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

by John W. Dean

  “Let’s get a line on this money thing,” Nixon urged. “I’d rather be on the offensive on that. Say, if you can, just say, ‘Yes, money was raised.’ Obviously the money was raised, so why did they put it on the doorstep? ‘Well, that’s the way it was given to Mrs. Hunt. That was the way she handled it. Raised the cash for that purpose.’” Haldeman said they had to separate authorizing Kalmbach from the $350,000 itself; they would claim that they did not know what Kalmbach was doing and merely wanted to return the $350,000 to the reelection committee.

  They rehashed Mitchell’s problems, which could become their problems as well, and the fact that he had attended three meetings regarding Liddy’s plans, and while he could claim nothing was approved during the first two, Haldeman noted that “Magruder still has that story of going down to Key Biscayne.” He thought, though, that Mitchell might be able to deal with that meeting, because “Dean wasn’t at [it].” He then enthusiastically added, “See, they had Liddy over there yesterday, and he wouldn’t talk.” The president, surprised, asked, “Is that right?” and Haldeman replied, “In spite of your signal.” Cynically Nixon added, “I did my job. And that’s why Dean wanted me to get [Liddy] to talk. I did my job, and the U.S. attorneys know. I’m glad I did.”92 This conversation ended with Haldeman assuring the president that they would figure out how to handle the money and “get out ahead of it, get a line on it.”

  The cabinet meeting that morning focused on energy and its influence on foreign affairs, and not a word was said about Watergate.93 After it ended, George Bush, chairman of the Republican National Committee, asked the president if he might have a minute with him, and they spoke for twenty minutes in the Oval Office.94 Bush had just returned from a trip to California, where he had met with Governor Ronald Reagan. It was Bush who raised Watergate, telling the president, “I’m feelin’ for ya on this other stuff.” Bush had raised Watergate because he said he had his own problem: a fellow named Ken Rietz, who had been involved in the Nixon campaign and been sent up to the RNC, where he had “worked in the dirty trick department,” doing some “espionage on Muskie and stuff like that.” Bush had told Rietz they had to figure out how to get him out of the RNC without jeopardizing any of his rights, and Nixon agreed that if there was a problem, Rietz should be let go. Bush said that if he could help Nixon in some way other than by wringing his hands, he was willing to do so. Nixon urged him to just keep saying that the president has taken charge, and as he walked Bush to the door, assured him it would soon pass.

  When Bush departed, Nixon requested that Haldeman return to the Oval Office, where he told Haldeman the gist of the conversation with Bush.95 Haldeman thought the situation had arisen because Magruder was still “lashing out” and pulling others in to get a better deal for himself. But Haldeman cautioned that people like Rietz had to be careful, because Magruder had exaggerated his activities.

  Nixon, sounding relaxed and thoughtful, wanted to consider Haldeman’s problems again, and he pointed out that whatever they decided, it would not be sufficient for some people. Haldeman gave an example: “One of the columns this morning made the point that they’re not going to settle for scapegoats. You can’t get away with trying to blame this on Magruder and Dean, which I think is probably true. And then they said you have to move it up to Haldeman, and they totally ignore Mitchell. And because you have to move to someone who was high enough to have had the responsibility, that’s the dilemma that you have. If you move to Haldeman, then there’s no way the president escapes responsibility.”

  “Wonder when will Dean start crashing on Ehrlichman?” the president soon asked. Haldeman thought maybe I had effectively done so in the information given the Post regarding “people higher up” and “people lower down” being involved without actually having named names. He reported that Ziegler said I had been totally surprised by the Post story. In addition, he also speculated that Ehrlichman had more problems with me than he did, for I had met with Ehrlichman on Watergate more often than I had with Haldeman. He added that the president had no problem with me, because he had been investigating at that time, and he had given me no orders to do anything. Nixon corrected him—the million-dollar conversation was now weighing heavily on his mind, and he recalled telling me, “I guess we can get that.” But Haldeman, although he had not been present, claimed he had warned that they dared not start down that track, and the president had agreed. “You agreed that, you know, you won’t get anywhere. That doesn’t accomplish anything.” The president wanted to know who had called Mitchell to come down. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. I don’t know that anybody did,” Haldeman replied.* He said that he did not think Ehrlichman had made the call because “John Ehrlichman wasn’t the least bit concerned about [Hunt’s threat].”*

