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

by John W. Dean

  Soon they were into another discussion attempting to attribute the blame to me, with Nixon declaring, “We must destroy John Dean. He is a bad, bad man.” “He will destroy himself,” Haldeman replied. “Why?” Nixon asked. “Because,” Haldeman replied,” I don’t think he is telling the truth, and I think it’s all coming around.” This dicussion continued through the afternoon and ended with more a hopeful analysis by Haldeman: “I don’t see how Dean could hang us, anyway. He’s got no evidence.”

  Nixon asked Haldeman, based on his closed session with the Senate Watergate committee, about the capability of its members. Haldeman thought Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) “comes out quite well,” and is “capable,” “sharp.” Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) “comes out very well” and “keeps quoting from The Washington Post” to give us the “chance to shoot down all those stories.” Senator Edward Gurney (R-FL) “is bad, very bad,” “just mean.” Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT) “is a disaster” and “not effective”; his “questions don’t make sense,” “he is antagonistic,” and is “sort of a pain in the ass.” Haldeman ended the visit by encouraging Nixon to go out and get some sun. “This is a fight that can be won,” Haldeman assured him. Nixon was not so confident, but as he stated it, “The point is, you’ve got to try, because by God, as you suggested, I sit in this chair with the whole world in [my] hands.”

  Haig checked in with the president in the late afternoon to assure him that everything was proceeding on schedule in the drafting of the white paper.55 A few hours later Haig phoned Nixon with some news.56 When Nixon anticipated the news that Richardson would soon have “his [special] prosecutor and all that horseshit,” Haig continued, “I see he got a humdinger.” “Who’d he get?” Nixon asked. “A fellow named [Archibald] Cox that used to be solicitor general for Kennedy,” Haig reported. “Oh, I know him,” Nixon said. “He’s not very bright, but he’s well respected,” and the president did not think the Senate Judiciary Committee could reject him. “Cox is not a mean man,” Nixon noted. “He’s a partisan, but not that mean,” and Haig added that he understood that Cox was “not a zealot.” “Believe me, if he’d take Cox, that would be great,” the president said.

  Nixon stayed actively involved through the weekend of May 19 and 20, checking on the progress of the white paper and all Watergate-related matters. When he met with Haig on Saturday morning in the Oval Office he was thinking about how to roll out the new statement.57 He thought he would call in the congressional leaders and “take them all for an hour and a half to two hours. And I will lay it all out there, and I’ll say, here it is.” He would ask for their support and explain it involved “the national interest” and, of course, remind them that he “was not involved in the God damn Watergate.” Late Saturday morning Nixon met with Ziegler and Haig and explained why he should not do a television speech with the white paper material: “You can’t use the big bullet too often and have it be effective.”58 He wanted to know who was working on it, and he was told Pat Buchanan and Ray Price, and Ziegler assured him they were in sync. Ziegler gave Nixon his reading on the first day of the Senate Watergate hearings: “The overall impact on the public, from a guy like McCord and his testimony yesterday, is zilch.”

  After much rehashing the president left with the First Lady for Norfolk, Virginia, and then to the USS Independence off the Norfolk coast for Armed Forces Day ceremonies. They returned to Camp David around four o’clock. Shortly after seven o’clock the president telephoned Ziegler from Camp David, asking, “How we coming on the project?”59 Ziegler assured the president they could make the Monday morning deadline, and that in addition to himself, Haig, Price, Buchanan, Garment and Buzhardt were at work on the statement.

  On Sunday morning, May 20, the president checked in by telephone with Ziegler, who said they had made good progress the night before.60 In addition to the congressional leaders, they discussed inviting members of the Armed Services Committee, because of their jurisdiction over the CIA, for the background briefing on the statement. Nixon next phoned Haig61 and told him that Ziegler had mentioned that Buzhardt thought they could delay releasing the Walters memcons to the Senate until Wednesday, which Nixon thought was favorable, as they would have released the white paper by then. At 12:26 P.M. Nixon called Haldeman to bring him up to date.62 Haldeman said he was being hounded by the press but telling them nothing other than “the president had no knowledge of or involvement in any kind of cover-up or anything else related to Watergate in any way, shape or form.” Most of this conversation involved Nixon once again trying to get Haldeman to tell him what he did and did not know, particularly regarding Ehrlichman and clemency, enlisting Kalmbach, keeping Hunt on after the Ellsberg break-in, and when he first learned of that break-in. Several hours later Nixon spoke again with Haldeman,63 who had been unable to reach Ehrlichman because he was in California for a new grand jury investigating the Ellsberg break-in. An hour later, however, Ehrlichman had called Haldeman, who then reported back to Nixon.64 Ehrlichman (who would later change his memory) told Haldeman on “the [Ellsberg] psychiatrist thing, that he doesn’t believe you knew about that until February or March,” and that he thought that Nixon had learned of it from me. Ehrlichman passed the word via Haldeman that anything Nixon could say in his statement about the Ellsberg break-in situation “would be very helpful.” He was looking for “any substantiation” they could get, since it had been under wraps. Nixon responded, “Of course, I suppose that even under the plumbers thing, illegal activity is not,” he said with a nervous chuckle, “is not, not impressed with national security.”

