by John W. Dean
In midafternoon the president called Haig to his EOB, anxious about the damage the Walters memcons would do to his credibility with his own people.6 Earlier he had pressed Haig to make certain that Buzhardt believed the president was not trying to use the CIA to interfere with the Watergate investigation—which, of course, the memcons revealed was exactly what he had tried to do. Nixon said he did not want his staff to see the documents; he did not want Elliot Richardson to view them; and he was deeply concerned that those who had seen them would no longer believe him. He did not want anyone working for him “to have any doubts about the president. I’m not in this God damn thing,” he insisted. He wanted everyone to focus on what he told Gray when he called on July 6—namely, to take the investigation “as high as was necessary”—which Gray had shared with Walters, who had then recorded it in a memcon.
But not even Haig could accept so limited a reading of the documents, and he made it clear that he thought they would create a serious legal problem for both Haldeman and Ehrlichman. “Does [Buzhardt] think they are guilty?” Nixon asked. “He thinks they are guilty, [but] they don’t think they are,” Haig said, and he shared Buzhardt’s assessment of the two men. “He senses that Bob is strong and John is not.” Nixon, disagreeing with that analysis, said, “I don’t want to get in it with Buzhardt, for reasons which you understand. I trust him and all the rest, but God damn it, after the Dean episode, I don’t trust anybody. Do you understand?” Nixon, clearly unnerved by this latest information, complained: “Jesus Christ, I can’t trust Garment, Buzhardt, Price, anybody. Jesus Christ, I don’t know who the hell we’re talking to any more. But if there’s one person that is totally blameless in this, I thought Watergate was the stupidest God damn thing I ever heard of.” As this rant continued, Nixon insisted, “I really thought it was probably a CIA, because I couldn’t think we could have done something that stupid. All this payoff crap. I thought, well, they’re taking care of their fees and all this. Believe me, I knew nothing about it, not a God damn thing. And I was busy with other things. But the point that I’m making is this: I’m not going to blame other people for my bad judgment in picking them.”
Ironically, this conversation ended with the president’s growing realization that he may have made another bad pick, as he told Haig: “Elliot Richardson, they say, is very goosey. If he’s goosey, screw him. Out, out, out. He’s got to be all the way with the president. No questions.” (Five months later Nixon would discover that Richardson was unable “to be all the way.”)
Later that afternoon, after digesting the steady flow of calamities and increasingly hostile press coverage, the president telephoned Haig and said, “Let me tell you, the whole game here now, I think you’ve got to realize, which you and I haven’t played much before, it’s all PR now.”7 With that, and still unaware of Judge Byrne’s decision to dismiss the Ellsberg case, Nixon issued an order not to send the judge the wiretap information: “God damn it, instead of sending it out to that judge and let him sit on it for a week, by God, we’ll put it out.” The president was now intent on preempting some of the bad publicity that he knew was only going to get worse.
