I told the president that in fact Gray had had no objection whatsoever when Ehrlichman told him he wanted me present at White House interviews. At that time he had said it was not a problem.*
“Well, now we’re going to put it to him,” Nixon said. “He will know he’s lying, when he does, because he knows I told him
that Hoover bugged us, that Hoover had told me. He knows that he’s been told that, because I told Gray specifically. I said, ‘I want you to go back and check it.’ He hasn’t done it.” The president then said, “Now, you see, what I’m trying to get at here is Gray, and mind you, it probably has come to the point, it’s probably not in our interest to let him get in,” so he was “looking for a way to disqualify Gray from the job, surreptitiously.” Nixon noted, “We thought yesterday was the day of truth. And now he turns out worse yesterday than the day before.”
“I want all communication with Gray cut off. That’s it,” Nixon ordered. “It doesn’t do any good to talk to him. Agree?” I reported, “He called here last night. He talked to Ehrlichman rather than me, because I have just been pulling him up short every time he talks to me.” Referring to our days together at Mitchell’s Justice Department, I said, “I have known Pat for a long time,” and the only time I had ever come down hard on the FBI was after the leaks started. “And then I insisted before they came over here that they tell me what they wanted, who they wanted it from, why they wanted it and what protection they would take on the information they were given.” The leaks had been excessive and unprecedented.28