by John W. Dean
August 29 Sirica orders Nixon to produce the eight tapes subpoenaed on July 23 by Cox. In turn the White House issues a statement that Nixon will not comply and is considering an appeal, which they would do on September 6. The White House also files papers denying the Senate Watergate committee’s tapes request, charging the committee with conducting a criminal trial that exceeds its authority.
September 4 A Los Angeles grand jury returns a secret indictment against Ehrlichman, Liddy, Krogh and Young for conspiracy to commit burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and also charges Ehrlichman with perjury. (At the request of the Watergate special prosecutor, these charges will be dropped when he files his actions involving the same individuals.)
September 5 While Nixon has earlier been reluctant to publicly attack me, at his second news conference in two weeks he claims that he personally ordered me on March 21 to undertake an investigation, and when I could not write a report, he turned to Ehrlichman. He refuses to explain what he meant by a “definitive” Supreme Court ruling and admits that confidence in the president has been “worn away” by the “leers and sneers of commentators.”
September 6 Nixon’s attorneys appeal Sirica’s August 29 ruling to produce the tapes to Cox, claiming the court does not have power to deal with his private records. The following day Cox petitions the Court of Appeals to order Nixon to deliver the requested tapes.
September 10 The White House and Cox both file lengthy briefs with the Court of Appeals regarding production of the subpoenaed tapes. Nixon’s lawyers argue that under executive privilege the courts have no power to require a president to reveal information about the presidency. Cox argues that enforcing the criminal law outweighs presidential privacy. On the following day, September 11, they have a three-hour argument before the court. Wright claims that even if Nixon did engage in a conspiracy to obstruct justice, he cannot be indicted, only impeached by Congress.
September 13 The Court of Appeals (with seven judges sitting on the case) unanimously adopt a six-hundred-word memo urging an out-of-court resolution to the tape issue. The court suggests allowing Cox to examine the tapes with the president’s lawyer and jointly decide which portions can properly be given to the grand jury. Cox approves of the proposal; the White House will consider it.
September 19 In response to the Court of Appeals proposal White House lawyers file a brief that states that Nixon will not “tear down the office of the American presidency” for Watergate. The following day the White House lawyers, with Cox, file a joint letter that states that after three meetings, they have not been able to agree on an out-of-court settlement regarding the tapes.
September 23 Gallup Poll: 61 percent to 32 percent believe Nixon should release the White House tapes to Judge Sirica.
September 24 Senate Watergate committee hearings resume, and White House lawyers file papers with Sirica asking that he reject the committee’s request for a summary judgment to provide them the tapes. Cox tells Richardson that Haldeman and Ehrlichman are preventing him from subpoenaing documents by placing them with Nixon’s presidential papers. (As long as Nixon remains in office, the strategy works.)
September 28 Nixon, who has been considering a compromise on the tapes requested by Cox, instructs Rose Woods to begin transcribing the subpoenaed tapes at Camp David in order to provide transcripts to his lawyers. But he tells Haig he did not want to listen to the tapes personally.
September 29–30 During this weekend, Nixon is told by Steve Bull that he cannot locate the June 20, 1972, conversation between Nixon and Mitchell or the April 15, 1973, conversation between Nixon and Dean. (See Appendix B.)
October 1 Using a new Uher 5000 tape-deck recorder purchased that day, Woods continues transcribing the June 20, 1972, conversation with Ehrlichman. As she progresses she discovers a gap, a shrill buzzing noise, and informs Nixon, believing she was responsible for it. (See Appendix B.)
October 4 Harris Poll: 54 percent to 34 percent believe Congress would be justified to begin impeachment proceedings if Nixon refuses to turn over his tapes.
October 10 Vice President Agnew resigns and pleads nolo contendre (no contest) to negotiated charges of failure to pay federal income taxes (on kickbacks from state contracts while serving as governor of Maryland).
October 12 Court of Appeals upholds Sirica’s ruling requiring Nixon to produce the subpoenaed tapes and calls for Sirica to do an in camera review. Nixon nominates Michigan congressman Gerald Ford, the House minority leader, to be vice president. (Ford will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 27 and by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 6.)
October 17 Sirica denies the Senate Watergate committee’s effort to obtain the tapes on the grounds that the court could not invoke jurisdiction in a congressional civil suit. Richardson sends a White House proposal to Cox that, rather than have Sirica do an in camera review, transcripts of the tapes could be verified by Senator John Stennis—the so-called Stennis compromise.
October 18 Cox tells Richardson he cannot accept the Stennis compromise. The transcripts prepared by the White House, and verified by Stennis, would not have been admissible in court, not to mention that it was well known that Senator Stennis was partially deaf and a strong Nixon supporter.
October 19 Notwithstanding the fact that Nixon knows it is unacceptable to Cox, he announces he will not appeal the Court of Appeals ruling on the tapes to the Supreme Court, but instead publicly proposes the Stennis compromise. The Senate Watergate committee accepts the proposal; Cox refuses it.
