Spiro Agnew’s endgame seemed virtually complete by October 1. Fred Buzhardt had shuttled between the Justice Department and Agnew to force him to resign in exchange for not going to trial, although Elliot Richardson and his Baltimore prosecutors knew they had the evidence to convict Agnew. Few in the White House, particularly Nixon and Haig, wanted a protracted criminal trial. They just wanted Agnew gone, Nixon because every day Agnew remained in the news it reinforced the public impression of sleaze, and Haig because as long as Agnew remained Nixon could not appoint a vice president who could eventually replace him.
As the turmoil around Agnew swirled, a life-and-death crisis developed in the Middle East. Egypt, which had been stung with the rest of the Arab world by Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, had amassed troops along the Suez Canal to attack the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. A preoccupied White House failed to focus on the movements until it was too late.1
On October 1 Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s longtime secretary, came into his Old Executive Office Building office to say she had mistakenly erased part of a tape from June 20, 1972, that she had been transcribing. Nixon called Haig, who called Buzhardt, who said the tape was not covered by the subpoena. “Buzhardt confirmed this, so the peculiar incident did not seem to present any problem,” Nixon wrote. Haig and Buzhardt already knew Nixon had obstructed justice, so the new erasure gave them ammunition to use against the president later. After their brief meeting on the tape, Nixon and Haig took the presidential limousine for a long drive around Washington so they could talk about what to do about Agnew, who still had not quit.2
On October 2 Agnew’s new press secretary said Agnew planned another aggressive speech on October 4, which enraged Haig. He already feared Agnew would keep escalating tensions with the West Wing, so he called Art Sohmer, Agnew’s chief of staff, and said Nixon wanted no more Los Angeles–style speeches. Agnew could forget a deal if he kept attacking Justice or any other part of the administration, Haig told Sohmer. Agnew had no idea that Haig was bluffing. The White House could not afford a protracted trial and political fight.3 Meanwhile, Nixon kept sending conflicting messages, such as his statement on October 3 that Agnew’s decision to remain in office was an “altogether proper one.”4
Haig did not agree. Either with Nixon’s imprimatur or on his own, Haig met on October 4 with Gen. Michael Dunn, Agnew’s military aide, who wrote Agnew a memo that spelled out Haig’s dire warning. Haig, Dunn wrote, “knows of every phone call made by” Agnew. Haig implied that he knew all of Agnew’s attempts to save himself, but there was no way out. If Agnew resigned, he would not be prosecuted, Dunn wrote, which was the same message Agnew had been told for the last week. “Haig’s threat made me realize, with a sickening shock, that I had finally lost the last slim thread of hope that the president would help me in my fight,” Agnew wrote. “On the contrary, he had turned against me and become my mortal enemy. Haig insinuated that if I went against the President’s wishes and refused to resign, there would be no more help from the White House to prevent a jail sentence and no assistance with the IRS finances, placing my staff, or the other carrots Buzhardt had dangled.”5 Haig disputed Agnew’s description in his memoirs, but it was clear something was said.6 Agnew had little will to fight left.
Agnew’s surprise at Haig’s tough message is hard to square with the White House Agnew described. “The American people should know that in the last hectic year or more of his residence in the White House, Richard Nixon did not actually administer all the powers of the presidency.” Haig, Agnew realized, “was the de facto president.” Despite his delusional protestations of innocence in the face of mounting evidence, Agnew realized that “Haig had the power of the bureaucracy at his command, and the Washington insiders knew he was standing there behind Nixon, pulling the strings. Haig had direct connections with the CIA and the FBI and every other agency. . . . His power extended into any agency he chose. The very survival of the Nixon presidency was threatened.”7
When Agnew’s memoirs were published, few paid heed to his complaints about Haig. Agnew’s insights were discounted as the complaints of a corrupt and discredited politician, but he had correctly assessed who had the power in the Nixon White House: “I am also convinced that Haig desired not only to move me out, but in due course, after someone else had been brought into the vice-presidency, to move Mr. Nixon out, too. I really think that by this time, Al Haig already knew enough about the discrepancies in the tapes—and the truth about Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up—to be convinced that eventually the President himself must go. And Haig did not want me in the line of succession.”8
Twelve years later, Haig’s memoirs acknowledged Agnew’s suspicions.9 Haig knew Nixon would not survive his second term and that the corrupt Agnew would not survive either. Haig also made the same claim to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in a September 1974 interview that was only made public in 2011, after Haig, Agnew, and Nixon had died.10 Melvin Laird also knew Nixon was guilty, because Buzhardt told him. Agnew correctly assessed the situation.
Shortly after Haig met with Dunn, he left with Nixon for Key Biscayne, where on October 6 they learned that Egyptian and Syrian forces had launched a surprise attack on Israeli positions in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, which Israel had also claimed in 1967. U.S. intelligence detected some movements by the Egyptians and Syrians, but nothing that indicated an attack of such magnitude.11 In Florida, isolated by Haig, Nixon was a bystander, while Kissinger, in New York, met constantly with foreign officials. He desperately but unsuccessfully worked the phones to stave off the fighting. He and Haig, not Nixon, controlled the American response. The president, stressed out and drinking too much, marginalized himself.
