SUNDAY, APRIL 15 | DAY 85
Richard Kleindienst had done everything he could to steer clear of the Watergate imbroglio. He thought back with horror to his bizarre encounter with Gordon Liddy on the Saturday afternoon following the break-in, ten months previously. He had been attorney general for exactly five days. He had just finished his regular round of golf at the Burning Tree Club in Bethesda and was eating lunch in the members’ lounge. Across the room, he spotted an excited-looking man attempting to attract his attention with furtive hand gestures. Thinking that he better find out what the man wanted, he walked over to join him. The stranger claimed to be carrying an urgent message from Kleindienst’s predecessor, John Mitchell.
When they were alone, Liddy explained that he was the leader of a group of five men arrested at the Watergate a few hours earlier. The break-in had been part of a CREEP “intelligence operation.” The burglars were all “good men who would keep their mouths shut.” They were all using aliases. Unfortunately, one of the men, James McCord, was on the committee payroll. It would not take long for the cops to find out his real name. Liddy claimed that Mitchell wanted McCord to be released immediately, before the police established “who he really is.” Kleindienst could not believe that Mitchell would make such an outlandish request. For all he knew, Liddy might simply be protecting himself. It was “the goddamndest thing” he had ever experienced in more than two decades as an attorney. “What happens to the President if I try a fool thing like that?” he asked. He told Liddy he would handle Watergate “like any other case.” He passed the same message on to the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Henry Petersen.
In fact, Kleindienst was walking a political tightrope. Despite rejecting Liddy’s overture, he did not report it to investigators. It took the FBI several more weeks to make the connection between Liddy and the burglars. Valuable clues about the planning of the break-in, and the involvement of higher-ups, went unexplored. Kleindienst delegated management of the case to Petersen. Petersen in turn kept the White House fully informed of every step in the investigation. He even shared top secret grand jury testimony, to the dismay of his subordinates. Watergate would never be a case “like any other.”
Now, ten months after Kleindienst’s strange encounter with Liddy, Petersen had shown up on his doorstep in the middle of the night. Accompanying him were the two lead prosecutors, Silbert and Glanzer. Over the next four hours, they gave the attorney general a detailed account of everything they had learned from Dean and Magruder. The government attorneys believed that they had finally cracked the case. They were ready to issue indictments against a long list of suspects, headed by John Mitchell. This news greatly upset Kleindienst, who regarded Mitchell as his political mentor. He told Senate investigators later he had not felt so churned up inside since his mother died when he was a young boy.
It occurred to Silbert that the former attorney general had a strange effect on people. Coldly analytical when discussing anyone else, John Dean had trouble talking about a man who was “like a father figure” to him. Fred LaRue cried when questioned about his longtime boss. Magruder reacted in similar fashion. “Old Stone Face” had the reputation of being a gruff, “almost heartless type of person,” yet his equally hard-nosed associates teared up when they spoke about him. Even the prosecutors felt a little emotional.
Most troubling to Kleindienst were the allegations against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Mitchell was no longer in office, but the twin pillars of Nixon’s “Berlin Wall” continued to see the president on a daily basis. Haldeman, in particular, was Nixon’s alter ego, closeted with him throughout the day. He was closer to the president than any chief of staff in living memory. If he and Ehrlichman were guilty of obstruction of justice, Nixon had to be informed immediately. The conspiracy might still be continuing. They could not sit on the information that Dean had shared with them in confidence any longer.
The prosecutors explained that the charges against Haldeman and Ehrlichman rested primarily on their off-the-record interviews with Dean. To get him to testify in court, they would have to strike a deal, probably in the form of a plea bargain. Through his attorney, Dean was demanding full immunity, but the prosecutors were resisting. It would look very bad if someone who was central to the criminal conspiracy was allowed to escape scot-free. Silbert and Glanzer believed that they would be able to confirm the key parts of Dean’s testimony from other witnesses, including Magruder, who were now crawling out of the bureaucratic woodwork. There was certainly a circumstantial case to be made against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Investigators did not have all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle just yet, but a pattern was clearly discernible.