October 20 Cox defends his decision not to comply with the president’s proposal during an afternoon televised news conference and asserts that he can be fired only by the attorney general, for Cox was well aware of Nixon’s earlier threats. At an 8:25 P.M. news conference the White House announces that Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus have both resigned rather than fire Cox. Solicitor General Bork, as acting attorney general, is responsible for dismissing Cox. Television networks interrupt regular programming to announce this action by Nixon, which becomes known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
October 23 Following a tumultuous weekend in the aftermath of the Cox firing, eight impeachment resolutions are introduced in the House of Representatives, and within days the House Judiciary Committee commences a serious impeachment inquiry.
October 26 In response to nationwide public pressure, the White House announces that Nixon will give the tapes to Sirica, and the Stennis plan is canceled. In a press conference Nixon announces that acting attorney general Bork will appoint a new Watergate special prosecutor.
October 30 The White House publicly discloses that two of the subpoenaed tapes are missing: Mitchell’s conversation on June 20, 1972, and mine on April 15, 1973.
November 1 Leon Jaworski is appointed as the new Watergate special prosecutor. Both Haig and Nixon believe that in Jaworski they have a conservative Democrat and an establishmentarian who will not cause trouble and go after the president as had Cox.
November 12 In a statement from his lawyers to Judge Sirica, Nixon claims neither the June 20, 1972, conversation with Mitchell nor the April 15, 1973, conversation with me was recorded.
November 14 Buzhardt learns of the 18½-minute gap in the June 20, 1972, conversation with Haldeman. (See Appendix B.)
November 21 The White House informs Judge Sirica and the public of the 18½-minute gap, which leads to an investigation by the Watergate special prosecutor’s office that runs throughout November and into December. The investigation determines that the only persons to have had possession of the tape were Woods, Bull and Nixon, though others had access to it. Woods believes she erased about five minutes; Bull says he did no erasing; Nixon is not required to respond. (See Appendix B.)
December 10 Jaworski receives two of seven existing subpoenaed tapes from Sirica.
December 19 Sirica rules that two of the additional subpoenaed tapes and part of a third will not be turned over to Jaworski, because they
have no relationship to Watergate.
December 21 Jaworski receives all the subpoenaed tapes that Sirica believes relevant to Watergate. Soon thereafter Jaworski listens to a segment of the March 21 conversation in the special prosecutor’s office. He is shaken when he hears Nixon’s “scheme” and is particularly disturbed by how Nixon “coach[es] Haldeman on how to testify untruthfully and yet not commit perjury. It amounted to subornation of perjury.”3
December 24 Harris Poll: 73 percent to 21 percent think Nixon has “lost so much credibility that it will be hard for him to be accepted as president again.”
1974
January 3 Nixon turns down the request of the Senate Watergate committee for some five hundred tapes and documents they believe relevant to their inquiry. The new attorney general, former Ohio senator William Saxbe (R-OH), is sworn in. Nixon did not know Saxbe well but needed a candidate who would be confirmed by the Senate.
January 6 The White House announces the appointment of James St. Clair, a Boston-based trial lawyer recommended by Colson, to head the president’s Watergate legal team. Buzhardt is appointed to fill my former post of counsel to the president.
January 7 Harris Poll: Nixon’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 30 percent; 48 percent to 40 percent believe he should be impeached if his tapes were destroyed. Gallup Poll: 46 percent to 46 percent on Nixon resigning; on impeachment, 53 percent opposed and 37 percent favored.
January 15 Panel of court-appointed experts determines that the 18½-minute gap was caused by five to nine separate manual erasures.
January 18 After a hearing in open court, Sirica recommends a grand jury investigate possible “unlawful destruction of evidence” in connection with the 18½-minute gap and the missing April 15 tape.
February 3 Jaworski corrects the president’s State of the Union claim that he had turned over all of the tapes requested.
February 4 St. Clair claims that my sworn testimony implicating Nixon was not borne out by the White House tapes and announces that the president will not comply with Jaworski’s requests for additional tapes.
February 6 The House of Representatives votes (with only four nays) to authorize impeachment proceedings against Nixon and to give the House Judiciary Committee broad subpoena powers to undertake the inquiry.
February 14 Jaworski publicly states that Nixon has failed to provide him additional requested tapes. The following day, St. Clair announces that Nixon believes the prosecutor had been given sufficient evidence to determine if crimes have, in fact, been committed.
February 22 Jaworski provides the House impeachment inquiry with a list of tapes and documents he has sought from the White House, as the House Judiciary Committee prepares to request information.
March 1 The special prosecutor indicts seven former Nixon aides for conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate cover-up, and several others are additionally charged: Mitchell (conspiracy, false statements to the FBI, grand jury perjury and Senate perjury), Haldeman (conspiracy and three counts of Senate perjury), Ehrlichman (conspiracy, false statements to the FBI and two counts of grand jury perjury), Colson (conspiracy), Mardian (conspiracy), Parkinson (conspiracy) and Strachan (conspiracy and grand jury perjury).
