The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It

by John W. Dean

  When the subject turned to the Senate’s Watergate inquiry, the president fully anticipated, and Haldeman concurred, that it would be a “daily spectacle with television cameras and press.” What would make it a major story, the president noted, would be getting “a big fish up there,” as had been the case in the McCarthy hearings. Haldeman added, “And you never know what any of the big fish will do when they get up there, and then we all said we want to go up and all that, but if they lob one in you’re not expecting, you don’t know how good a witness he’ll be.” The president thought it was “a tough god damned thing” and was particularly worried about perjury. Haldeman, in turn, pointed out that the “people who are going to go for perjury already have and will do it again and are going to be up there anyway.”

  “You mean like Magruder?” the president asked, whom he quickly denounced as “that son of a bitch.” This led to a discussion of who was and who was not covered by executive privilege: Chapin, Colson, Dean and Strachan, they agreed, were covered, while Magruder, Hunt and Liddy were not. Haldeman thought Strachan had no criminal exposure, because he did not direct anything. Haldeman described Strachan’s only job as being “to keep on top of everything” and to know what was going on. They speculated that Magruder might testify to what Strachan knew. “But only that he knew, not that he had any authority,” Haldeman clarified. “No participation. He was an observer.” They sat silently for a moment, and then Haldeman added, “The danger you got there is that he probably, and I possibly, got reports on some of that stuff.” Nixon said, “Sure. I’m aware of that.” Haldeman continued, “And if I did, I didn’t know it. But Strachan did know, because he gave me stuff that thick,” as Haldeman undoubtedly gestured, and added, “And I never looked at it. On all campaigns, budgets, personnel things and everything else.” The president again warned, “The main thing is, don’t get anybody up there on perjury where they can prove [it].”

  It was when listening to this conversation between Haldeman and the president, directly after hearing the one with Ehrlichman, that I realized how compartmentalized everything had become at the Nixon White House regarding Watergate. While Mitchell, Ehrlichman and Haldeman had once discussed the problem among themselves in the early days, they now communicated almost exclusively through me, although Ehrlichman and Haldeman did exchange some information.30 No one was sharing anything with anyone else, nor with the president, who even at this late date had no real idea of his exposure. What became conspicuous to me as I prepared this book was at the time something I only sensed, but sensed clearly enough to realize I had to take some form of action by being a bit more blunt with the president, now that I was getting comfortable dealing with him. So when the president called me at home the evening of March 20, I decided to make certain that he had the information I felt he needed to make realistic decisions about a report.

  “You’re having rather long days these days, aren’t you?” the president asked, opening the conversation.31 Chuckling, I replied that I thought they would soon get even longer. He requested an update on the Gray confirmation proceedings, which I told him were being played politically, as if the president had already abandoned Gray. “What’s your feeling, though, John, about Gray? Are you just as comfortable to let him go down? Which do you want? I mean, we can put some pressures on, and I just wonder.”

  “I don’t think it’s worth saving, sir. I really don’t,” I offered, putting it as charitably as I could, and suggested that it would take Gray several years to get control of the FBI. Actually, I doubted Gray could ever do that, given that the existing chain of command in the Bureau held him in near contempt. I gave the president the vote count in the Judiciary Committee, where it appeared that Gray would have trouble getting voted out.

  At an opening in the conversation I decided to breach scheduling protocol of requesting a meeting with the president through Haldeman and raised what was foremost on my mind: “I had a conversation with John Ehrlichman this afternoon before he came down to visit you. And I think that one thing we have to continually do, and particularly right now, is to examine the broadest implications of this whole thing, maybe about thirty minutes of just my recitation to you of the facts so that you operate from the same facts that everybody else has.” When he replied with a noncommittal, “Right,” I continued, explaining, “We’ve never really done that. It’s been sort of bits and pieces. Just paint the whole picture for you, the soft spots, the potential problem areas and the like, so that, you know, when you make judgments, you’ll have all that information.” Now sounding interested, the president said, “Would you like to do that, when?” I answered whenever worked for him, and we arranged a meeting for ten o’clock the following morning. He agreed it would be better with nobody else there. When he asked if I was coming down in favor of just stonewalling, rather than issuing a report, I answered, “A stonewall with lots of noises that we’re always willing to cooperate.” Notwithstanding my response, he asked if I could give an oral report to the cabinet and the leaders, and I told him I could but suggested he wait until we had met. He agreed, saying: “No, I want to know. I want to know where all the bodies are first.” I said that after he had the facts, it could be programmed any way he wanted, although my thinking was, if I laid out the situation objectively and honestly, the president would understand the next move had to be to end the cover-up. Finally he brought the conversation to a close, telling me jokingly to “take the evening off.” I agreed to do so, and did.