  On Sunday evening Nixon discussed the drafting of the white paper on the telephone with Haig.65 The president wanted to stress the “national security” angle but did not want to release any of the underlying documents (the memcons or the Dean papers). Nixon said he wanted all this talk about impeachment, particularly by Buzhardt, to cease: “We are fighting to the end. We’re going to beat the bastards.” A few hours later, at 10:17 P.M., after arriving back at the White House, Nixon talked with Ziegler and learned they were still working on the draft.66 Ziegler said they had discussed a rapid response team to deal with any charges that arose at the Watergate hearings. Nothing had been decided, nor had a recommendation been offered. Nixon repeated his mantra: “I think the whole thing right now is to play everything very tough, that everybody else is lying.”

  May 21, 1973, the White House

  Monday was devoted to editing, rewriting and more editing of the white paper, mixed in with discussions of how to best release it on the following day. The conversations are difficult to follow without copies of the drafts from which they were working during the conversation, but what is clear is that Nixon approved every word of the final draft, often providing his staff information that only he knew. No one was allowed to check Haldeman’s or Ehrlichman’s notes. Even though Nixon had dictated his contemporaneous thoughts about some of the meetings and issues involved for his diary, he chose not to use it to refresh his recollections. The editing and planning process for the white paper, which would be the most detailed statement Nixon would make of his defense, began when Ziegler entered the Oval Office at 8:40 A.M. to report that Watergate had finally moved off the front pages of the newspapers.67

  Ziegler explained that they could not have a meeting with congressional leaders to present the white paper, because the Republican leaders—Jerry Ford in the House and Hugh Scott in the Senate—were “fearful” and did not want to attend a meeting in the White House, so they would be privately briefed in their offices. Ziegler said it had been suggested that Nixon invite the Democratic leaders—Carl Albert in the House and Mike Mansfield in the Senate—down for a glass of bourbon in the Lincoln Sitting Room for their briefing. While considering these and other ideas, Nixon said he had noted in a memo from Pat Buchanan that “he seems to think that it was a mistake for me to refer to Haldeman and Ehrlichman as two fine men. You think so?” Ziegler dodged the question, and Nixon explained that Buchanan di
d not understand “the problem we had. If I didn’t put that in the speech, you could have those two men bitter,” which he did not want. Nixon pointed out that fifteen people had left the administration because of Watergate, “And it’s a wrenching experience.”68

  As this conversation progressed, Nixon shared his analysis of what had gone amiss with his presidency: “I would never say this to him, but it was Bob Haldeman giving Jeb Magruder the enormous responsibility he did over there at the campaign, and Magruder then taking the Liddys and Hunts and that bunch of jackasses over there.” (Absent from this analysis was Ehrlichman’s authorizing Krogh to send Liddy to the reelection committee.69)

  To edit the white paper, Haig spent almost a half an hour with the president in his EOB office reviewing the document.70 When Haig departed Nixon had a particular revision, so he called him back. “One small thing that would help in editing throughout: Never use the word ‘criminal’; use the word ‘illegal.’”71 It went on like that throughout the day and evening.72 During the late afternoon, Nixon asked Ziegler what he made of the designated special Watergate prosecutor’s statement that he would conduct an “investigation right up to the Oval Office?”73 “I’m not the slightest bit worried about Archibald Cox,” Ziegler responded, and when Nixon asked why, the press secretary said, ”I don’t think he’s that heavy, and it’s basically irrelevant now as to what Archibald Cox does.” Ziegler saw it merely as a public relations battle. Nixon and Haig took a dinner break on the Sequoia for several hours, cruising down the Potomac, and when they got back at 8:14 P.M., Haig told Nixon the writers needed to work overnight and would have it in the morning.74

  May 22, 1973, the White House

  It required down-to-the-last-minute editing to finalize the white paper, which Ziegler assured Nixon was ready to go when they met at 8:50 A.M. in the Oval Office.75 While Nixon was waiting for the final draft to arrive on his desk, he returned a call from Chief Justice Warren Burger that had come in the previous evening.76 It was a stilted conversation, a response to Nixon’s calling to congratulate Burger on four years on the Court. Nixon assured him he should not be overly concerned about “all the hullabaloo,” which he would survive, and it would pass. Nixon did cross the line in raising the difficulty that Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman would confront getting a fair trial, but Burger only said, “There will be a lot of books written about this, and a lot of law review articles. It’s just one of the times when the boat’s rocking.” With a chuckle, the Chief Justice added, “This kind of separates the men from the boys.”

  When Haig and Buzhardt arrived in the EOB office at 9:55 A.M. with the draft in hand, Nixon asked who had fact-checked the information.77 Had Haldeman and Ehrlichman? Buzhardt’s answer was vague, saying it had been checked “with a number of people.” When Nixon pressed, Buzhardt responded, “We got through, ah, Colson and Petersen.” The president did not seem totally satisfied with that reply and said they needed to anticipate every possible question. They then proceeded with work on the document, finishing just before 11:30 A.M. A final revised draft was carried to the EOB office for Nixon at 2:31 P.M. by Ray Price, who was joined by Buzhardt and Haig. Price had added the one-page summary suggested in the morning meeting.78 Nixon took less than fifteen minutes for a final look and to discuss the release.