At 3:45 P.M. Haig rejoined the president in his EOB office for a brief session before Nixon headed to Camp David for the weekend.8 (Because it was raining and windy, he was driving, with Rebozo joining him for the trip.) Nixon said he wanted Walters to meet with Henry Petersen but not Elliot Richardson, who had not yet been confirmed. Walters was on his way, and “he’s not going to volunteer anything,” Haig replied. He would say that he had refreshed his recollection with his diary but would not mention the memcons. Nixon departed for Camp David shortly after four o’clock, but during the entire weekend he phoned Haig for the latest information, checking in almost obsessively within minutes of his arrival at Aspen Lodge.9
That evening at Camp David Nixon learned that Mitchell was denying that, as attorney general, he had approved any wiretaps of newsmen. “That’s bullshit,”10 Nixon remarked, and indeed, later that evening Buzhardt located in the boxes containing the wiretap logs Mitchell’s signature authorizing wiretaps of six newsmen and ten National Security Council staffers.11
When discussing the memcons with Haig later that night, the president learned that Buzhardt remained adamantly against releasing them, even returning them to the CIA, although the president was inclined to get them out of the White House.12
On Saturday, May 12, Nixon decided they could survive the release of the memcons, while understanding the consequences: “It will be very embarrassing, because it’ll indicate that we tried to cover up with the CIA.”13 Nixon seems to have overlooked what had apparently concerned Buzhardt: The information in the memcons could give the lie to Nixon’s March 21 defense that he had not known about a cover-up until I told him nine months later. Buzhardt advised Haig, who reported to Nixon, that Senator John Stennis was “working covertly” to help the president’s cause and trying to bring some sanity to the recent chaos plaguing Nixon.14 Late Saturday afternoon Nixon and Haig discussed potential Watergate special prosecutors they might recommend to Richardson. Haig’s pick was former U.S. Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg, whom Haig liked because “he’s a little bit obnoxious and doesn’t wear well with people, which would be good from our point of view.”15
On Sunday, May 13, Nixon told Ziegler that timing was key, “And it isn’t yet time to go on the offensive.”16 Later that day the president encouraged Ziegler to work on the strategy for dealing with the latest Watergate problems,17 and then called Haldeman to talk strategy, and to wish him well as he headed back to the grand jury on Monday.18 He told Haldeman that attempting to stop the Senate Watergate committee proceedings was not going to work, and that as far as the Senate was concerned, “I think we’ve just got to make an asset out of the liability.” He advised Haldeman that when answering questions before the Senate, he had to be as careful as if he were in a courtroom, but at the Senate you can “make a speech each time.” And Nixon spelled out the speech he wanted made, with nothing nuanced or subtle: “The president has no knowledge whatsoever, it was never discussed in his presence, you see what I mean?” Nixon also instructed Haldeman on how he should answer questions about Walters: It was all a matter of national security. Together they again tried to remember what had happened on June 23, 1972, but could only guess. So they conjectured (incorrectly) that they had not yet known the true story of Watergate and thought the CIA might have been involved, because CIA personnel had taken part in it.
May 14 –16, 1973, the White House
Back in his West Wing office on Monday, May 14, the president was gripped with a new concern: Had he written me an incriminating memorandum? During his 8:56 A.M. Oval Office meeting with Ziegler, he raised this question: “Maybe I wrote a memorandum to him saying, look, do everything possible to be sure that John and Bob don’t get involved, or everything possible to see that Hunt doesn’t talk. Do you know what I mean?”19 Nixon was sufficiently worried about this possibility that he had Larry Higby check with all the West Wing secretaries who handled presidential matters to see if he had ever written a “confidential memorandum” to me.20 He was also alarmed about another file regarding Ehrlichman and Hunt: “You know, they were supposed to do a second-story job someplace, and they were going to do this, and they never did, and they just screwed up everything.”* “We don’t seem to have any file on that,” he told Higby, suggesting he take a look. When Higby left, Nixon called Rose Woods into the Oval Office and asked if he had written any memorandum to me since February 27, but she could recall none.21 She did, however, have an update from psychic Jeane Dixon, who “tells us that May and June are going to be pretty bad. June may be worse than May. But everything will turn out fine and to be of stout heart and all that.” By noon Higby assured the president that he had not discovered any memos to me, which he reaffirmed when Nixon called him into the Oval Office at 12:25 P.M.22
While contrary to Nixon’s assumption I knew almost nothing about the wiretaps
on newsmen and NSC staffers, for they had been undertaken before I arrived at the White House, he had specifically instructed me on April 16 that this was a national security matter I could not discuss, to preclude my testifying about them. As soon as their existence was made known, as a result of Judge Byrne’s inquiry about how Ellsberg had been overheard, however, and additional information about them started to leak, Nixon insisted that the FBI issue a statement that they had been conducted in a legal manner and approved by the attorney general. On May 14, with guidance from the White House, acting FBI director Bill Ruckelshaus released a statement acknowledging the activity.23 While under the circumstances the statement put the best spin possible on the situation, it inevitably resulted in more bad press.24 And the bad news kept coming. Ziegler told the president: Judge Sirica was reading the classified documents I had placed in the safe-deposit box, to which I had given him the key; and Walters was testifying before the Senate Armed Service Committee about the CIA relationship to the Watergate investigation and White House aides Hunt and Liddy.25 Nixon would keep asking his staff for an update on my papers, but it would take days for him to learn of their nature.