  When Haldeman departed, Nixon called Henry Petersen, and after a brief chat about leaks got to the reason for his call—the latest update.96 You have Mitchell today?” Nixon asked. “Yes sir, he’s in the grand jury now,” Petersen replied, and said he thought Mitchell would be out today. He also reported that Magruder had taken a lie-detector test successfully, and that Strachan was scheduled to follow. “How about Dean?” the president asked. Petersen said they were “still in arm’s-length negotiations,” noting that I hadn’t “really decided to be a witness yet.”97 The president sought Petersen’s assurance that my conversations, as well as Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s, with the president were privileged, as well as subject to “national security.” “I understand,” Petersen tacitly agreed. He also reported that Kleindienst had talked with Jeb Magruder’s new boss, the secretary of commerce, after the cabinet meeting that morning, and Magruder had tendered his oral resignation, which could be accepted by the commerce secretary whenever he wanted it. Petersen said he was suggesting that the resignation be put in writing in case Magruder had any second thoughts. The president said that there was no change in the status of anyone at the White House, and Petersen agreed they were in a different position than Magruder. Nixon reported that he was heading for Florida, but if Petersen had anything Nixon should know, he could call him. “But otherwise don’t bother me.”

  Kissinger soon arrived in the Oval Office.98 Nixon observed that what he was going through with Haldeman and Ehrlichman was not as difficult as some of the life-and-death decisions they had made regarding “Cienfuegos, Jordan or Cambodia.”99 Still, he faced a conundrum: If he did nothing, he would be criticized; he did not want to do anything to harm his aides, but then if he did have to let them go, people would call him “a God damn fool” for keeping them so long. “How could I have been misled for nine months?” Nixon asked plaintively, and Kissinger replied that it had been his understanding that the president had not been misled, and this was all about public posturing. Nixon said it was a question of how best to do what had to be done and whether taking action would remove any of the poison. With increased bitterness, he said, “Mitchell was the culprit,” and he ended the conversation by complaining that the fight ahead was pure politics.

  Shortly after noon, while waiting for his helicopter to arrive on the South Grounds, the president asked Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Kissinger to the Oval Office, though Kissinger would only remain for a minute. It had originally been planned that Haldeman and Ehrlichman would accompany the president to Florida over the Easter holiday, but he had decided to go alone, because he wanted private time to think.100 Ehrlichman indicated that they had just come from another session with their lawyers, who were now getting down to serious business and wanted Haldeman and Ehrlichman to have an informal session with the prosecutors, if requested.101 The president told them that George Bush was letting Rietz go. Ehrlichman was aware that Rietz had paid the expenses of the spy they had working for presidential candidate senator Edmund Muskie as a chauffeur. “Well, nothing wrong with that,” the president said. Ehrlichman thought Bush, whom Haldeman called “Mr. Clean,” was overreacting.

  The president reported that he had raised with Petersen Ehrlichman’s hope
about speeding up the grand jury, but Petersen said that was a problem, because each person talked about others who were involved, and not only were they running out leads, but they had to study the record, so all of it was taking time. “Well, I understand,” Ehrlichman said, clearly not happy with this news, “but I think it would be just a matter of letting him know you were in a hurry, and then periodically keeping the heat on him. The thing to fear here is that Silbert will deliberately try to stretch this thing out, hoping for some kind of apple to fall off the tree.” That, Haldeman added, was what their attorneys were convinced he was doing.

  “Dean’s just changed the terms,” Ehrlichman announced, referring to the fact that I was no longer talking with the prosecutors—information that Wilson could only have learned from the prosecutors themselves. “Changed the terms?” the president asked. “Why, I wonder?” Ehrlichman answered, “Probably because these guys didn’t deliver what they said they would.” He added, “[Dean’s] got a guy [who was] Humphrey’s field director in ’68.” “He’s cousin of the sister of Dean’s first wife,” Haldeman clarified.102 Not surprisingly, Nixon reacted, “Well, I just hope the poor son-of-a-bitch is not going to turn him completely rat. But what is Dean going to try to negotiate now, I don’t know. But Christ, I think he must have. It seems to me he’s told them whatever he can so far. Don’t you think he has?” Ehrlichman said, “It sounds like to me, if he is into that Hunt business, that’s pretty far.” (In fact, I had still not gone into detail with Shaffer about the president’s role.) Based on his conversations with Petersen, the president told Haldeman and Ehrlichman, “Dean has not yet cooperated, you know what I mean.”