Haig shaded the truth in his memoirs. “It has been stated elsewhere that Nixon, who was in Key Biscayne on Yom Kippur, did not learn of the attacks until hours after they had taken place,” Haig wrote. “That is not true. Within minutes after hostilities began, I was informed by the White House situation room, and I informed the President, that the Arab offensive was under way. It was then about 6 a.m. He decided within the hour to return to Washington to take personal command of the crisis.”12
In fact, Nixon remained in Florida all day and did not return to Washington until 10:00 p.m. on October 7.13 Kissinger wanted Nixon to stay on the sidelines, and Haig kept him there.
Haig and Kissinger spoke at 10:35 a.m. on October 6.
“I wanted to bring you up to date on where we stand and to tell you my strategy,” Kissinger said. “You may have to calm some people down.”
“Good,” Haig responded. “I am sitting with the president.”
Egypt started the fighting, Kissinger said, and the United States needed to determine if the Soviets had advance notice and then to go to the United Nations Security Council to get a joint resolution for a cease-fire. As Kissinger spelled out his plan, Haig listened, giving one-word responses when Kissinger paused for breath.
“The President is seriously considering going back to Washington,” Haig said.
“I think that is a grave mistake,” Kissinger responded. “There is nothing we can do right now. You should wait to see how it develops. Wait until at least this afternoon. So far not even a Security Council meeting has been called.”
“He agrees with that,” Haig said. “His problem is that if it is an all-out war for him to be sitting down here in this climate would be very, very bad.”
Kissinger said they needed to wait for the Soviets’ response and remain calm. Nixon should stay in Florida.
“You will make sure that the President is comfortable with this strategy,” Kissinger said. “I think it is our only possible course and it has to be seen in the general context of his ability to act and of what follows afterwards.”14
Not only was Nixon not flying back to Washington to confront the crisis, he was relying on Haig to talk to the main crisis manager for the United States—Kissinger, who spoke with Haig two hours later.
“I wanted to tell you the President feels he definitely has to come back to Washington,” Haig said.
“I think you are making a terrible mistake,” Kissinger said.
“We are not going to announce it and we will not go back until 7 tonight,” Haig said.
“I would urge you to keep any Walter Mitty tendencies under control,” Kissinger said, referring to the fictional character who lived in a fantasy world.
“That is not the problem,” Haig said. “He has a situation with Agnew which prohibits his staying down here. On top of that he knows if he is sitting here in the sun and there is a war going on he is in for terrible criticism.”
Nixon, Kissinger said, could not just slip into Washington unnoticed.
“That is true but he feels very strongly that he is just not going to sit down here,” Haig said.
“What does he think is going on?” Kissinger asked.
“He thinks nothing is going on,” Haig said.15
At the same time, Haig and Kissinger debated about what to do with Nixon, Haig and Buzhardt were finishing the details for Agnew’s resignation. The Justice Department had presented them with a memo that said the vice president could be indicted without being impeached first, although the president could not. That gave Haig a hammer to use against Agnew if he remained intransigent. They called Agnew’s lawyer, Judah Best, who flew to Key Biscayne and arrived after midnight. He and Buzhardt negotiated the details until about 4:00 a.m.16
On the morning of October 7, Attorney General Elliot Richardson met with his team and said the outbreak of the war made it even more important that Agnew resign. Worried about Nixon’s health, Richardson worried that if something happened to Nixon, Agnew would succeed him.17 In Florida, Haig told reporters that Agnew could resign as early as the next day.18
Kissinger updated Haig at 9:35 a.m. So far, Kissinger said, they had no word from the Soviets. He suggested that Ron Ziegler announce that the United States would go to the Security Council with or without the Soviets. No one, Kissinger said, really wanted a Security Council session, particularly the Israelis, who wanted to settle the issue on the battlefield.
“What we don’t need now is a war council meeting and getting ourselves into the middle of it,” Kissinger said. “To the American people it is a local war. Let them beat them up for a day or two and that will quiet them down.”
Haig said Nixon would return that day, which Kissinger opposed again.
“What is he going to do?” Kissinger asked.
“It is conceivable we will have an announcement about the Vice President,” Haig said. “That is the first thing.”
“That is a slightly different problem,” Kissinger said.
“You bet it is and what I am telling you is the two are going to be linked together,” Haig said. “He cannot be sitting down here in the sun with what is going on in the VP thing. It is not firm yet but we will know very shortly.”
“If that other thing is happening then I can see a reason for coming back from the point of view of diplomacy,” Kissinger said. “I would keep his return for later. Supposing the Soviets get tough and if he then returns that would be a good move. If he returns early it looks like an hysterical move. I am giving you my honest opinion. If the Soviets took a position of having kicked us in the teeth that would be a signal that things are getting serious. We will not have heard by 3. We probably won’t know until the first thing in the morning.”