In some cases, assembling the puzzle was as simple as following the money. The $350,000 in campaign funds that had been used to pay the burglars and their lawyers was a good example. The money, most of it in crisp $100 bills, had made a remarkable journey. It had originally been raised from private donors who thought they were helping Nixon’s reelection effort. Because it had been pledged prior to a new campaign finance law taking effect in April 1972, it did not have to be officially reported. Instead of being used for election expenses, the funds were sent over to the White House and reserved for private polling. Haldeman asked his aides Gordon Strachan and Alexander Butterfield to look after the money. One of Butterfield’s friends agreed to keep the thick wads of cash in a safe-deposit box in a bank across the river in Arlington, Virginia, until Haldeman found a use for what they now called “the 350.”
By the time the prosecutors met with Kleindienst in the early morning hours of April 15, they had succeeded in linking the 350 to the hush money trail. According to Dean, the funds had been used to pay off Howard Hunt, who was blackmailing the White House. By contrast, Strachan claimed to have “returned” the money to CREEP on Haldeman’s behalf. This explanation made little sense to investigators. They noted that Strachan had actually transferred bundles of $100 bills to Fred LaRue, Mitchell’s aide and trusted confidant, in several batches. Had Haldeman really wanted to return the 350 to the committee, he would have sent it to the finance department rather than the man who was paying off the Watergate burglars.
Kleindienst finished with the prosecutors around 5:00 a.m. After three hours’ sleep, he phoned the White House and asked to speak to the president. Nixon was still in bed, having stayed up late the night before. He did not call back until after ten. Instead of seeing the attorney general immediately, Nixon invited him to join a special Palm Sunday worship service in the state rooms of the White House. They would talk afterward. Kleindienst was finally ushered into the president’s hideaway office in EOB 175 at 1:21 p.m. He had never been there before. Nixon noticed that his voice “choked periodically” with emotion and “his eyes were red with fatigue and tears.” Nixon, by contrast, was calm and in control.
It took Kleindienst some time to get to the point. Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean were all in serious trouble. That much Nixon knew already. But the shocker was that his two closest aides, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, also faced possible criminal prosecution. The evidence was not yet conclusive but was very disturbing. The story was likely to be “all over town” very soon. Kleindienst suggested that the two men take leaves of absence. That would limit the damage to the presidency if they were eventually indicted. Nixon bridled at this idea, which he saw as tantamount to an admission of guilt.
“The point is, Dick, I can’t,” he protested. “I can’t let an innocent man down.”
Kleindienst refused to involve himself further in the case. He was too close to the principal suspects, particularly Mitchell. His assistant, Henry Petersen, would be in charge from now on. It was nevertheless clear from his presentation that Nixon and his aides had been focusing on the wrong threat. They had been galvanized into action by rumors that Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy had done deals with the prosecutors. This was misinformation, probably spread by the prosecutors themselves to put pressure on other witnesses. Far from “telling all,” Liddy had not “said a word to anybody,” Kleindienst informed Nixon. Hunt was not on the verge of breaking. The real threat to Nixon was coming from inside the White House.
John Dean was furious with the prosecutors for failing to keep his dealings with them confidential. Instead of consulting his attorney, they had simply phoned Charlie Shaffer after midnight to void their earlier agreement. They argued that they could no longer withhold potentially explosive information, portions of which had been confirmed by other witnesses, from the leadership of the Justice Department. From past experience, Dean knew exactly what would happen next. The White House, and therefore the president, would immediately be informed. Dean could no longer play his double game, with a foot in both camps.
The prosecutors were also frustrated with Dean. Guided by Shaffer, he had been very selective about his disclosures. Pressed to provide a detailed chronology, he instead described isolated incidents, like Ehrlichman’s instruction to “deep six” the contents of Howard Hunt’s safe. He refused to talk about his own conversations with the president on the grounds of executive privilege and national security. It had taken several sessions to extract from Dean the first incriminating details about Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Shaffer’s strategy seemed obvious to Silbert. By dribbling the revelations out, he was attempting “to make Dean so valuable to us that we would grant him immunity from prosecution.” It was like a card game in which the players were constantly raising the stakes.
