WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 | DAY 67
“The president and I consider you one of the administration’s best people,” Haldeman told Magruder after he and Mitchell were ushered into the chief of staff’s West Wing office on the morning of Wednesday, March 28. “We want to help in every way we can.” He emphasized, however, that he was speaking only as “a friend,” not on behalf of the White House.
Congressman Nixon examines film of Pumpkin Papers with a magnifying glass during the Alger Hiss case in 1948. He is accompanied by his aide Robert Stripling.
Magruder was most concerned about his testimony before the grand jury. He explained that his entire story would unravel if Dean refused to support his version of the early meetings with Liddy. Haldeman grasped the point immediately. He had sat through endless lectures from Nixon recalling his triumph over the lying Alger Hiss, a case that had also turned on perjury. Hiss’s defense collapsed after his accuser, Whittaker Chambers, produced 35 mm film of purloined State Department documents he had hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. Nixon was able to show that the “Pumpkin Papers” had been typed on a machine that previously belonged to Hiss, thereby demonstrating a direct connection with Chambers.
“This could be the little thing that does it,” Haldeman noted on his legal pad, referring to the disagreement between Magruder and Dean. “The typewriter or pumpkin of this case.” Rather than adjudicate the dispute himself, Haldeman ordered Dean to return from Camp David to “work things out” with Magruder and Mitchell. Dean could not hide up on the mountain forever.
The three of them—Magruder, Mitchell, and Dean—met that afternoon in a little cubbyhole down the hallway from Haldeman’s corner office. Magruder did most of the talking, wringing his hands nervously as he pleaded with Dean to remember the meetings with Liddy the same way he did. He claimed that Dean had encouraged him to alter his diary to eliminate the most incriminating meeting.
Dean was angry with Magruder for treating him as “his partner in the cover-up.” The way he saw it, there was a distinction between helping Magruder rehearse his testimony and supporting his story under oath. “True, I had helped him save himself by helping him to commit perjury,” he later wrote. “But I had never agreed to lie for him. Now he was threatening me. I latched onto my anger for dear life.”
When Magruder asked him how he would testify if called before the grand jury, Dean again prevaricated. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” he said.
“But you agreed you’d go along,” protested Magruder.
“There’s no sense debating this now, Jeb,” Dean repeated. “No one has asked me to testify.”
Dean felt much more sympathetic toward Mitchell. He viewed the gruff bond lawyer as a father figure. Unlike Magruder, Mitchell hid his personal turmoil behind a stony face, but Dean sensed what his onetime patron must be going through. One of Mitchell’s closest friends, Fred LaRue, had passed on word that he was “on the verge of breaking,” meaning that he was contemplating suicide. That very morning, The New York Times had published another story based on a panicked phone call from Martha Mitchell. “I fear for my husband,” she told the newspaper. “I’m really scared. I have a definite reason. I can’t tell you why. But they’re not going to pin anything on him. I won’t let them, and I don’t give a damn who gets hurt.” From overhearing Mitchell’s telephone conversations, Martha had concluded that someone was trying to make him “the goat” in the Watergate scandal.
Whether or not he was at his breaking point, Mitchell certainly had no intention of cooperating with prosecutors. “I ain’t going to jail,” he told the others, placidly puffing his pipe. “You can make your own decisions.” He urged Dean to “stiffen up” and refuse to testify. “If you were to go before the grand jury, you won’t be believed because your story doesn’t jibe with mine.”
Dean wanted Mitchell to know that he had no personal knowledge of his role in the bugging of the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate and therefore could not testify against him. He could only speculate about what might have happened, based on secondhand information that had come his way. After shooting down Liddy’s original Gemstone plan in early 1972, Mitchell and the Committee to Re-elect the President had come under a lot of pressure from the White House to agree to a stripped-down version. The intelligence-gathering plan had been “approved without anyone really understanding its full import.”
“Your theory is not far from wrong,” murmured Mitchell, according to Dean’s later sworn testimony. “Only we thought it would be three or four times removed from the committee.”
Dean felt sick. Mitchell had gone further than ever before toward acknowledging his role in approving the Watergate break-in. Believing that he could count on his young protégé, Mitchell had trusted Dean with his most dangerous secret. If Dean struck a deal with the prosecutors, as he was considering, he would have to betray his mentor. He could be either “a perjurer” or “a squealer.” There was no other option. Never in his life had he felt “more squalid.”
He went straight home without returning to his own office across the alleyway in the Executive Office Building. That evening, he briefed Haldeman by phone on the latest twists in the resumed grand jury investigation into Watergate. He mentioned, in passing, that he wanted to seek the advice of a criminal defense lawyer regarding his own possible testimony. He already had someone in mind, a man called Charlie Shaffer, who was reputed to be one of the best in the business. If engaged by Dean, Shaffer would be able to provide the White House with a much-needed source of expertise on criminal law.
“Good idea,” said Haldeman.
When Haldeman phoned Nixon later that evening, the president agreed that Dean should retain a lawyer. He still had complete confidence in the White House counsel.
“Christ, I wouldn’t think of undercutting him. Never. He’s been a hero.”