“Alright,” Haig said. “I will try to hold this thing down here.”
“I would hold him until the first thing in the morning,” Kissinger said.
Kissinger said the principals had included Nixon in the morning telephone calls, as if including the president of the United States in these vital calls was doing Nixon a favor.
“But don’t you agree, speaking personally?” Kissinger asked.
“I know, except I know about the other problem,” Haig said, meaning Agnew.
“You are a better judge of that,” Kissinger said. “The problem I am handling in my judgment is if we played this as a crisis—say nothing, act tough, without stirring up the atmosphere.”
Haig said he would check with Nixon.19
Kissinger feared that any overreaction by Nixon would send the wrong message to the Soviets, and with Nixon in Florida, Kissinger also enjoyed a free hand. At 1:10 p.m. he called Haig again to ask Nixon to stay in Florida unless he had a compelling reason to return. Nixon needed to stay calm, Kissinger said. Haig said he had settled Nixon down. Kissinger said he wanted to include Nixon in a way that would help the country.20
In a normal administration, the president would make those decisions, not a cabinet secretary, even one with Kissinger’s influence. Nixon knew enough to realize it looked bad if he stayed in Florida while the crises with Agnew and the war went on. Yet Kissinger and Haig isolated the president. Their reasons would become more apparent in the coming days, as they believed they could not let Nixon exercise the power he had earned by winning two elections as president.
Throughout it all, Nixon remained a bystander. He finally returned to Washington that night.
The next morning, Agnew’s attorney, Judah Best, called the vice president in New York to tell him about the deal for his resignation. Agnew told Best to remind Haig and Buzhardt that Agnew would not agree if it was not stipulated that Agnew would not do any time in prison. “I was deathly afraid of a double cross,” Agnew said.21
Agnew’s attorneys met with Richardson on October 9 to lock in the deal. Agnew would not go to prison. “It is my recommendation that there be no term of imprisonment,” Richardson told U.S. District Judge Walter Hoffman, who oversaw the Agnew case. That afternoon, Agnew went into the Oval Office to see Nixon, who looked haggard and drawn and seemed genuinely sorry. That was an act. Nixon mostly felt relieved.22
Agnew walked into Hoffman’s court on October 10 and stunned the crowd by pleading nolo contendere—no contest—to tax evasion. He then resigned as vice president. In exchange for not pushing a criminal trial against Agnew, Richardson gave Haig what he wanted almost from the moment he learned about Agnew’s legal troubles. By quitting, Agnew allowed Nixon to appoint a new vice president acceptable to Democrats and Republicans. That person also had to be considered a viable president, since the pressure to force Nixon from office would not stop.
Anyone close to Nixon knew he wanted to name John Connally—the former Democratic governor of Texas and a former treasury secretary—as vice president. However, members of both parties distrusted him. Democrats resented his recent switch to the Republican Party, while Republicans never considered Connally one of their own. Haig said Nixon asked him not to help him pick a vice president, because Nixon wanted to consider Haig as a potential nominee. Nixon, Haig said, sent various lists of candidates to Republicans all around the country. Meanwhile, Melvin Laird polled his former colleagues on the Hill, although Laird had his favorite candidate, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan. A former college football star at the University of Michigan, Ford was a genial midwestern conservative acceptable to his fellow Republicans and to most Democrats.
As the White House focused on Agnew, an odd story by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein appeared in the October 10 Washington Post. Nixon, they reported, had approved more wiretaps than the seventeen conducted by the FBI on government officials and journalists between 1969 and 1971. The FBI tapped two more unnamed targets in late 1971 and early 1972, the story said. However, they did not report what Woodward already knew: one tap was on Yeoman Charles Radford, the chief suspect in the military spy ring. Instead, the story implied that Nixon was lying about the number of wiretaps and exaggerating national security threats. Nixon had ordered the FBI to monitor Radford to see if he leaked any classified information after Nixon had ordered him transferred away from Washington. The taps on Radford and an associate of his followed stricter guidelines than those ordered in 1969, and they stopped after the Supreme Court ruled that all wiretaps required a judge’s approval.23
The Woodward and Bernstein piece came as reporters Jim Squires of the Chicago Tribune and Dan Thomasson of Scripps-Howard were closing in on the mysterious “national security” topics that John Ehrlichman was forbidden to mention while testifying before the Senate Watergate committee in July. The main topic, as Senators Howard Baker and Sam Ervin already knew, was the spy ring. Woodward already knew about the spy ring, too; he had asked his former commander, Rear Adm. Robert Welander, about it in May. The October 10 story in the Post appeared more as a bit of work for Haig by Woodward instead of a story that broke news. Woodward was withholding news that he alone knew, not informing his readers.
