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

by John W. Dean

  “Well, I don’t think the president personally, the presidency as an office of the administration,” Petersen clarified. “Because of Ehrlichman and Haldeman.” He added, “That statement [was] made in the heat of argument. Charlie Shaffer’s a very committed, emotional, able lawyer. He stands up and says, ‘God damn it, I’m not going to plead him. If I have to do this, I do this in return.’”

  The other major thread running through this discussion was the president’s probing for information relating to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Responding to his earlier request, Petersen gave the president a written document summarizing the charges against the two aides as of that date, based on the information I had provided in my off-the-record conversations with the prosecutors:47 Gray’s having been given material from Hunt’s safe; Ehrlichman’s instructing me to “deep six” material found there; Ehrlichman’s ordering Hunt out of the country;* Haldeman’s having been informed of my meetings with Mitchell and Liddy, during which I had rejected Liddy’s plan and Haldeman had agreed. But, Petersen noted, Haldeman had done nothing to “discontinue” Liddy’s activities, and Magruder had told the prosecutors he had delivered to Strachan for Haldeman copies of information from “intercepted telephone conversations.” Nixon, who had far more information about all this than Petersen, began to probe for the weaknesses in his cases against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He pressed Petersen on his recommendation that they resign, but Petersen did not back down. The president also discussed the material in Hunt’s safe at some length but did not inform Petersen that he knew Gray had destroyed it.48

  Two minutes after Petersen departed, Ehrlichman appeared and had barely seated himself when Nixon blurted out, “Gray denied to Petersen that he ever got the bundle. Oh, he’s a dumb son of a bitch.”49 Nixon handed Ehrlichman the document Petersen had brought summarizing the charges against him, all of which Ehrlichman denied. They then focused on Gray’s denial. The president wanted to know what I would say, and Ehrlichman repeated that I had indeed carried the material to his office for Gray, but as far as what was inside the envelope, Ehrlichman said he only knew what I had told him—that it had come from Hunt’s safe. Ehrlichman said that if Gray claimed he did “not receive a big manila envelope from Dean, then I’m going to have to dispute that.”

  Ehrlichman then returned to Petersen’s summary: “Dean doesn’t give them much. Well, gee, did Hunt go out of the country. No.” Ziegler returned and again asked the president if he wanted to see Garment. He did not, and Ehrlichman added—not surprisingly, since Garment wanted him and Haldeman to resign—“I agree totally.” Then, chuckling, he added, “I mean, it’s therapy for Garment, is the reason you see [him].” The president instructed Ziegler to give Garment “a little bullshit” to pacify him.

  Shortly after Ziegler and Ehrlichman departed, the president called and requested that I come to his EOB office. I arrived late that afternoon with my revised resignation letter and material for a draft statement being developed for Nixon by Dick Moore, Len Garment and the speechwriters.50 I had spoken with Dick Moore and given them adjustments to one key paragraph, indicating the president had accepted the resignations of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and myself. The president now asked that I speak with Garment about the draft statement and requested that I read him my letter: “You have informed me that Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman have verbally tendered their request to be given an immediate and indefinite leave of absence from your staff. By this letter I wish to confirm my similar request that I be given such a leave of absence from the staff.” “You don’t want to go if they stay?” he asked. I was not interested in being “the scapegoat,” I replied, to which Nixon replied, “Like Magruder’s been a scapegoat for Mitchell.” I agreed with that assessment.

  The president did not appear to disagree with my letter, with his most serious comment being grammatical—namely, that “you” was not a polite word to use with reference to the president. He was still preoccupied with Petersen’s charge that Haldeman should have taken action after I returned from the second Magruder/Liddy meeting in Mitchell’s office. The president said that because I gave Haldeman this information, Petersen’s point was “that actually Haldeman, then, did know.” I told him I disagreed with that interpretation and assured the president that Haldeman had also told me he did not know. What had happened, I explained, was that both Haldeman and I had assumed Mitchell would never approve Liddy’s reckless plan. I had told Haldeman, “They’re talking about bugging, they’re talking about kidnapping, they’re talking about mugging squads, taking people down from San Diego south of the border.” Nixon asked, “You told Bob this? Wanting to know what he said?” “He said, ‘Absolutely no,’” I answered. “So you will so testify, then?” I assured him that I would.