For all the mistrust, each side needed the other. Dean wanted immunity. The prosecutors were seeking information only he could provide. Much as Dean was tempted to throw in his cards, he was drawn back inexorably to the gambling table. “We don’t have any choice,” Shaffer told him. “We’ve got to pump them full of the cover-up now. I’ve got to up the ante with them to have a shot at immunity. That’s your only chance not to be the fall guy.”
As Nixon was meeting the attorney general at the White House, Dean was closeted once again with the prosecutors in Shaffer’s office in Rockville. They circled each other warily for several hours. Seymour Glanzer played bad cop to Earl Silbert’s good cop.
“I’m tired of hearing about this great obstruction case your client is supposed to have for us,” Glanzer told Shaffer. “His story is jumbled and disjointed. We can’t do anything with what he’s told us.”
The foxhunting attorney countered with one of his equestrian analogies.
“You guys remind me of a bunch of horses going to the starting gate. You want to run before the bell is sounded. We plan to take this thing one step at a time.”
As everybody was preparing to leave, Shaffer signaled his client to play his trump card. Dean made a cryptic reference to “information already in Justice Department files” that would help explain the cover-up. The FBI had photographs of Liddy and Hunt outside the office of a Beverly Hills psychiatrist by the name of Lewis Fielding. The photographs would incriminate the two Watergate principals in an earlier conspiracy to steal the mental health records of the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg.
The prosecutors struggled to make the connection between Ellsberg, an obscure California psychiatrist, and Watergate. It was all very confusing. To complicate matters even further, Ellsberg was currently on trial in Los Angeles for espionage. If there was evidence relevant to his case in Justice Department files that had not been disclosed, that could become grounds for a mistrial. The judge would have to be informed immediately.
“Quit playing games with us,” Glanzer demanded. “What’s this all about? And what the hell’s it doing in our files?”
Dean explained that Hunt and Liddy had used camera equipment on loan from the CIA to reconnoiter the Fielding office prior to the bungled September 1971 burglary. They had given the film to the CIA for processing. The agency had subsequently provided the FBI with copies of the photographs, along with other Watergate-related evidence, without revealing their significance. The photos had remained a puzzle to investigators who failed to connect the dots.
It gradually dawned on the two prosecutors that their obstreperous witness had produced a plausible motivation for the Watergate cover-up. The obstruction of justice had been necessary to conceal other felonies. They were no longer investigating “a third-rate burglary,” in Ziegler’s dismissive phrase. They were uncovering an entire web of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that could be used to impeach a president.
Always leery of embarrassing situations, Nixon recoiled from directly confronting Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He summoned Ehrlichman to EOB 175 for an hour-long meeting after Kleindienst left at 2:22 p.m. but avoided the subject that was now uppermost on his mind. As soon as he was through with Ehrlichman, he telephoned Haldeman at his home in Georgetown. The chief of staff had spent the afternoon mired in the messy details of the forthcoming Senate hearings. As he had with Ehrlichman, Nixon adopted a tone of contrived joviality that was the opposite of his true feelings.
“Hope you’re enjoying this lovely day?”
“ ’Fraid not,” was the clipped response. “Got to get out and take a look.”
As he pondered the charges against his two top aides, Nixon met with the man who was now effectively in charge of the Watergate investigation. By now it was 4:00 p.m. Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen had spent the weekend working on his boat. Summoned urgently to the White House, he appeared in Nixon’s office in jeans, sneakers, and a grimy, oil-stained T-shirt. He had never been there before and felt completely out of place. He was more accustomed to prosecuting Mafia bosses and other racketeers than meeting with presidents. Although he was a registered Democrat, Petersen supported Nixon’s tough law-and-order policies. He had served in the Marine Corps in the South Pacific during World War II: his craggy face looked as if it had taken a few knocks. “Petersen is a soldier,” Dean had told the president on March 21. “He kept me informed. He told me when we had problems, where we had problems. He believes in you. He believes in this administration. This administration has made him.”