With Agnew gone, Buzhardt pitched an idea aimed at breaking the deadlock on the White House tapes with special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Instead of turning over the subpoenaed tapes to Cox, Buzhardt suggested, why not have Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, a Democrat and former judge, review summaries of the tapes and verify their accuracy for Cox and the federal court?24 Buzhardt and Stennis knew each other well from the years Buzhardt spent as an aide to South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In May Buzhardt had suggested using Stennis to help stifle the Watergate committee investigation, calling Stennis the “undertaker” of the Senate because he could bury a political controversy by stacking a committee hearing with friendly witnesses to create the illusion of a fair investigation. Stennis, however, was seventy-three and hard of hearing, and he had spent most of the year in the hospital after being shot during a January robbery attempt outside his Washington home. Buzhardt’s proposal came just days after Stennis returned to the Senate. Haig agreed, while Nixon was hopeful this could prevent the disclosure of his guilt in the cover-up. Sam Ervin did not take the offer seriously, saying it was meant to precipitate a crisis that would get Cox fired.25
On October 11 Nixon told Haig to call Connally and tell him that congressional opposition made it impossible to nominate him to be vice president. Haig said he told Connally that Nixon’s decision would actually help him, because “we are probably going to fire Cox within a week or ten days. There is a good chance that if your name goes forward Saturday that you will be held up in any event. There could be a merger of impeachment [of both the president and vice president]. That is the great danger.”26 That made no sense, since Agnew’s resignation meant there was no vice president to impeach. For Connally to be impeached with Nixon, he would first have to be confirmed, which Haig had just told Connally was unlikely. Connally said he thought he could survive a confirmation battle and even win over a prominent Democrat such as Edward Kennedy, whose brother, President John Kennedy, was killed by the same bullet that wounded Connally in Dallas on November 22, 1963.27 According to Nixon, Connally acknowledged he had little chance of confirmation. Haig also wrote that Connally said he would support Nixon if he wanted to name Gerald Ford.28
Haig then called Ford to say Nixon would appoint him as vice president. He noted that Ford became the fourth person to know Nixon’s plans after Connally, Nixon, and Haig himself. Nixon and Haig planned to make the announcement the following day.29
Haig and Buzhardt then told Nixon about the Stennis compromise. Nixon’s calendar shows he met with Haig and Buzhardt for close to an hour at 1:35 p.m. and then with Haig, Buzhardt, and Ron Ziegler for slightly more than thirty minutes starting at 2:51 p.m.30 Nixon told his two aides, Haig wrote, that “the first order of business is to fire Cox.” The president wanted Elliot Richardson to know that Nixon planned to fire Cox but keep Richardson as attorney general. If Richardson felt he needed to resign, Nixon could live with that. He just wanted to fire Cox.31
Haig’s handling of the Cox firing would soon become one of the greatest debacles of his tenure as Nixon’s chief of staff. His version of the events also does not match those of Richardson and the other participants. Either Haig willfully led Nixon, Richardson, and Cox into a politically destructive move that would play out in nine days, or he was just stunningly incompetent. Now that Agnew had resigned, the end game for Cox was in motion; its resolution would leave Nixon even more crippled.
On Capitol Hill, Senator Lowell Weicker continued his quest to have the Watergate committee subpoena former FBI official William Sullivan as a witness. He knew Sullivan had more information about Nixon’s use of FBI wiretaps to track suspected leakers. Sullivan had spent much of 1973 dodging responsibility for his part in the wiretap saga. He alternately teased Weicker and committee staffers with tantalizing hints of wrongdoing, only to reverse direction and claim ignorance. In June he complained to Weicker that John Dean had lied in his testimony about Sullivan and the wiretaps, and he gave contradictory and misleading signals to committee investigators in July, August, and October. Sullivan’s interests in not testifying converged with Haig’s; if Sullivan testified under oath, the very real chance existed that he could spill damaging information about Haig at a time when criminal charges from the wiretap program remained possible.
Cox angered the White House again when he announced that Egil Krogh, the leader of the White House Plumbers, had been indicted for perjury in the case of the September 1971 burglary of the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Krogh lied to cover up that break-in as well as other aspects of the Plumbers’ work. If Krogh went to trial, he would use evidence from the Plumbers’ work in his defense, including the spy ring investigation.