  I explained that Haldeman had told me to not do anything: “Just stay away from it, don’t talk to them,” and I had not. Nixon wanted to know what happened next, and I told him that I had no direct knowledge. I said Haldeman and I had been over this, and he recalled my coming into his office and telling him “about this crazy scheme that’s being cooked up.” Rogers was coming over, the president said, noting, “Everybody’s in the middle of this, John.” “All I’m trying to think is how to get you out in front,” I told him. We discussed the possible timing for the release of a statement, and I departed. It was my last personal meeting with Richard Nixon.

  When Rogers arrived in the EOB office, he and the president sat at a considerable distance from the recording microphones, so only the gist of their conversation can be discerned.51 Nixon, however, was being less than candid with his old friend, spinning facts and distorting what he had been told. For example, rather than telling Rogers what Petersen had actually said, he used me as a foil, telling Rogers what I thought Petersen believed. When discussing the payment of money to the Watergate defendants, Nixon reported that no one was told not to talk. This recording is not sufficiently audible to know what advice, if any, Rogers offered, but it is remarkable that Nixon solicited Rogers’s advice based on information the president knew was distorted.

  Shortly before nine o’clock that evening, still working in his EOB office, Nixon called Henry Petersen to ask if there were any developments he should know about.52 Petersen reported that Fred LaRue had come in and “admits to participating in the coordination and obstruction of justice.” LaRue had provided information about using the $350,000 White House fund to pay the defendants. He said that he had been present with Mitchell [and Magruder] at a third meeting, in Florida, when Liddy’s plan was approved, and while reluctant to say whether electronic surveillance had been discussed, Petersen thought he was coming around. LaRue did tell them that Liddy’s plan could not have been approved without Mitchell. Petersen said LaRue had hired one of Colson’s law partners to represent him, but the prosecutors objected, and got Sirica to toss the lawyer off the case for having a conflict. So LaRue had to find another lawyer and would be back in the morning.

  When Petersen reported, “Liddy confessed to Dean on June 19, and Dean then told Ehrlichman,” the president said nothing, but he later returned to this point and said that Dean should’ve told him this fact, but had not. (In fact, I had informed him that I had spoken to Liddy on June 19, and Ehrlichman had told him I was reporting on a regular basis.) Petersen further reported that I had said Colson had been present in Ehrlichman’s office when Hunt was told to get out of town, and that I had been asked by Mitchell to “activate Kalmbach,” but lacking the necessary authority, I had gone to Haldeman, who authorized it. So Kalmbach was now to be called before the grand jury. Petersen said the prosecutor still did not have a deal with Magruder, because Magruder was worried the Judge Sirica would throw him in jail, and he did not want to go to jail before the others if he confessed. So they were working with the judge see what they could do.

  Last, Petersen informed Nixon that they were wrestling with whether or not they could, based on the information they had so far, name Haldeman and Ehrlichman as unindicted coconspirators. He
said they were reluctant to do so for fear of being accused of further covering up, since it would appear that they were escaping any indictment and likely punishment. Peterson noted, however, that anybody named as an unindicted coconspirator at this early stage would likely later be indicted as a conspirator. When the president asked about my status, Petersen said they were still negotiating, trying to get the facts nailed down.

  After speaking with Petersen, the president went to the White House residence, where he called Ehrlichman from a telephone that was not attached to the recording system. They talked for twenty minutes, probably about the latest information that Petersen had shared regarding Ehrlichman, who had been carefully reconstructing his participation in the cover-up. He was now claiming, for example, that his calendar indicated that he had virtually never met with me regarding Watergate—and he was sure that when we did meet it related to topics like the president’s estate plan and leaks. In addition, he had a tape recording disproving Chuck Colson’s erroneous memory that the instruction to get Hunt out of town had taken place in Ehrlichman’s office. He also enlisted Colson to say that he had never heard Ehrlichman order me to “deep six” anything.

  April 17, 1973, the White House

  The president’s morning schedule was filled with an arrival ceremony for the Italian prime minister and then an extended meeting with him in the Oval Office, so I was surprised when he phoned me at 9:19 A.M. He was then very diligently attempting to hold the trust of everyone on his staff who had been involved in Watergate.53 This would be my last recorded conversation with Richard Nixon, and I was struck at the time by how insincere he sounded. (My last conversation with Nixon was another conciliatory call on April 22 that he made from Key Biscayne on Easter Sunday morning, which was unrecorded.) He asked if I had looked at the executive privilege statement being prepared, and I replied that Len Garment’s draft was fine. He said he would call again that afternoon, after he had read Garment’s draft, but he did not, nor was I surprised when he did not. He said he could not believe “some guy down in the U.S. Attorney’s Office would say the president blew the case in order to get publicity.” I was not sure what he was talking about, so I told him I would get him some additional information. He was surprised that Judge Sirica was quizzing those who had pled guilty in open court and wondered if others named might not raise constitutional questions. “Give me a little feeling on that,” he requested, adding, “Don’t let them know I’m checking on that. But give me your, do a little rundown.” The president’s request struck me as a make-work project, and given the events later that day, I never pursued the matter. He repeated that he would call me back, and then said, “I hope you got a good night’s sleep, as well as you can these days. But let me say, like I told the other boys, I said, God, you know, it’s tough for everybody, John. All of you are good friends and, I said, you have fought the good fight, and you’ll live to fight another one. That’s the important thing.”

  “No problem here,” I assured the president, wondering what had prompted that sign-off. While Nixon was speaking with me, Len Garment was on his way to the Oval Office.54 It was a meeting intended to placate Garment, in which he was offered excuses for why they had not met earlier. Nixon listened quietly as Garment tried to appeal to his better nature, unaware of how deeply the president had been involved in the cover-up. Garment asked him to “act preemptively and sweep away all this petty detail and rationalizations and baloney that will be in the interest of all the persons involved.” Garment said the clock was running out. “And the key thing,” he continued, “the single issue overriding all of this, is that the American people believe you when you say that you had no knowledge of this.” Garment argued that all involved had to be suspended until the investigation had run its course.

  “What do you think about Dean? How does he feel about it?” the president asked, and Garment reported that we had spoken and that I was ready to resign, though Garment thought suspensions were better. Garment talked, and Nixon listened, but Garment did not have the facts, and the president did not tell him to get those facts from me. In fact, quite the opposite. “Incidentally, don’t discuss it any further with Dean,” he instructed. Garment agreed, but later that day he did not hesitate to contact me when he saw that Ehrlichman and the president had undertaken a blatant effort to shut down my attempts to cooperate with the prosecutors. While Garment was unquestionably loyal to Nixon, he had no tolerance for dirty play.

  After Garment departed the president called Haldeman in for a quick visit before the arrival ceremony on the South Grounds.55 The president went over several matters in Petersen’s report, including the fact that I had told Ehrlichman of Liddy’s confession on June 19, 1972. The president wanted them to “get a line” on that situation.* He also wanted Haldeman and Ehrlichman to “sit down and do some hard thinking about what kind of strategy [they were] going to have with the money.” He said he thought their line regarding not wanting the defendants to talk to the press was weak. He remained concerned about Hunt’s last payment, since it involved him, but Haldeman assured him that Mitchell had taken care of the matter without the help of anyone in the White House. Finally Nixon instructed, “Ah, look, you’ve got to call Kalmbach,” given the fact that Petersen had informed him that Kalmbach was being called to the grand jury. “I’ve been trying to find out from Dean what the hell he is going to say he told Kalmbach. What did Kalmbach say that Dean told him? They wanted money for this support purpose?” Haldeman had no answer but reported that Ehrlichman was talking with Kalmbach. The president reported that LaRue was now “a broken man” who was talking very freely.