  That afternoon, shortly after four o’clock, the press office passed out copies of the “Statements About the Watergate Investigations” to the White House press corps.79 The document ran some twenty legal-size pages, printed on both the front and back sides, and it contained just over four thousand words. It opened with a summary statement, followed by the complete version, which addressed four separate topics: “1969 Wiretaps,” “The 1970 Intelligence Plan” (the Dean papers), “The Special Investigations Unit” (the plumbers), and “Watergate.” The document from start to finish was written in the first person, clearly indicating that the statement was from Nixon himself.

  I first saw the president’s new statement that day, when I met with Time magazine reporter Hays Gorey, who had come directly from the White House briefing, at which Ziegler was joined by Len Garment and Fred Buzhardt. I had agreed to give Hays an on-the-record interview, but when he asked me about this new statement, I was reluctant, because it involved testimony, which I had not discussed with any newsperson. The statement’s summary had seven key items, and Hays asked if I would give him my off-the-record and for-background-use-only reactions. I agreed to that so he read from the document, and I briefly reacted with either “true” or “false,” though an occasional “bullshit” slipped out.80 Remarkably, while some of the statements were more artfully worded than others, every declaration by Nixon but the first was patently false (I have appended to each statement an endnote that offers several examples of conversations, or other material, that reveal the sweep of Nixon’s mendacity):

  With regard to the specific allegations that have been made, I can and do state categorically: (1) I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate operation. (2) I took no part in, nor was I aware of, any subsequent efforts that may have been made to cover up Watergate.81 (3) At no time did I authorize any offer of executive clemency for the Watergate defendants, nor did I know of any such offer.82 (4) I did not know, until the time of my own investigation, of any effort to provide the Watergate defendants with funds.83 (5) At no time did I attempt, or did I authorize others to attempt, to implicate the CIA in the Watergate matter.84 (6) It was not until the time of my own investigation that I learned of the break-in at the office of Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and I specifically authorized the furnishing of this information to Judge Byrne.85 [And] (7) I neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics.86

  Following the “line”—to use a Nixonian term—of his April 30 speech, Nixon dissembled throughout his May 22 summary statement, blending fact and fiction in the remainder of it. But in providing distorted information regarding what took place on June 23, 1972, Nixon set a trap for himself, for no false statements would be of greater consequence than his twisted account of that day’s events. He claimed early post-Watergate “reports led me to suspect, incorrectly, that the CIA had been in some way involved.” That was largely fiction. “They also led me to surmise, correctly, that since persons originally recruited for covert national security activities had participated in Watergate, an unrestricted investigation of Watergate might lead to and expose those covert national security operations.” That was mostly fact. He then added “to prevent the exposure of these covert national security activities,” while still encouraging a full investigation of Watergate, he so “instructed my staff, the Attorney General, and the Acting Director of the FBI.” That was mostly false, not to mention the fact that he combines events from June 1972 with events in April 1973. Next Nixon completely outmaneuvering himself by stating: “I also specifically instructed Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman to ensure that the FBI would not carry its investigation into areas that might compromise these covert national security activities, or those of the CIA.” He simply passed over the Mexican checks, which raised a political problem, and which he could have legitimately said the Justice Department had advised the White House were beyond the scope of the Watergate investigation. Instead he provided misinformation by omitting these facts.

  When the truth surfaced fourteen months later with the release of Nixon’s recording of the Haldeman conversations of June 23, not only did it establish his deception regarding that day, but it destroyed his claim that he had no knowledge of the cover-up until March 21. It was more than the Nixon presidency could withstand, for these falsehoods revealed that he had been compounding lies to keep his defense in place. But it is not clear from the record that Nixon knew he was lying about June 23. To the contrary, it appears that both Nixon and Haldeman were unaware of the potential trap they had set for themselves. The information needed to understand the June 23 meeting could largely have been gleaned from Haldeman’s notes of his conversation with me that
morning. But Nixon had also literally banned everyone on his staff from reviewing the Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Colson notes of their meetings with the president. It is clear that Nixon preferred to create his own facts, as he wanted to recall them, and with his May 22 statement he had locked in his defense. It would now be his word versus that of anyone who might dare to challenge it.

  May 23 to July 16, 1973

  Discrediting Dean and the Beginning of the End

  Following the release of the May 22, 1973, statement, a newly confident Nixon became convinced his biggest remaining problem was me. For over a month the president, along with his aides and supporters, had been at work trying to discredit me, an effort that would continue not only throughout the rest of his presidency, but for the rest of his life, with Nixon leading the way.1 The pattern that had emerged in the conversations beginning in mid-April simply continued, though the president’s wrath was directed not only at me but at anyone else who presumed to tell the truth if it conflicted with Nixon’s defense. During the month between the May 22 statement and my testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, which began on June 25, the president’s conversations focused on his efforts to recall and reconstruct his activities, mixed with periodic rants, of which follow a few representative samples: