He was determined to claim credit for cracking Watergate before the press learned about the latest developments. That meant getting out ahead of the Justice Department and the Senate, where that Bible-quoting charlatan, Sam Ervin of North Carolina, was preparing to hold open hearings. Judge Sirica was another wild card who could spring a surprise at any moment. The White House was awash with rumors about bombshell news stories about to break in The Washington Post or The New York Times. “Ziegler has just left my office,” Ehrlichman informed Nixon at 9:50 on Monday morning. “He’s got some input from the Post. It’s his estimate that unless we take the initiative by nine o’clock tonight, it will be too late.”
Ten minutes later, Nixon welcomed Dean to the Oval Office as the “two Germans” left by the side entrance, laughing conspiratorially. He directed Dean to the chair just vacated by Haldeman. “Sit down, sit down.” The president came to the point very quickly. He presented his legal counsel with two letters, both drafted by Ehrlichman. One letter offered Dean’s immediate resignation “as a result of my involvement in the Watergate matter.” The other requested an “indefinite leave of absence” from the White House staff. Nixon wanted Dean to sign both letters so he could have them “in hand.” He would have the option of releasing one or the other or neither, depending on how events developed.
The canny Dean immediately suspected a plot to blame him, and him alone, for the obstruction of justice. His legal strategy hinged on demonstrating that he had been carrying out orders from superiors, particularly Haldeman and Ehrlichman. His defense was that he had been a simple errand boy, or “conduit” in legal terminology. Signing these letters would be tantamount to signing a confession that could be used against him in court. His suspicions were confirmed when he asked the president if he had requested similar letters from the others.
“Are we talking Dean, or are we talking Dean, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman?”
“Dean at this moment,” Nixon acknowledged.
“You have problems with the others too.”
Fumbling nervously on his desk, the president absentmindedly pressed a button by mistake. An aide entered the Oval Office seconds later in response to the summons. Dean was unable to suppress a laugh as Nixon waved the intruder away impatiently.
Nixon claimed that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were ready to submit their resignations anytime he asked. This gave Dean an idea. He would link his departure to the departure of his two main antagonists. He suggested writing his own version of the letters that Nixon had shown him. He promised to make them “short and sweet.”
“Fine,” said the president, realizing he had to keep the viper close to his chest.
Reminding Dean that he was “still the counsel round here,” Nixon asked for his help on “the PR side” of Watergate. He sure as hell was not going to allow the Justice Department or anyone else to grab the headlines for solving the crime. By Nixon’s account, he had exposed the cover-up himself, with perhaps a minor assist from his legal counsel. Dean had come to him on March 21, warning of a cancer on the presidency. This was the first time Nixon had any inkling of wrongdoing. Shocked, he had launched his own investigation, which had finally established the truth.
“We triggered this whole thing. You know what I mean?”
“That’s right.”
“You helped the trigger.”
Once again, Dean remembered events differently. In his version, he was the hero, with the president little more than a spectator. He minimized his own role in coaching Magruder to commit perjury and managing the cover-up over a period of eight months.
“I put everybody’s feet to the fire because it just had to stop.”
As often happened, Nixon saw a parallel with the Alger Hiss case, one of the proudest moments in his political career. “That son of a bitch Hiss would be free today if he hadn’t lied about his espionage.” The disgraced State Department official had gone to jail for “the lie rather than the crime.” When it came to dealing with federal investigators, Nixon’s advice was this: “Believe me, don’t ever lie with these bastards.”
“The truth always emerges,” said Dean.
Nixon told Dean he would “like to take the credit” for persuading Magruder to talk to investigators. Dean should make the point that the case had been broken “as a result of the president’s action.” By now, Nixon was in full fantasy mode, inventing a starring role for himself. He had told his subordinates, “I want to get to the bottom of this thing, period.”