By the evening of May 14 the situation at the White House had become almost frantic. In an Oval Office session with Haig and Ziegler, Nixon learned that Richardson had given the Senate Judiciary Committee a list of four potential special prosecutors: U.S. District Court Judge Harold R. Tyler, Jr., of New York; former deputy attorney general Warren Christopher; William H. Erickson, a judge on the Colorado Supreme Court and chair of the America Bar Association’s criminal law section; and David W. Peck, a former appellate judge on the New York Supreme Court and later a Wall Street lawyer.26 (Within days all of Richardson’s choices for the special prosecutor post had turned him down.) The president also learned that Richardson had publicly criticized both Haig and Garment for suggesting names of special prosecutors, commenting, “I don’t like him pissing on the White House. But everybody else is doing it at the moment. All right, fine, let’s get him confirmed.” The Senate Democrats, meanwhile, were hammering the White House for making its own suggestions for the post.27
Haig had more bad news that evening regarding Walters’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: “Well, we got a problem with the testimony that Walters gave. He twisted it in a way that was bad for Bob and John.” When Haig assured the president that it was not bad for him, Nixon claimed that Walters had “misconstrued” his own documents. “Every son of a bitch is a self-server,” Haig noted. Ziegler was concerned that they were getting too involved in “the day-to-day bouillabaisse.” Nixon agreed and said they should just accept the fact that they were in for several months of a beating, but that they would come back. Only if he was guilty would they not come back, Nixon noted, but because he was not guilty, they would survive. This is not to say that Nixon was not outraged by the latest charges that had surfaced that evening: He had stolen campaign money and put it into his San Clemente house; he had dragged the CIA into Watergate; and he had paid off the defendants. But because none of those were true, he would survive. “There’s got to be a way to deal with it,” a very frustrated Ziegler said. “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”
Nixon met with Haig again that evening, complaining, not surprisingly, that day after day and week after week it was all Watergate, all the time.28 “Now you and I’ve got to get on with the business of this God damned country,” he said, and instructed Haig: “Buzhardt’s in charge, and at the end of the day he can tell you, we had this and this pack of shit today, and this pack of shit tomorrow.” Ziegler, he said, was concerned with “some attrition in the press and polls,” but Nixon’s response was, “Screw it. We’re going to take it for another two months, and then we’ll come back. Don’t worry about it. Don’t react to the God damned attrition. Al, we just do the job.” Haig agreed, and Nixon urged, “Don’t react in a jumpy, panicky way every time something comes up.” With one exception, Nixon added: the leaked story that he had taken a million dollars and put it in his California property. On that, he said, “We’ve got to attack them, assault them, destroy them.” They spent the next three hours desperately but unsuccessfully trying to kill the story and attacking the Senate Watergate committee, which they believed had leaked it.29
In the Oval Office the following morning, May 15, when Ziegler reported that neither the Post nor the Times had carried the account of the million dollars purportedly taken from the campaign, Nixon pointed out, “It played in the AP.”30 To knock the story down, Ziegler reported, they were bringing in Kalmbach’s partner, Frank DeMarco, who did Nixon’s taxes as well as those of the Nixon Foundation. But Nixon was now annoyed that they had overreacted to the story and lost their balance again: “You know, there is going to be a story every God damn day, and eventually, they will pass.” As this conversation proceeded, and Ziegler raised the fact that they were getting terrible press, the president reminded him, “Ron, we are all getting too obsessed.” Nixon asked whether he should consider a press conference, but Ziegler thought not, for it would be all Watergate.