  March 21 to 23, 1973

  A Cancer on the Presidency and Nixon’s Response

  March 21, 1973, the White House

  At 8:40 A.M. I spoke on the telephone with Haldeman to explain that I had asked to meet with the president because I felt I needed to walk him though all the pertinent facts of Watergate. Haldeman felt it a good idea. I had hoped to make some notes to be sure I covered everything but hadn’t had the time to do so. As I was walking to the Oval Office midmorning, the president was meeting with Haldeman and Ehrlichman on scheduling matters and Pat Gray’s decision to stop talking about Watergate.1 Ehrlichman still revealed nothing about Hunt’s blackmail demand. Haldeman was leaving the office as I entered.2 My conversation with Nixon would run an hour and forty minutes, with Haldeman returning for the last forty minutes.

  Today I understand that much of what I explained to Nixon in this conversation had already been told to him by Haldeman or Ehrlichman, but they had often been both vague and remarkably untroubled by the conspicuous criminality of our activity. I had hoped that when I laid out the facts the president would demand the cover-up end immediately. But I did not really know Nixon, although I certainly understood him better after this conversation. After a brief discussion of Gray’s hearing, I explained why I had requested the meeting:3 “The reason I thought we ought to talk this morning is because, in our conversations, I have the impression that you don’t know everything I know, and it makes it very difficult for you to make judgments that only you can make on some of these things, and I thought that—” Nixon then finished my thought: “I’ve got to know why you feel that something, that we shouldn’t unravel something,” he said, thinking about a report. And I continued, “Well, let me give you my overall first,” I said, for my concerns extended far beyond what might merely unravel.

  “In other words, your judgment as to where it stands, and where we’re going to go,” the president said, getting the gist of where I was headed. To make sure I had his full attention, I stated, “I think there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got. We have a cancer, within, close to the presidency that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding, it grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself. That’ll be clear as I explain some of the details of why it is, and it, basically it’s because, one, we’re being blackmailed, [and] two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves already to protect other people and the like. And there is no assurance—”

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nbsp; “That it won’t bust?” the president interrupted. I continued, “So let me give you the sort of basic facts, talking first about the Watergate, and then about Segretti, and then about some of the peripheral items that have come up. First of all, on the Watergate: How did it all start? Where did it start? It started with an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn’t set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation over at the reelection committee. Not being in this business, I turned to somebody who had been in this business, Jack Caulfield. I don’t know if you remember Jack or not. He was your original bodyguard, before they had candidate protection, [a former] New York City policeman.”

  “Right, I know him,” the president said.

  “Jack had worked for John [Ehrlichman] and then was transferred to my office. And I said, ‘Jack, come up with a plan that, you know, is a normal infiltration, I mean, you know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing.’ He did. He put together a plan. It was kicked around, and I went to Ehrlichman with it. I went to Mitchell with it. And the consensus was that Caulfield wasn’t the man to do this. In retrospect, that might have been a bad call, because he is an incredibly cautious person and, and wouldn’t have put the situation where it is today.”

  “Yeah,” the president acknowledged.

  “But after rejecting [him] they said, ‘We still need something.’ So, I was told to look around for somebody that could go over to 1701 and do this. And that’s when I came up with Gordon Liddy. They needed a lawyer. Gordon had an intelligence background from his FBI service. I was aware of the fact that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House while he’d been at the White House, and he had apparently done them well. Going out into Ellsberg’s doctor’s office,” I added, which I had told him about. “Oh, yeah,” the president recalled, and I continued. “And things like this. He’d worked with leaks. He, you know, tracked these things down. And so the report that I got from Krogh was that he was a hell of a good man and, and not only that, a good lawyer, and [he] could set up a proper operation. So we talked to Liddy,” I said, referring to Krogh and myself. “Liddy was interested in doing it. Took Liddy over to meet Mitchell. Mitchell thought highly of him because, apparently, Mitchell was partially involved in his coming to the White House to work for Krogh. Liddy had been at the Treasury before that. Then Liddy was told to put together his plan, you know, how he would run an intelligence operation. And this was after he was hired over there at the committee. Magruder called me in January and said, ‘I’d like to have you come over and see Liddy’s plan.’” The president sought clarification, “January of ’72?”

  I confirmed that was correct and continued with the story, and Magruder’s request. “‘You come over to Mitchell’s office and sit in on a meeting where Liddy’s going to lay his plan out.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t really know as I’m the man, but if you want me there, I’ll be happy to.’ So I [went] over, and Liddy laid out a million-dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on: All in codes, and involved black-bag operations, kidnapping, providing prostitutes to weaken the opposition, bugging, mugging teams. It was just an incredible thing.” The president wanted to know if that had been approved, and I told him it had not. I explained, “Mitchell just virtually sat there puffing [on his pipe] and laughing. I could tell, because after Liddy left the office, I said, ‘That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.’ He said, ‘I agree.’ And so [Liddy] was told to go back to the drawing board and come up with something realistic. So there was a second meeting. They asked me to come over to that. I came into the tail end of the meeting. I wasn’t there for the first part of it. I don’t know how long the meeting lasted. At this point they were discussing again bugging, kidnapping and the like. And at this point I said, right in front of everybody, very clearly, I said, ‘These are not the sort of things that are ever to be discussed in the office of the attorney general of the United States,’ where he still was, ‘and I am personally incensed.’ I was trying to get Mitchell off the hook, because he’s a nice person, doesn’t like to say no to people he’s going to have to work with.”

