Dean had wrestled for days with the dilemma of what to do if compelled to testify before the grand jury. In his conversations with Mitchell and Magruder, he had dismissed that possibility as hypothetical and refused to seriously discuss it. In fact, it was constantly on his mind and had suddenly come much closer. Prior to leaving for California, Nixon had released a statement instructing members of the White House staff to cooperate with investigators. Given the precariousness of his political position, he might have had no other choice, but the consequence, in Dean’s view, was alarming. The decision would likely lead to “an open war pissing match between Magruder, Mitchell, Dean, and the White House.”
Dean was angered to think that he was being set up to shoulder the blame for Watergate. By meeting with a defense lawyer, he was taking the first concrete step toward separating himself from the criminal conspiracy that had ensnared many of his colleagues. He and Shaffer spent a lot of time over the weekend discussing ways Dean could lessen his legal problems and avoid eventual imprisonment.
“John, you’re in big trouble,” said Shaffer, on the evening of Monday, April 2. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty as hell of conspiring to obstruct justice. You may like to think of yourself as just a little guy carrying out orders, but the counsel to the President is no little guy outside the White House. Technically, you’re just as much a part of the conspiracy to cover up as Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and whoever.”
Dean said he was ready to tell the Watergate prosecutors everything he knew in the hope of receiving some kind of immunity. If he did that, said Shaffer, he would likely be indicted. That was not at all how the game was played. Dean did not have to “run into machine guns.” Shaffer was friendly with one of the prosecutors, a man named Seymour Glanzer. He proposed an informal meeting with Glanzer to see if he could strike a deal. By now, it was around midnight, but that did not prevent him from calling Glanzer at home.
“Seymour, you need to talk with me,” he announced with relish. “You don’t know how badly you need to talk to me.”
Dean could not hear what Glanzer was saying, but he seemed to be protesting the lateness of the hour.
“Yeah, I know, you’ve got your problems in life and I’ve got mine, but I’m going to give you some more.”
There was a further long silence as the prosecutor continued to complain.
“You heard me. Now listen, Brother Glanzer, I’m about forty-five minutes from your house. Put some coffee on, because I’m coming to see you.” After instructing Dean to go home to bed, Shaffer ventured out into the night.
Glanzer lived in McLean, Virginia, on the opposite side of the Potomac to Maryland. When he opened his front door to the defense attorney, he was greeted by a bizarre apparition. Shaffer was dressed in full riding gear with jodhpurs and polished brown boots. He brandished a braided leather whip, known as a quirt, in his fist. The balding, out-of-shape prosecutor looked at him incredulously.
“I’m an equestrian,” said Shaffer, by way of explanation. “I ride.”
Shaffer proceeded to offer Glanzer a tantalizing preview of the benefits that could flow from recruiting Dean as a Watergate witness. The prosecutors had erred by focusing almost entirely on what Ron Ziegler described as “a third-rate burglary.” Equally important was what happened after the break-in. Dean could help them nail “some pretty big people.” In return for providing information about events in the White House, Dean wanted immunity from prosecution.
The prosecutors were not prepared to grant Dean immunity immediately. They were, however, eager to hear his story. Under the agreement Shaffer reached with Glanzer, anything Dean told the prosecutors would be off the record initially. No notes would be kept of the conversations. They would not even be allowed to report the meetings to their Justice Department supervisors. This was a key concession because it allowed Dean to control the upward flow of information. He knew, from his own experience, that anything the prosecutors shared with their superiors would be immediately reported to the White House. He did not want Haldeman and Ehrlichman to know what he was telling the prosecutors.
To Shaffer’s surprise, Glanzer and his boss, Earl Silbert, did not seem very interested in the cover-up. Their priority was to find out who had ordered the bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters. They had concluded that someone higher than Liddy was involved, and suspected Magruder, Mitchell, Dean, and possibly Colson. To extract information from Dean, they pretended that the hitherto defiant Liddy had told them “everything he knows.” This was false, but by this stage virtually everyone involved in the scandal was lying or concealing something. Watergate had become an intricate game of deception, played at many different levels by many different actors.
Shaffer visited Dean in his office in the Executive Office Building to brief him on his talks with the prosecutors. Dean was struck by the way in which his hard-nosed defense attorney was as awed by the mystique surrounding the presidency as the average American. Spotting an autographed photograph of Mitchell on Dean’s desk, Shaffer fantasized about confronting the former attorney general in court. “I could smoke this guy out,” he boasted, rubbing his hands in anticipation. “I’d love to cross-examine him and turn that old stone face into jelly.”
Dean still felt squeamish about turning on his onetime mentor and colleagues like Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Just as he was getting comfortable with his aggressive new lawyer, he was restrained by a fit of conscience. Shaffer brushed his qualms aside.
“It’s your ass or theirs. Whose do you want to save?”
“Mine, of course, but…”
“Do you think they’re going to protect you when the shit hits the fan?”
Dean had no real response to that. He was also caught off guard by Shaffer’s next question. Did he want to “keep lying and covering up”? Reluctantly, he agreed to meet with the prosecutors himself on condition that he inform Haldeman in advance. The meeting was set for Sunday, April 8, the day Nixon was scheduled to return from California.