Nixon would later claim that meetings in his EOB hideaway went unrecorded that Sunday afternoon and evening because the Secret Service technicians responsible for changing the tape did not work on weekends. As Nixon subsequently told the story, Petersen urged him to dismiss both Haldeman and Ehrlichman immediately. The two men were likely to become “a source of vast embarrassment to the presidency.” According to Nixon, the following exchange then took place:
Nixon: “I can’t fire men simply because of the appearance of guilt. I have to have proof of their guilt.”
Petersen: “What you have just said, Mr. President, speaks very well of you as a man. It does not speak well of you as a president.”
It was the first truly beautiful spring weekend in Washington, with temperatures in the high sixties. Nixon had been trapped inside all day and was desperate to get out. He had invited Bebe Rebozo for a cruise on the Potomac on the presidential yacht. A 104-foot houseboat with polished mahogany fittings, the Sequoia had originally been put into service by Herbert Hoover. FDR and Truman had used the yacht for summit meetings and fishing trips. A few months before his assassination, Kennedy had celebrated his forty-sixth and final birthday with a lavish party on board. But no president had sailed on the elegant old tub as often as Nixon. The elaborate navy ritual transformed him into the commander in chief of a miniature realm, like a boy playing with toy soldiers. He particularly loved sailing past George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon, where the founder of the nation lay buried. When they came abeam of Washington’s tomb, Nixon and his guests would stand at attention to the mournful strains of taps echoing across the water and a solemn salute from the crew.
The president and his friend were piped aboard the USS Sequoia at 5:32 p.m. after driving to the Washington Navy Yard from the White House. As the sun began to set over the blue-gray hills of Virginia, Nixon sat with Bebe on deck, describing the latest charges against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He worried that they would be unable to cope financially if they became targets of an extensive criminal investigation. The two men had served him “loyally and selflessly” for many years. Whatever happened, he wanted to help them with their legal fees.
“How much money do I have in your bank?” Nixon asked, referring to the financial institution in Key Biscayne that Rebozo had founded decades before.
The Nixon family stands at attention on the USS Sequoia as the crew salutes the grave of George Washington at Mount Vernon, June 1972.
Bebe would not allow Nixon to dip into his own savings. He said that he and Bob Abplanalp would be able to raise a couple of hundred thousand dollars for Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He insisted, however, that donations be made in cash and kept entirely secret. He would not be able to perform the same favor for other, equally deserving Nixon associates.
It was dark by the time the Sequoia returned to the navy yard. In the depths of Nixon’s soul, it was even darker. He had sent word to his two top aides that he wanted to meet with them after his boat ride with Bebe. He would write later in his memoirs, “I dreaded having to go back to the White House and face the bleak choices I knew were waiting there.”
The president masked his inner turmoil with cheerful remarks about the gorgeous weather as he greeted Haldeman and Ehrlichman in his EOB hideaway. He sensed dangers from all sides—from the prosecutors, from Congress, from Judge Sirica, from the press, from men like Dean and Mitchell and even Colson, whom he had trusted with his innermost secrets. He knew he would have to find a way to “prick the boil” of Watergate, however painful the procedure. He now realized that Dean had been right when he talked about a cancer threatening his presidency.
“Petersen wants you both out,” Nixon announced abruptly, after some awkward preliminaries. “Says the evidence that Dean and Magruder are giving the prosecutors implicates you both so much you’re an embarrassment to the president.”
Haldeman was stunned. He had given the best years of his life to Nixon. His wife, Jo, and four children had paid a high price for his single-minded devotion. Connected to the president by buzzers and pagers that required him to come whenever summoned, he had neglected his family. That very week, he had learned that his second son, Peter, had been expelled from an elite Washington secondary school for smoking dope and cutting class. Agonized discussions with his wife on what to do with Peter had been interrupted by yet another call from the White House. Now, it seemed, he might be shown the door.
The dazed chief of staff found it difficult to concentrate on what the president was saying. Gradually, however, his mind returned to its normal focus. Ever the loyal soldier, he was ready to sacrifice himself “to save the man who had brought me here.” He told Nixon he was prepared to resign if it became politically necessary.