  “That’s right,” the president agreed.

  “So, I let it be known. I said, ‘You all pack that stuff up and get it the hell out of here, because you just can’t talk this way in this office, and you shouldn’t, you should reexamine your whole thinking.’ I came back—” Nixon interrupted to ask, “Who else was present besides you?” I responded, “It was Magruder, Mitchell, Liddy and myself.” I then continued: “—I came back right after the meeting and told Bob [Haldeman], I said, ‘Bob, we’ve got a growing disaster on our hands if they’re thinking this way,’ and I said, ‘The White House has got to stay out of this, and I, frankly, am not going to be involved in it.’ He said, ‘I agree, John.’ And I thought at that point the thing was turned off.4 That’s the last I heard of it, when I thought it was turned off, because it was an absurd proposal.” The president agreed, so I proceeded. “Liddy, I did have dealings with him afterward. We never talked about it. Now, that would be hard to believe for some people, but we never did. Just the fact of the matter,” I reported. The president accepted this, and I noted, “We had so many other things.” The president said he was aware that I worked with Liddy on campaign law matters, as Haldeman had informed him of that, and I continued. “Now, so Liddy went back after that and was over at 1701 with the committee, and this is where I [have to] put the pieces together after the fact as to what I can put together of what happened. Liddy sat over there and tried to come up with another plan that he could sell. They were talking, saying to him he was asking for too much money, and I don’t think they were discounting the illegal points at this [time]. You know, Jeb is not a lawyer. He didn’t know whether this was the way the game was played or not, and what it was all about. They [i.e., Liddy and Hunt] came up with, apparently, another plan, but they couldn’t get it approved by anybody over there. So Liddy and Hunt apparently came to see Chuck Colson, and Chuck Colson picked up the telephone and called Magruder and said, ‘You all either fish or cut bait. This is absurd to have these guys over there and not using them, and if you’re not going to use them, I may use them.’ And things of this nature.”

  “When was this?” the president asked. “This was apparently in February of ’72,” I answered. “That could be. Did Colson know what they were talking about?” the president inquired. “I can only assume,” I said, “because of his close relationship with Hunt, he had a damn good idea of what they were talking about. A damn good idea. He would probably deny it, deny it today and probably get away with denying it.” The president and I agreed that would likely be the case unless Hunt said otherwise, with the president adding, “But then Hunt isn’t enough. It takes two [witnesses], doesn’t it?” He was referring to successfully prosecuting perjury, so I said, “Probably,” a bit surprised by the comment. I added that there were in fact two people present: “Liddy was there also, and if Liddy were to blow—” Nixon said, “Then you’ve got a problem. I was thinking of the criminal liability in the White House. Okay.”

  “I’ll go back over that, and tell you where I think the soft spots are,” I advised, hoping to continue with my narrative, but the president continued to interrupt. “Was that Colson?” he asked. “Colson, you think, was the was the person who pushed?” I answered, “I think he helped to get the thing off the dime. Now, something else occurred, though.” But Nixon interrupted again: “Did Colson, had he talked to anybody here. Did he talk to Haldeman?” I told him I did not think so, and pushed on. “But here’s the other thing, where the next thing comes in the chain. I think that Bob was assuming that they had something that was proper over there, some intelligence-gathering operation that Liddy was operating. And through Strachan, who was his tickler, he started pushing them to get something, to get some information, and they took that as a signal, Magruder took that as a signal to probably go to Mitchell and say, ‘They’re pushin
g us like crazy for this from the White House.’ And so Mitchell probably puffed on his pipe and said, ‘Go ahead.’ And never really reflected on what it was all about. So they had some plan that obviously had, I gather, different targets they were going to go after. They were going to infiltrate, and bug, and do all this sort of things to a lot of these targets. This is knowledge I have after the fact. And, apparently, after they had initially broken in and bugged the Democratic National Committee, they were getting information. The information was coming over here to Strachan. Some of it was given to Haldeman. There’s no doubt about it.”

  Nixon now asked, “Did he know what it was coming from?” I said I did not know, and agreed with the president’s assessment of “not necessarily.” I also agreed with him when he said, “Strachan knew what it was from,” but as I explained, “I have never wanted to press these people on these points, because it hurts them to give up that next inch, so I had to piece things together.5 Alright, so Strachan was aware of receiving information, reporting to Bob. At one point Bob even gave instructions to change [Liddy’s] capabilities from Muskie to McGovern, and had passed this back through Strachan to Magruder, and apparently to Liddy. And Liddy was starting to make arrangements to go in and bug the McGovern operation. They had done prelim—” Nixon interrupted to ask, “They had never bugged Muskie, though, did they?”