  “You got one sticky wicket there. Dean has the administrative responsibility for the Secret Service, who in the Technical Security Division have responsibility for all document protection and White House guards,” Haldeman pointed out to the president.* As his helicopter was landing on the South Grounds, Nixon remarked that he did not think my relationship with the Technical Services Division was “that much of a problem.”

  The recording system, which was seldom good, made much of the remainder of this conversation difficult to hear. Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he wanted to have a further conversation with Dick Moore about the La Costa meetings, reminding them that Moore was a “special counsel to the president,” for he was an attorney on the staff. But he added that Petersen had told him that my status as an attorney did not mean I could not testify about criminal matters under attorney-client privilege. Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman chimed in, almost simultaneously, “Except his client.” The president said, “His client, I figure, is not a member of the White House staff.” Ehrlichman countered, “Well, is the client’s [employee] not part of the client when acting on behalf of the client?” Meaning, weren’t he and Haldeman covered by attorney-client privilege? Nixon did not engage further in this line of discussion but urged Ehrlichman to talk to Moore; Ehrlichman, however, thought it was too late, given that everyone had now retained counsel. He wanted the president to give Moore a message about his memory of the La Costa meetings: Ehrlichman (falsely) claimed that Nixon had called the La Costa session to come up with a paper on the whole Watergate episode, and as Ehrlichman now recalled, it was I who was “the major impediment” to that effort.

  Nixon asked yet again about the money, and Ehrlichman continued: “The money business was nothing new. Dean continually, through this period of time, was coming to us on an episodic basis and saying, Jesus, Mitchell needs money, and what are we going to do? And invariably and inevitably, with the exception of the one little, of the Herb Kalmbach episode, we said, John, God only knows what he’s going to do. And my remark about Nelson Rockefeller is typical. You know, tell Mitchell to go borrow it from his friend Nelson Rockefeller.” Ehrlichman continued, raising his protestations of his innocence to new levels: “See, our sense of this is, throughout, was Dean saying to us, nobody in the White House is involved. And our sense of it being, well, look, if Mitchell needs money, for whatever reason, that’s Mitchell’s problem.” He added, “I have no interest, for instance, in obstructing justice. I had no exposure myself. I was satisfied from Dean that none of my colleagues in the White House had exposure, and that Jeb Magruder was a horse’s ass and got himself into this.” He quickly admitted, “Well, in all candor, I knew that Mitchell was trying to raise money for these people. And I knew that LaRue was, and I knew that because Dean told me so. I don’t have any personal knowledge either from Dean or anybody else of any correction in that process.”

  Nixon now added own his spin to Ehrlichman’s account: “You didn’t have any reason to think of it being raised for an improper purpose until two things: one, until McCord said it was for payoff purposes, and two, until Dean came in and said that Hunt is shaking us down.” “Bob and I have shared a suspicion that Mitchell was at the bottom of all this,” Ehrlichman replied. “There’s no two ways about that. And we’ve shared that suspicion for many months. But Dean very effectively kept between me and any intimate knowledge.” (More accurately, Mitchell simply did not want to deal with Ehrlichman.) “Good,” the president responded.

  Haldeman and Ehrlichman soon departed, sharing Easter good wishes, and Dick Moore, who had been waiting, was asked to enter the Oval Office for a quick meeting before the president left.103 Nixon had one point to make, which he buried in other conversation, although his message was clear: “You had nothing to do with the money!” He told Moore that Ehrlichman had explained to him that I had repeatedly raised the need for money, which was being raised for the Watergate defendants’ legal fees and support. That point made, Moore departed, and the president soon headed for his awaiting helicopter.