Ehrlichman was much more antagonistic, according to Haldeman’s later account. He referred angrily to “brother Dean” who was “grabbing every document in sight by day and talking to the prosecutors by night.” Surely the traitor should be punished before the two men closest to the president. Nixon had a different opinion.
“I can’t fire Dean. I can’t risk his going after the president.”
“Well, you certainly can’t risk his bouncing around here, playing his little game, tiptoeing through the files gathering ammunition,” Ehrlichman protested. He volunteered to draft “a little resignation note” for Dean to sign.
In the middle of this discussion, Nixon received a telephone message from Dean. It consisted of three numbered points:
1. I hope you understand my actions are motivated totally out of loyalty to you. If it’s not clear now, it will become clear.
2. Ehrlichman requested to meet tonight but I feel inappropriate at this time. I am ready and willing to meet with you any time to discuss these matters.
3. I think you should take your counsel from Henry Petersen, who I assure you does not want the presidency hurt.
Nixon replied by inviting his nemesis to meet with him alone in EOB 175. Dean arrived at 9:17 p.m. as Haldeman and Ehrlichman scuttled out the side entrance. As Dean later recalled, the president was sitting in the comfortable lounge chair in the far corner of the room next to his desk. His feet were propped up on the ottoman. Dean pulled up one of the hard-back chairs from the conference table and sat down opposite him. He noticed that the president looked both exhausted and disheveled. He was wearing a smoking jacket that resembled a dressing gown. “His usually neatly creased trousers looked as if he had slept in them, and his necktie was stained. This was not the well-manicured Richard Nixon I was used to.”
Nixon was at pains to appear friendly. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “Scotch? Martini? Anything?” Dean declined. This was the first time the president had offered him a drink, alcoholic or otherwise. He felt awkward. When Nixon insisted, he requested a Coke. Nixon ordered Manolo to bring a Coke for Dean and a coffee for himself. He understood very well that Dean had betrayed him but was obliged to pretend that their relationship was unchanged. He did not want to precipitate an open war with the man who was still his legal counsel. Dean had turned against Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he could turn against the president at any moment. Better to hold him close to the chest—“an asp at your bosom,” as Colson put it—than push him away. Dean, meanwhile, was desperate to avoid being made to take the blame for Watergate. As long as he remained on the White House staff, he knew he would enjoy a measure of protection.
Nixon asked whether Haldeman and Ehrlichman had been part of the cover-up. Dean explained that the two men had guided him “every inch of the way.” He had kept them fully informed about the burglars’ demands for hush money. They had approved the raising of funds. They could both be charged with “obstruction of justice,” a section of the legal code “as broad as the imagination of man.” Dean also mentioned Ehrlichman’s instruction to “deep six” documents found in Hunt’s safe. Nixon noticed that Dean’s voice took on a “vindictive edge” whenever he talked about Ehrlichman, his predecessor as White House counsel and direct superior.
Nixon was most concerned about the confidentiality of their private conversations. Discussions between the president and his lawyer were covered by “executive privilege,” he insisted. Some involved matters of “national security.” There was a risk that some of his remarks would be misunderstood if they ever became public. The March 21 “cancer on the presidency” meeting was a case in point. Nixon wanted Dean to know he had been “joking” when he discussed the possibility of raising a million dollars for the burglars. That was not how Dean remembered the conversation, but he sought to strike a reassuring tone.
“Well, Mr. President, I’m not even going into those areas. You can be assured of that.”
Dean was struck by the way Nixon asked a series of leading questions that appeared designed to get him to acknowledge the president’s lack of involvement in Watergate. He wondered if he was being taped. Nixon also made a show of instructing Dean to “tell the truth” to the prosecutors. Toward the end of the meeting, he got out of his chair and retreated to a corner of his office, well away from any microphones. The lights of the White House on the other side of the road shone through the curtains behind him. In a barely audible voice, Nixon referred hesitantly to another conversation, also in March, when he had acknowledged discussing a presidential pardon for Hunt with Colson.
“I guess it was foolish of me to talk to Colson about clemency, wasn’t it?”
Dean merely nodded. The president had just mentioned their two most problematic conversations. “He knew they were his biggest mistakes, but he was telling me that he considered them small ones,” Dean wrote later. “Jokes, little errors.”
Dean sensed that Nixon was on the brink of a momentous decision that could determine his fate. If he acted swiftly, it was still possible he could cut out the cancer that imperiled his presidency. As Nixon led him to the door to say goodbye, Dean impulsively raised a subject he had never had the courage to mention before.
“You know, uh, Mr. President,” he stammered. “I would hate to have anything I have started here by talking to the prosecutors and getting these facts out…uh, I would hate to have any of that ever result in the impeachment of the president.”
Dean’s mention of the ultimate constitutional sanction seemed to take Nixon by surprise. He thought a moment before vigorously shaking his head.
“Oh, no, John, don’t you worry about that. We’re going to handle everything right.”
After his evening session with Nixon and Haldeman, John Ehrlichman left the White House “heartsick.” He felt he was being unjustly blamed for Watergate. True, he had performed some dirty tricks for Nixon in the past, including his involvement in the Ellsberg psychiatrist affair. But he had done his best to minimize his exposure and had urged the president to make a clean break with Mitchell and Magruder. He now risked being dragged down with men he regarded as much more culpable. He had barely reached home when he received a call from the White House. For the third time that Sunday, his ostensible day off, the president wanted to see him urgently.
Haldeman was already with Nixon in his hideaway office by the time Ehrlichman arrived at 10:16 p.m. Nixon wanted to brief his two aides on his talk with Dean. It had clearly disturbed him. He was particularly troubled by the story of Hunt’s safe. There had evidently been material in the safe documenting dirty tricks by Colson, including his investigations into the Kennedy clan, that could be extremely damaging to Nixon himself. Ehrlichman denied ordering Dean to “deep six” the files but acknowledged approving his alternative proposal to transfer the “political dynamite” to Patrick Gray.
Nixon instructed Ehrlichman to phone the acting FBI director and find out what had happened to the documents. An early riser, Gray was already in bed when his special FBI phone rang. The conversation began awkwardly. Ehrlichman informed Gray that the Watergate prosecutors had questioned Dean about the transfer of a folder of files from Hunt’s safe.
“He’d better deny that,” said Gray, who had told Justice Department investigators he had no knowledge of the documents.
“He’s apparently pretty much on the record on that. I thought I’d better alert you.”
“What the hell am I going to do about that?”
“I don’t know. Is it still in being?”
“No. I was told that was purely political and I destroyed it.”
Nixon could not hear Gray’s end of the conversation, but he could see the blood draining from Ehrlichman’s face. There was a pause as Ehrlichman processed this information.
“I see,” he finally managed to say. “Well, it probably was.”
“Is there any way you can turn him off?”
There was another long pause. Aware that whatever he said might become part of a court record one day, Ehrlichman became the epitome of bureaucratic correctness.
“No. Not in any orbit that we cognize around here.”
Resorting to a gambling circumlocution, Ehrlichman advised Gray to examine his “hole card.” This was an old poker expression meaning that he should calculate the strength of his hand before placing his next bet. The allusion was lost on the naive Gray, who was under the impression that he had been executing the wishes of his masters.
“The only thing I can do with this is deny it,” said Gray, who had burned the documents in an incinerator in his yard, along with discarded Christmas wrapping paper. A dark thought occurred to him. Ehrlichman might corroborate Dean’s testimony, in which case Gray would be hung out to dry. “You’re not going to back him up, are you?”
Ehrlichman mumbled something unintelligible and quickly hung up. He stared blankly at the wall. He imagined the newspaper headline: Head of FBI Destroyed Evidence at Behest of President’s Aides. Nixon and Haldeman tried to cheer him up. Maybe it was not so bad. The idea of hand delivering the documents to Gray had come from Dean, not Ehrlichman. He could not therefore be blamed for their disappearance. None of this was of any comfort.
“It was done in my office. I’m implicated,” he said bitterly. “There goes my license to practice law.”