“Believe me, I put a little bit of pressure on Magruder and a few of these clowns,” he boasted. “Also I put pressure on the Justice Department. I told Kleindienst, ‘Goddamn it!’ ”
Dean lacked the heart to contradict him. He left the Oval Office without signing the resignation letters, torn between a residual sense of loyalty to the president and a feeling that Nixon was a “devious bastard” who was out to get him. “The voices canceled each other out,” he wrote later. “I was just strong enough to resist the president, not strong enough to defy him.”
Nixon resumed his spin control efforts with Haldeman and Ehrlichman as soon as Dean was safely out of the way. After considering various “scenarios” that highlighted bold action by the president, they came up with one that turned Dean into the villain. According to this version of events, Dean’s failure to produce his long-promised report on White House involvement in Watergate had brought the crisis to a head. He obviously had something to hide.
“Remember you had John Dean go to Camp David and write it up,” Ehrlichman reminded Nixon. “He came down and said, ‘I can’t.’ ”
“Right.”
“That is the tip-off. Right then you started to move.”
“That’s right.” Nixon agreed enthusiastically. “He said he could not write it.”
“Then you realized that there was much more to this than you had been led to believe.”
This made sense to Nixon. He moved on to the question he had previously asked Dean. “How do I get the credit for getting Magruder to the stand?”
“Very simple,” replied Ehrlichman. He explained that the president had taken Dean “off the case” after losing confidence in him. He had then assigned his Watergate responsibilities to Ehrlichman with a mandate to establish all the facts. That was the crucial turning point.
“Why did I take Dean off?” Nixon asked.
“Because he was involved.”
“The scenario is that he told you he couldn’t write a report,” said Haldeman. “Obviously you had to take him off.”
“Right, right.”
“Then we started digging into it,” said Ehrlichman. “I talked to a lot of people on the phone, I talked to several witnesses in person, kept feeding information to you.”
“Right.”
“You began to move.”
What was emerging as the official White House narrative had numerous holes in it, beginning with the fact that Nixon had been aware of Magruder’s perjured testimony all along. Buried in the piles of tapes in the EOB safes were recorded conversations showing that Ehrlichman and Haldeman had discussed the matter with him as far back as July 1972, a month after the Watergate break-in. Rather than putting a stop to Magruder’s lies, Nixon had emphasized the need to cut the investigation off “at the Liddy level if possible.” Dean reported on his cover-up efforts to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who in turn briefed Nixon. The “scenario” of a deceived president moving to clean house when he finally discovered the truth was pure political spin. But it would serve its purpose for now.
Nixon had the usual ceremonial duties to perform in addition to managing the gravest crisis of his presidency. After his session with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, he was whisked by motorcade to the Washington Hilton for a trade union conference. Then it was back to the Oval Office for a presentation of the millionth copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” and receipt of an honorary award from Rotary International. There was no time for lunch or his normally sacrosanct afternoon “thinking time.” He had arranged to receive yet another Watergate briefing from Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen in his private study.
He jogged up the twenty-six stone steps that adorned the entrance to the Executive Office Building, on the other side of the closed-off avenue. By the time he reached the top, he was out of breath. Petersen was waiting for him in the anteroom of EOB 175, next to the wall of framed political cartoons. This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that he had been called to a face-to-face meeting with the president. In addition, they had spoken by phone four times, most recently just before midnight on Sunday evening.
“Always come here in the afternoons,” the president told his new consigliere as he led him into his private office. “I always run upstairs. That’s why I’m a little panting. I get my exercise.”
Petersen expressed his admiration. He was overworked and out of shape. He had difficulty running up steps.
“What’s your age?”
“Fifty-two, sir.”
“My, you’ve got some great years ahead of you,” said the sixty-year-old president.