March 6 At his press conference the president is asked about Haldeman’s perjury indictment on the March 21 conversation for claiming Nixon had said “it would be wrong.” Nixon offers his by now standard version of this conversation, but since Haldeman has now been indicted based on the recording of that discussion (which only the prosecutors have heard), the president adds, “Now when individuals read the entire transcript of the twenty-first meeting, or hear the entire tape, where we discussed all these options, they may reach different interpretations, but I know what I meant, and I know also what I did. I meant that the whole transaction was wrong, the transaction for the purpose of keeping this whole matter covered up.” At a hearing that day in Sirica’s courtroom, St. Clair announces that the president has agreed to submit over eighteen recorded conversations to the House impeachment inquiry, which have earlier been provided to Jarworski, although the House had requested forty-two additional conversations.
March 7 Ehrlichman, Colson and Liddy are indicted by the Watergate special prosecutor for conspiring to violate the rights of Dr. Fielding in the Ellsberg break-in. Ehrlichman is also indicted for perjury.
March 12 Jaworski sends a letter to St. Clair seeking sixty-four additional recorded conversations, which include the June 23, 1972, tape, in connection with the criminal proceedings against Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Strachan and the others in the case, which has been designated U.S. v. Mitchell et al.
March 28 The White House press office states that the court records show that ten of the forty conversations sought by the House impeachment inquiry were never recorded.
April 11 The House impeachment inquiry votes 33 to 3 to subpoena the forty-two recorded conversations it has requested. Jaworski sends St. Clair a follow-up letter advising him that if the White House refuses to voluntarily produce the sixty-four recorded conversations requested, a subpoena will be issued.
April 16–18 Jaworski requests that Sirica issue a subpoena to the president for the sixty-four requested conversations, which Sirica does on April 18.
April 29–30 In an address to the nation, Nixon announces he will turn over to the House impeachment inquiry, and make public, edited transcripts of Watergate conversations. He claims this submission “will at last” and “once and for all” confirm that his role in Watergate has been “just as I have described them to you from the very beginning.” On April 30 he releases 1,308 pages of edited transcripts. The document opens with a 50-page introduction that attempts to point out discrepancies in my testimony of my memory of our discussions versus the recorded conversations. It next includes a 4-page listing of the forty-seven select transcripts included, beginning with our September 15, 1972, conversation; then February 28, 1973; followed by select meetings and telephone conversations in March and April 1973, most of the latter featuring Haldeman and Ehrlichman considering how to deal with me; and nine conversations when I spoke with Nixon.4 Largely ignoring the White House’s effort to frame the conversations, newspapers throughout the country print verbatim copies of the massive collection. Commentators quickly note the conspicuous absence of conversations that had been requested by the House impeachment inquiry.
May 1 The House impeachment inquiry votes 20 to 18 (along partisan lines) to reject Nixon’s edited transcripts and formally declares that the president had failed to comply with its subpoena for forty-two requested conversations. Nixon’s lawyers seek to quash Jaworski’s subpoena for sixty-four conversations related to the cover-up. St. Clair informs the impeachment inquiry that it has been given everything that the White House will consent to provide. The impeachment inquiry announces it has discovered discrepancies between parts of the newly released White House transcripts and the transcripts that it has had prepared.
May 7 Republican Senate minority leader Hugh Scott calls the White House–edited transcripts a “deplorable, shabby, disgusting and immoral performance.” St. Clair reports that the president would provide no further tapes to Jaworski or the House impeachment inquiry.
May 11 Harris Poll: 49 percent to 41 percent favor Nixon’s impeachment (April results were 42 percent to 42 percent).
May 20 Judge Sirica orders Nixon to produce the sixty-four tapes subpoenaed by Jaworski for his inspection by May 31.
May 24 Jaworski takes Nixon’s appeal of Judge Sirica’s order to produce sixty-four taped conversations directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
May 30 House impeachment inquiry informs Nixon that defiance of its subpoenas may “constitute a ground for impeachment.”
May 31 The U.S. Supreme Court accepts Jaworski’s appeal seeking sixty-four taped conversations.
June 4 A court-appointed panel of experts issues its final report on the 18½-minute gap, stating “the only completely plausib
le explanation” for the gap was “pushing the keys” at least five times on the recorder. (See Appendix B.)
June 13 Buzhardt has a heart attack and is reported to be in serious condition.
June 23 Len Garment, asked by a reporter, refuses to say if Nixon would comply with a Supreme Court order to provide the subpoenaed conversations to Jaworski.
July 1 Jaworski’s brief to the Supreme Court argues that Nixon was involved in the cover-up and names him as an unindicted coconspirator, which makes his conversations relating to the conspiracy to obstruct justice relevant and admissible in the trial of members of the conspiracy (principally Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell; a “born-again” Colson had negotiated a plea to be dropped from U.S. v. Mitchell et al., in exchange for pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg and Russo case).
July 8 Eight justices of the Supreme Court hear Jaworski’s oral arguments regarding the sixty-four taped conversations that he seeks; St. Clair argues the president’s case. Justice Rehnquist, because of his relationship with many of the parties involved, recuses himself.
July 9 St. Clair reveals that in the “public interest” Nixon might defy a Supreme Court ruling forcing him to produce the tapes.