Nixon had more than picking a vice president and the tapes to handle on October 11. The war in the Middle East had taken a serious toll on the Israelis, who told Kissinger they had lost at least five hundred tanks in the fighting. The Soviets had kept up their supplies to Egypt and Syria, while U.S. aid to Israel remained stalled.32
By day’s end Nixon must have felt overwhelmed. He flew to Camp David shortly after 5:30 p.m. and talked to Kissinger from 6:19 to 6:32 p.m. He spoke with Haig twice, from 7:30 to 7:40 p.m. and from 7:54 to 7:58 p.m. Haig called again at 8:08 p.m. but was not connected to Nixon, most likely because Nixon was passed out drunk.33 Around that time, Maj. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger’s deputy at the NSC, called Kissinger to inform him that British prime minister Edward Heath wanted to talk to Nixon. Kissinger told Scowcroft no, because the last time Kissinger had spoken to Nixon that day—for thirteen minutes after 6:00 p.m.—Nixon was “loaded.”34
At 8:28 a.m. on October 12 Haig called Richardson and summoned him to the White House for a meeting. The mission to fire Cox was heating up. Richardson called Cox and expressed surprise that Cox had indicted Krogh, which Richardson considered a national security case they needed to avoid. Cox said he thought it was just a simple case of perjury. Regardless, Richardson said, there existed a strong possibility that they both could get fired. Richardson had insulated Cox from the frequent pressure Richardson received from Haig and Buzhardt. The attorney general knew from his meeting with Haig in the morning that Nixon wanted a reason to fire Cox; Richardson did not want to give Nixon one so easily.35
Nixon returned to the White House in the morning and told Haig he would pick Ford as vice president. They called Connally and told him he had lost out to Ford. They arranged for a celebration at the White House after the official announcement of Ford’s appointment. “Haig gave an order that we should have a grand celebration,” White House aide Steve Bull said. “Dave Gergen and I said no, this wasn’t a time for a celebration. It was a tragedy. A vice president had just resigned, and we’ll get hammered in the press for appearing to celebrate. We were overruled, and the next day, we were hammered in the press for it. Haig called us into the Roosevelt Room, where he said that we should never leak information if a decision goes against what we want. I told him that wasn’t true.”36 Betty Beale, the Washington Star columnist, called Nixon to task for what Haig had ordered. “What other President tossed a joyous party in the East Room to announce a new Vice-President even while the pictures of the former Vice-President were being removed from the walls of the West Wing?” Beale wrote.37
The president, never the most publicly devout politician, held a prayer service at the White House on the morning of Sunday, October 14. Among the invitees was Stennis, whom Nixon called into the Oval Office to ask him if he would agree to the compromise Buzhardt had concocted.38 Stennis said he would consider it depending on what Cox and Senators Ervin and Baker said. Stennis had kept many secrets for Nixon before and was willing to help Nixon again, but he wanted cover from his two Senate colleagues.39
With Stennis’s tentative agreement, Haig and Buzhardt increased the pressure on Richardson to fire Cox. On October 15 they told Richardson that Nixon would prepare his own tape transcripts and then fire Cox. They did not, however, tell him about the Stennis compromise. Haig only did that after the meeting, when he called Richardson back and mentioned it for the first time.40 He also did not tell Richardson that Stennis had signed on to the compromise. Richardson was being pushed into firing his law school mentor, Cox, at the behest of Nixon, the target of Cox’s investigation. Nixon did not realize, however, that Haig was telling him one thing and Richardson another.41
Haig called Richardson and added more conditions, saying Cox could keep his job if he agreed not to ask for more documents or tapes than the ones that Stennis would verify. Agreeing to such terms would have closed off potential avenues of investigation to Cox, making him dependent on the whims of Stennis, Buzhardt’s ally, to determine any future investigation. No serious prosecutor, Haig and Buzhardt had to realize, would accept such a deal. Richardson only reluctantly considered it to avoid firing Cox. But Richardson did not agree to the new conditions. He said he would have to call Haig back.42
Haig and Buzhardt then went to Capitol Hill to see Stennis, who threw a kink into their plans. Stennis said his hearing would not let him listen to all of the tapes, which he did not realize were of a sporadic quality that would challenge even the most perfect hearing. Ever helpful, Buzhardt told Stennis he would listen to some of the tapes for him, thereby eliminating the ostensible neutrality that made the Stennis compromise even remotely plausible.43
All sides were hurtling toward a crisis. Richardson called Haig at 3:20 p.m. and agreed to the Stennis compromise but not to limit Cox’s ability to get any new documents or tapes. Haig said nothing about the second point, which Richardson assumed was agreement. They met at 4:00 p.m., when, as Richardson later told the Senate, he told Haig that he would resign before firing Cox. They did not need to provoke a confrontation with Cox, Richardson said, and a fair compromise would combine the Stennis proposal with Cox’s future ability to ask for more materials. Haig, however, told Nixon that Richardson had agreed to everything: firing Cox, the Stennis compromise, and the limits on Cox seeking additional materials. He did not, however, tell Nixon that Richardson would not back Nixon if he tried to fire Cox. So Haig misled Nixon into believing that Richardson agreed with his plan.
Richardson told Cox about the Stennis compromise in a 6:00 p.m. meeting. Cox was not enthusiastic.
Richardson agreed to everything, Haig wrote. “I think Cox should go along with it,” Richardson said in Haig’s account, which differs from those of the other participants.44 Haig had his own reasons to fire Cox, which he did not share with Nixon, and he had already placed Nixon in no-win positions before, particularly with the revelation of the White House tapes and Vernon Walters’s memcons from June 1972. Given Haig’s established credibility problems, his version is hard to believe.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News published a story on October 14 that exposed some of William Sullivan’s machinations with Weicker and the Watergate committee. Sullivan, the Daily News reported, had conferred multiple times with Weicker and had provided evidence against Robert Mardian, the former head of the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division and later the counsel to the Nixon 1972 campaign. “The Sullivan interviews, undertaken over the past several weeks by committee member Sen. Lowell P. Weicker (R-Conn.), reportedly have elicited a number of ‘solid leads’ from the onetime FBI official,” the Daily News reported.45 The Daily News story was impeccably sourced; one of Weicker’s top aides, Richard McGowan, had spent years on the Daily News staff before joining Weicker. McGowan also doubted Sullivan’s honesty. “Bill Sullivan is a viper,” McGowan wrote in a memo to Weicker.46 The Daily News story also connected Sullivan as a source of Bob Woodward, especially for one of the Deep Throat interviews. Details of the Daily News story, primarily the accusations against Mardian, matched what Deep Throat told Woodward during their meeting in a bar in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on March 5.47
Sullivan reacted on October 16 by writing Weicker to say he did not want to testify before the committee.48 He also wrote the Daily News to deny he had talked to Weicker, despite the evidence to the contrary, and he also wrote Weicker to complain that investigators had badgered him all year.49
On October 17 Richardson detailed his understanding of the proposed deal with Cox in a memo to Buzhardt. Cox and the White House would negotiate any future requests by Cox for new documents. Buzhardt objected, so Richardson said he would delay anything regarding new tapes and documents.50 A decision that day by Judge John Sirica that the Senate Watergate committee lacked the standing to seek the tapes meant Cox faced the White House alone, an awkward position, since Cox technically worked for the president.51 Cox made his situation worse the next day, October 18, when he told Richardson he could not agree to the Stennis proposal, calling it problematic for one person to review the tapes. Nor would he limit future requests for information, because that would unfairly hamstring the investigation.52
Most, if not all, of the misunderstanding between Richardson and Nixon could have been avoided if the two had spoken directly. But they could not. Cox, the investigator of Watergate-related crimes, worked for Richardson, who had to preserve the investigation’s independence, which would disappear if Richardson and Nixon talked directly. That placed more authority in the hands of Haig, who by now had demonstrated he did not have Nixon’s best interests at heart.
Richardson took Cox’s written rejection of the Stennis compromise to the White House, where he met with Haig, Buzhardt, Len Garment, and Charles Alan Wright, the University of Texas legal scholar advising Nixon on Watergate. Haig said Cox’s rejection meant he should be fired. Richardson presciently argued that the public would blame Nixon, not Cox, if Nixon carried out his threat. Told about the meeting, Nixon erupted. “No more tapes, no more documents, nothing more!” he told Haig.53
“More than ever,” Nixon wrote, “I wanted Cox fired.”54
Richardson knew he and Cox were doomed. He went home on the night of October 18 and wrote a letter that explained why he had to resign.55
Cox’s work triggered another decision that aggravated Haig. Egil Krogh, indicted by Cox for perjury, pleaded not guilty on October 18, which signaled a potentially difficult trial that could damage Haig’s spy ring cover-up.
Whatever Haig thought he had accomplished unraveled on October 19 and 20. Richardson opened the morning by showing his staff the letter about resigning if Nixon fired Cox. Richardson’s aides agreed with his plan, so Richardson had his secretary type it into a memo.56 Richardson then called Haig, who said Wright and Cox were still talking. Richardson said he wanted to see Nixon if those negotiations broke down. Meanwhile, Wright sent Cox a letter that confirmed the details of their conversation from the night before. Cox said he could not agree to limit his requests because he had promised the Senate when he was confirmed in May that he would take the investigations wherever they led. He would not violate his word, Cox told Wright.57
Haig kept selling Richardson on the Stennis proposal. Richardson might have agreed, but he then saw the letters between Cox and Wright and realized the White House still wanted to handcuff Cox’s future requests, which Richardson thought he had already resolved in Cox’s favor. Someone, either Haig or Nixon, was not dealing in good faith. Richardson would not agree to limit Cox’s requests or fire him, but he kept talking to Buzhardt, Garment, and Wright.58 Meanwhile, Haig had told Nixon exactly the opposite—Richardson would fire Cox and not resign. Nixon also wrote that Haig told him it was Richardson’s idea to put “parameters” around Cox to keep him from being fired.59 Haig then kept trying to sell Richardson on the Stennis plan, although he omitted key details, such as that Senators Ervin and Baker did not know the scope of the compromise. Haig had not told Ervin and Baker they would only get summaries of tapes, not verbatim transcripts. Haig also said that Nixon needed maximum flexibility to deal with the Middle East crisis, a bogus plea to anyone who knew how much Kissinger and Haig had pushed Nixon to the sidelines. Nevertheless, Ervin and Baker agreed to pitch the compromise to the other committee members.60
After all that, Haig then told Richardson the truth, claiming he had tried to budge an uncompromising Nixon. Upset, Richardson felt used and lied to. He knew Cox would not agree to Haig’s terms, that Cox would get fired, and that Richardson himself would have to resign. Meanwhile, Nixon said Haig told him that Richardson had only displayed mild dissatisfaction about the limits on Cox but would stay on the job.61 Richardson called Cox and read him Nixon’s letter about the tapes. Cox predictably disagreed.