  In his memoir Nixon included a touching, symbolic scene, with Ziegler joining him that evening in Florida at his Key Biscayne residence, where they “watched the sun setting into Biscayne Bay” while they discussed Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigning. The president’s schedule reveals this never happened.104

  Nixon did, however, speak by telephone with Ziegler, who was at the Key Biscayne Hotel, and learned that Ziegler was distressed by the negative television coverage of Mitchell emerging from the grand jury, which Ziegler believed was clearly intended to “humiliate him.” The press secretary was concerned that the same not happen to Nixon’s chief of staff and top domestic adviser. He also reported that during the previous three days he had been asked over three hundred Watergate-related questions. Nixon later wrote that because Haldeman had asked him to get a broad spectrum of advice before asking for their resignations, he solicited Pat Buchanan’s thoughts, and he asked Ziegler to call Haldeman and read him what Buchanan had to say. Buchanan thought that anyone who could not “maintain [his] viability should step forward voluntarily,” and the sooner he did so, the better for all. Buchanan cited conservative columnist and television commentator Howard K. Smith as saying that Nixon could either act like Eisenhower, who “cleans house himself,” or Harding, “who covered up for his people.”* Buchanan also noted the impact that Watergate was having on the president’s staff: “There is a Titanic mentality around the White House staff these days. We’ve got to put out the life rafts and hope to pull the presidency through.”105

  April 21–24, 1973, Key Biscayne

  At the president’s request, the log of his personal contacts from April 21 through April 24 were not recorded in his official daily diary, because he had asked Pat Buchanan and Chappie Rose (if not others whose names have never been disclosed), to come to Florida to discuss Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s leaving the White House. He also made a number of telephone calls soliciting advice: On Easter morning, April 22, the president phoned Colson (7:55 A.M. to 8:21 A.M.), me (8:24 A.M. to 8:39 A.M.), Haldeman (9:45 A.M. to 10:16 A.M.) and Ehrlichman (10:26 A.M. to 10:38 A.M.) and also wished everyone well. As I later wrote, all I remembered of the conversation (since I had stayed up late and Nixon had phoned so early) was his ending the call by saying, “You’re still my counsel.” In Ni
xon’s own account he told me, “You said this is a cancer that must be cut out. I want you to know I am following that advice.” He maintained that I told him I appreciated the call, which I am sure was the case, and that I had not decided if I should take the Fifth Amendment, to which he responded that I should feel free to come and see him. Nixon noted, “Dean said rather coolly, ‘I know how that line got in the statement, the one about no immunity,’” which I had only learned about because Len Garment, with whom I remained friendly, had told me. Nixon wrote that we spoke about Gray’s destruction of documents and the events relating to Hunt’s demands, which led to the March 21 meeting.106 Even at this late date I was still loyal to Richard Nixon, and had not taken my lawyers through any of my personal dealings with him, other than to allude to the fact that there were problems in explaining the cover-up without involving him. In fact, I continued to hope that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Colson would join me in admitting the mistakes we had made, believing it was the only way the president would survive. No one person could solve this problem by taking the blame, particularly anyone at a lower level of the staff. But my superiors were prepared to risk it, or they were in a remarkably deep denial of reality.

  It was apparently during a meeting at his Key Biscayne home on Monday morning, April 23, that the president made a firm decision that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had to go. It was a protracted and emotional session lasting some three hours, and it included Ziegler, Buchanan and Chappie Rose. Nixon recalled Chappie Rose’s quoting Gladstone: “The first essential for a prime minister is to be a good butcher.” Nixon wrote in his memoir that, as the session ended, “we all agreed that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had to resign.” Nixon asked Buchanan to deliver the message, but he protested and suggested Ziegler, who got the assignment to call Haldeman, who would, in turn, talk with Ehrlichman. Ziegler reported that while Haldeman disagreed with the decision, he would accept it. Ehrlichman, however, did not only not accept it but persuaded Haldeman to change his mind. Nixon, in turn, backed down, and rather than tell them they had no choice in the matter, the president began calling other advisers, such as Bill Rogers, John Connally and Bryce Harlow, who had headed the president’s congressional relations office during his first term, thinking they would bolster his position, which they did. But when that information was relayed to Haldeman, he said Rogers and Connally had told them just the opposite. The president returned to the White House on Tuesday evening, April 24.