Just before ten o’clock Henry Petersen returned to the Oval Office, for Nixon wanted to make sure he understood that the president had not been trying to block his investigation of the Ellsberg break-in on April 17, when he called him from Camp David and heatedly told him to stay out of national security matters.31 (Of course, that was precisely what Nixon had been trying to do, at Ehrlichman’s request.) Nixon did not want Petersen giving Elliot Richardson the wrong impression. The president also apologized to Petersen for approving the appointment of a special prosecutor, which was effectively a snub at Petersen, who said he understood the changed circumstances. Later in the conversation Petersen explained the problem for the Justice Department if the Senate granted me immunity.32 But Nixon did not pursue the topic, and instead continued his effort to spin the March 21 conversation.
Following the visit with Petersen, Haig arrived to report that Richardson’s nomination was being held hostage to his appointment of a Watergate special prosecutor acceptable to the Senate Judiciary Committee.33 While Nixon still wanted to influence the choice, they understood that they had to be very careful with Richardson.
On May 16, after weeks of being pressed by reporters, Ziegler told the president when they met that morning in the Oval Office, “This whole question about the Dean report, how it got started, and how you made your August twenty-ninth statement, I think I’m going to just lay that out.”34 To do so he needed some information: “Who asked Dean to conduct the investigation?” Nixon said the “instructions” were his, but a dubious Ziegler caused Nixon to add, “I didn’t ask him specifically. I didn’t call him in the office and ask him, Ron.” Rather, he claimed that all of that was handled by Ehrlichman (even though Ehrlichman himself had told Ziegler that he never asked me about an investigation before the August 29 statement). The point Nixon wanted made was, this was not something he “just made up.” (In fact, of course, that was exactly what he had done: Gathering his thoughts on August 29, 1972, Nixon’s handwritten notes indicate that he simply claimed he had personally instructed me to undertake an investigation I had never undertaken.*) Nixon instructed Ziegler to simply state that such an investigation was a responsibility inherent to the White House counsel, so Nixon simply retroactively invented this responsibility and sent Ziegler to the press room with that explanation, but instead Ziegler tossed in the towel, admitting that the president had never spoken to me, nor had he directed any investigation by me.35
Shortly before ten o’clock Nixon telephoned Fred Buzhardt to see what information he had regarding the documents I had placed in a safe-deposit box. Buzhardt said Judge Sirica had not yet revealed the contents, but Fred had done “a little snoopin’ last night, and I think I’ve identified the documents” based on the description given the court.36 He had found a matching document at the National Security Agency (NSA) that did not relate to Watergate, which delighted Nixon. Buzhardt described it as
“an intelligence summary of our own collection capabilities and limitation, and a plan for overcoming our shortfalls.” That was about as bland a description as possible, so Buzhardt quickly added that “the intelligence people” think it is “quite a hot document.” Slowly the issue involved was striking a chord with Nixon, who recalled a meeting with the intelligence agencies, and Hoover of the FBI, about gathering better domestic intelligence. “Fred, damn it, that’s not improper,” Nixon complained, and though Buzhardt agreed, Henry Petersen, who had received a copy from Judge Sirica, was refusing to give the White House a copy.
A half hour later Buzhardt had more information. In addition to the core document he had described earlier there were White House memos from Tom Huston and Bob Haldeman, as well as others, relating to that document.37 Buzhardt reported that he was moving “to control this document.” Ziegler entered the Oval Office as Nixon was completing his call with Buzhardt, and the president told him that the documents in the safe-deposit box “had nothing to do with Watergate whatever”; he described them as a plan to coordinate the CIA, NSA and FBI for internal intelligence,38 and added, “It’s all highly classified, because it’s all supersecret shit. So listen, today we start the fight again.”