Nixon was eager to put Petersen at his ease and establish a friendly relationship. He knew he would need his help if he was ever going to find a way out of the morass of Watergate. Petersen had provided invaluable assistance to Dean in keeping track of the investigation. With Dean out of the picture, Nixon had to rely on Petersen directly as his primary source of intelligence on the activities of the Justice Department and grand jury. To wheedle information out of Petersen, he presented himself as the investigator in chief. They would crack the case together. “You know I am in charge of this thing—you are and I am,” he told Petersen. “You understand now, you’re talking only to me. There’s not going to be anybody else on the White House staff. In other words, I am acting counsel and everything else.”
Petersen was awed by his sudden elevation to the president’s inner circle after twenty-six years laboring in the anonymity of the federal bureaucracy. He was amazed by Nixon’s ability to remain “calm and collected” amid the chaos all around. The president had displayed a “complete lack of shock” when informed about Dean’s allegations against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. “Here I was recommending that two people whom he had known and worked with for years be dismissed,” he recalled later. “I would have been cussing and fuming.” Petersen accepted the president’s assurances that he genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of the Watergate conspiracy.
The assistant attorney general willingly shared the innermost secrets of the grand jury proceedings with the man who would eventually become an “unindicted co-conspirator.” He reasoned that the president had a right to direct the investigation as head of the executive branch. Loyal to his superior, he did not question Nixon’s motives. From Petersen, Nixon gained a detailed understanding of the case against his closest associates and the potential threats to himself. Petersen explained the way in which the prosecutors were methodically interviewing people lower down the totem pole before going after Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He outlined the timetable for calling various witnesses to testify and provided highlights of the interviews with Magruder and Dean. In response to Nixon’s probing questions, he also described the tortuous negotiations with Dean’s attorney, Charlie Shaffer, over immunity.
Shaffer was refusing to plea-bargain, Petersen reported. Instead, he wanted “a deal” that would afford his client full protection. Petersen was inclined to grant Dean immunity if it would clinch the case against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. This put Dean in a different category from Magruder, who had agreed to plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy. Shaffer’s argument was that Dean was not guilty of anything. As far as the cover-up was concerned, he had simply been acting as “an agent” on behalf of White House superiors. If the Justice Department put Dean on trial, Shaffer would level the same charges against “Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Nixon, and this administration.”
“The president too?” asked Nixon, suddenly alarmed.
“It’s a goddamned poker game. Yes, sir.”
Nixon demanded clarification. Dean “told you that unless you grant him immunity, he’s going to attack everybody, including the president. Is that right?”
That had come not from Dean but from his lawyer, Petersen explained. It was framed in terms of Dean’s defense strategy in the event of a trial rather than as a direct threat. So far at least, Dean had implicated only Haldeman and Ehrlichman, not the president himself. But Nixon was still concerned.
“He hasn’t testified that he’s an agent for the president in any of this, has he?”
“No, sir.”
“If he has, I need to know.”
“Yes, sir. I know.”
“I didn’t see Dean until a month ago. Never saw him.”
Thanks to Petersen, Nixon understood that Dean had a winning card he was prepared to use if he was ever put on trial. In the meantime, Dean had another card up his sleeve that he played later that afternoon. Summoned back to EOB 175, he produced his rewrite of the resignation letters prepared by Ehrlichman. As promised, his version was pithy and to the point:
Dear Mr. President,
You have informed me that Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman have verbally tendered their request to be given an immediate and indefinite leave of absence from your staff. By this letter I wish to confirm my similar request that I be given such a leave of absence from the staff.
Sincerely, John Dean
“You don’t want to go if they stay?” Nixon asked.
Dean mentioned his fear of being turned into “the scapegoat.”
“Like Magruder’s been a scapegoat for Mitchell?”
“Right.”
By linking his fate to those of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Dean had made it much more difficult for Nixon to single him out for blame. His letter avoided any mention of Watergate. Beyond complaining that “you” was not “a polite word” to use in addressing a president, Nixon did not argue the merits of the rival drafts. He would later acknowledge that Dean’s latest ploy was “very cute.” If he sacked Dean alone, he would risk the accusation that he was “covering up for Haldeman and Ehrlichman.” He knew when he had been outmaneuvered.