Also that afternoon, White House Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren announced that Nixon was sending Kissinger to Moscow to negotiate a Middle East peace deal with the Soviets. Kissinger resisted the attempt to link his mission with the impending Stennis announcement, telling Haig that afternoon that it was a “cheap stunt” and “poor tactics” that would “look as if [Nixon] is using foreign policy to cover up a domestic thing. I will not link foreign policy with Watergate. You will regret it for the rest of your life.” Haig backed down.62
Haig ordered the release of a White House statement about the Stennis compromise at 8:00 p.m., after the evening news broadcasts and close to the deadlines for the morning newspapers. Nixon, the release said, would end the tape controversy. Cox had rejected a compromise backed by Ervin and Baker, the statement said, and there would be no more requests for tapes and documents. It was all a lie based on Haig’s deception of Nixon, who mistakenly believed he had Richardson’s agreement.63
Richardson returned to his home in McLean, Virginia, where he received a call from Bryce Harlow. Richardson surprised Harlow by saying he had never been treated as shabbily as he had in the last few days.64 Harlow reported back to Haig, who called Richardson. The attorney general, who had spent the last week being whipsawed by Haig and Buzhardt, told Haig he had just poured himself a drink and that they could talk about it later, a comment Haig used to smear Richardson as a drunk.65 Haig wrote that Richardson’s speech was slurred and that he would not fire Cox and would resign if he was forced to.66 Despite that, there is no indication that Haig presented that information forcefully to Nixon, although Haig closed out Nixon’s evening with a fifteen-minute call at around 11:00.67
Richardson started Saturday, October 20, with a letter to Nixon that said he would try to persuade Cox to agree to the Stennis compromise but would not limit future requests for tapes and documents. Haig saw that as Richardson refusing to carry out a presidential order. Cox followed with a 1:00 p.m. news conference at the National Press Club in which he declared he would not agree to the Stennis plan or any other limits. Haig called it a “bravura performance” in which Cox labeled the Stennis compromise a “Nixonian design” to mislead the American people.68 Cox did not realize at the time that the plan was actually hatched by Haig and Buzhardt and abetted by their Senate ally, Stennis.
Cox’s statement outraged Nixon. Len Garment called Richardson from Haig’s office to say they had watched the news conference. Nixon was too busy dealing with the Middle East, Garment said; he asked Richardson if he would fire Cox and then resign if he felt he needed to. No, Richardson told Garment, he would not fire Cox. Haig then called Richardson, who repeated what he had told Garment.69
Richardson went to the White House at 4:30 p.m. to meet an angry Nixon, who fumed about Richardson’s insubordination. He asked Richardson to wait to resign until the end of the Middle East crisis. Richardson declined. The man whom Nixon had appointed to run three cabinet agencies—Health, Education, and Welfare; Defense; and Justice—thanked Nixon for giving him so many great opportunities. He then resigned and went to Justice to tell his staff. Haig called Justice and asked for William Ruckelshaus, Richardson’s deputy.70 A few months earlier, Haig had questioned the idea of Ruckelshaus joining Richardson there because Haig doubted Ruckelshaus’s loyalty to the White House. Now, as acting attorney general, Ruckelshaus validated Haig’s earlier concerns. Haig again invoked the Middle East crisis when he told Ruckelshaus he needed to fire Cox. If the crisis was so dire, Ruckelshaus responded, then why not wait a week to fire Cox? Your commander in chief has given you an order, Haig said, so you must follow it. Ruckelshaus resigned instead and handed the telephone to Robert Bork, the solicitor general and third-ranking official at Justice.71 Now the acting attorney general, Bork agreed to fire Cox, reasoning that Nixon would go down the chain of command at Justice to find someone willing to fire Cox. Haig dispatched a limousine to pick up Bork and drive him to the White House. Inside the limo were Buzhardt and Garment, dispatched by Haig to make sure Bork did not change his mind. Bork met with Nixon from 5:59 to 6:08 p.m., and he agreed to fire Cox. The president then went to the White House residence to watch a movie.72
The first bulletins about the firings started to move shortly before 7:00 p.m. All the major television networks broke into their regular programming to break the news. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler stepped into a seething White House briefing room shortly after 8:00 p.m. to announce the firings. Foreign elements, the prepared White House statement said, may be prepared to use Watergate to do things they would not ordinarily do.73 Few in the press corps believed the official explanation. They considered Cox an honorable prosecutor and Richardson and Ruckelshaus two of the most credible administration officials. Before the night was out, the event was being called the Saturday Night Massacre, and the calls for impeaching Nixon gained intensity.