  When the president’s schedule opened later that day he asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman to join him in the Oval Office for a discussion that lasted almost two hours.56 Ehrlichman indicated that the proposed executive privilege statement was ready but required the president to make some decisions about it. “I just finished an hour with Colson,” Ehrlichman continued, “who came over very concerned, and said that he had to see you.” Colson’s message, which he had explained at length, was that “Dean had to be dealt with summarily. [Colson’s] partner has a tie with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and they seem to know what’s going on there.* Very simply put, I think his argument will be that the city of Washington generally knows that Dean had little or no access to you. That Haldeman, Colson and Ehrlichman had a lot of access to you.” Nixon agreed, “True, that’s quite right. Dean was just a messenger.” Ehrlichman continued, “That knowledge imputed to us is knowledge imputed to you, and if Dean is credible and testifies that he imputed great quantities of knowledge to us, and is allowed to get away with that, that will seriously impair the presidency ultimately. Because it will be very easy to argue that all you have to do is read Dean’s testimony, look at the previous relationships, and there she goes! So [Colson] says, the key to this is that Dean should not get immunity. That’s what he wants to tell you.”

  “Well, he told me that, and I couldn’t agree more,” the president said. Ehrlichman continued, “Now, he says you have total and complete control over whether Dean gets immunity through Petersen.” Nixon was not certain of that, yet he did not want Colson coming in to tell it to him. Nixon thought granting immunity to me would be paying the smallest price, but Ehrlichman had a different view: “Well, the price that he’ll pay, the quid pro quo for the immunity, is to reach one of the three of us, or all of us.” When Nixon did not disagree, Ehrlichman continued, “Colson argues that if he is not given immunity, then he has even more incentive to go light on his own malefactions, and he will have to clam up, and he will have to defend himself.” The next half hour focused on the pros and cons of this matter, or as Nixon put it, “I think you got to figure what the hell does Dean know.” Then, more bluntly: “What kind of blackmail does he have?”

  Ehrlichman’s action plan was to remove me from the staff, with the president instructing Petersen that I was not to receive immunity. His press plan was to publicly claim that the Dean
report had been inadequate, and when I could not write it up, it had been a sign to the president that I was much more deeply involved than he had previously known. So I was taken off the matter, and working through Ehrlichman, the president began his own investigation. Ehrlichman explained his rationale for removing me from the White House: “You’ve got Dean coming in saying to you, ‘I’ve talked to the U.S. attorney, and I’ve told him a lot of things that I did wrong.’ So you put him on leave.” “I asked him that,” Nixon explained, “and he said, I’ll go on leave with Haldeman and Ehrlichman.” Ehrlichman, bristling, replied, “Well, he’s not in any position to bargain with you on that.” Nixon countered that Petersen’s informing him that he had evidence that both Haldeman and Ehrlichman should resign placed him in a difficult position. “Well, that takes me to my next step,” Ehrlichman said, “which is my continuing misgivings about Petersen. And I’m sorry to be put in the position of having to raise this question, in light of his having said that about me,” referring to Petersen’s calling for Ehrlichman to resign, “because it makes it a very doubtful kind of statement, but just from a personal, selfish standpoint, I would rather the case were in the control of somebody who would call them right down the middle. Rather than some guy that I know has egg on his face from his previous working with Dean. And I know that out of Dean’s mouth.”

  Haldeman added, sounding increasingly angry as he spoke, “If you have any doubt about that and want it from an unbiased source, call Dick Moore and ask him, because there is no question that Petersen is up to his ass with Dean in violation of the law.” Then, somewhat threateningly, he told Nixon, “And you have knowledge of that now, too.”57 Ehrlichman continued, “Now I cannot sit by quietly. If I take a leave, and I go out of here, I am going to very vigorously defend myself. And one of the first things I am going to do is sink Petersen.” After Haldeman added his view—“The first thing is Dean; the second is Petersen”—Ehrlichman continued, “Well, Dean sunk himself, as far as I’m concerned, but I will not have Petersen left in a position to make the prosecutorial decisions, because just as sure as I’m sitting here, I promise you that he will indict me.” Nixon, surprised, asked, “Oh, he will?” Ehrlichman said, “Yes, sir, he will, whether there’s any evidence or not. He will indict me, because it is very much to his interest to do so,” without elaborating on why Petersen might want to do so. “God damn it, why was he put in charge of the case?” Nixon asked. Ehrlichman said he thought it was only a temporary thing, then added, “I just want to say to you in the strongest kind of terms that I will have no choice in this matter. And I’ll do it by fair means or foul.”