Haig planned not only to fire Cox but to shut down the entire special prosecutor’s office. Shortly after the firing, Haig ordered the police to close and seal the offices. Cox’s staff converged on the scene as the news spread, but the police stopped them from taking anything, including their personal items.74
In his memoirs, Haig expressed remorse for plunging Nixon into such a crisis. “I could not help but be aware that what happened must also have shaken Nixon’s confidence in me,” he wrote. Nixon just wanted to fire Cox and be done with it, Haig claimed, but Haig had led Nixon to pursue the Stennis compromise. “Urging him to do otherwise was the greatest mistake I made as Nixon’s chief of staff,” Haig continued. “From the emotional point of view, facing the results of my advice was the low point of my time in that job.”75 Haig blamed Richardson’s staff for spinning the events to make Haig look bad, but it was no distortion—it was reality. Haig not only pushed Nixon into the crisis but also consistently lied to Nixon and Richardson, telling the president that the attorney general had agreed to fire Cox when he clearly had no intention of doing so. Haig’s machinations had succeeded in getting rid of a nemesis, Cox, but had the collateral effect of further weakening the president he was meant to protect.
In Moscow, Kissinger on October 21 bridled at a memo Nixon had sent him the previous day. “I now consider permanent Middle East settlement to be the most important final goal to which we must devote ourselves,” Nixon wrote. “U.S. political considerations will have absolutely no, repeat no, influence whatever on our decisions in this regard. I want you to know that I am prepared to pressure the Israelis to the extent required, regardless of the domestic political consequences.”76 Kissinger shot an angry telegram to his deputy, Scowcroft, saying he “was shocked by the tone of the instructions, the poor judgment in the context of the Brezhnev letter and the failure to let me know in advance that a press statement be issued. Did you, as I asked, take these matters up with Haig before the final decisions were made?” Following Nixon’s wishes, Kissinger fumed, would “totally wreck what little bargaining leverage I still have.” Nixon’s tone was “unacceptable,” he continued. “Please show this message to Haig.”77
Despite Nixon’s interference, Kissinger and Leonid Brezhnev managed to work out a draft of a Middle East cease-fire. Kissinger immediately flew to Tel Aviv to show the cease-fire to the Israelis. Scowcroft messaged Kissinger later to try to excuse away Nixon’s comments. “You must understand that the President was demonstrating his leadership in the crisis,” Scowcroft wrote. “All the actions which took place were designed to illustrate that he was personally in charge.” The Cox crisis that Haig had exacerbated had exploded and “is now dominating the news and activities here,” Scowcroft continued. “Initial media reaction has appeared quite negative.”78 By marginalizing Nixon earlier, Haig and Kissinger had created the leadership vacuum that Nixon was now desperately trying to fill. If Kissinger had had his way, Nixon might never have left Key Biscayne.
House Speaker Carl Albert and other House leaders asked the House Judiciary Committee on October 22 to consider impeachment motions. That environment, Haig wrote Kissinger, was “of major national crisis which has resulted from the firing of Cox and the resulting resignation of Richardson and Ruckelshaus. Because the situation is at a stage of white heat, the ramifications of the accomplishments in Moscow have been somewhat eclipsed and their true significance underplayed.” Kissinger, Haig said, had to brief the press and a bipartisan congressional delegation and promote the historic nature of the cease-fire. “In this one instance, it is most important that some effort be made to refocus national attention on the critical events in the Middle East and to emphasize above all the crucial role of the Presidential leadership,” Haig concluded.79
Kissinger had already lost patience with Nixon. The president’s lengthy absences, his excessive drinking, and his preoccupation with Watergate irritated the secretary of state, who believed he was single-handedly running U.S. policy on the Middle East. He considered Nixon a liability, a nonfunctional president, and the manifestations of this feeling would emerge more forcefully in the next week.
On Monday, October 22, as the damage wreaked by the Saturday Night Massacre had become clear to everyone, Woodward called Haig to tell him that he and Bernstein were writing a story that would say Richardson believed Nixon had tried to block Cox’s investigation. Not so, Haig told Woodward. Their conversation, according to Woodward’s notes, now stored at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, was on “deep background,” meaning Woodward could use the information for guidance but not attribute anything, even anonymously, to Haig. It was the same type of reporter-source relationship Woodward claimed in All the President’s Men to have had with Deep Throat. Haig told Woodward that it was “totally untrue” that he tried to get Richardson “to limit the Cox probe” and that such claims were “scurrilous and typical in today’s sick atmosphere.”80 That, as was later shown by Haig’s own memoirs, was not true. Haig had repeatedly tried to stymie Cox as well as sway Richardson.
In an October 23 Washington Post article, Woodward and Bernstein quoted one anonymous source as saying that “Richardson was so concerned about the Mideast crisis . . . that he discussed the possibility of submitting his resignation confidentially and not announcing it until the Mideast crisis had been settled.” That, too, was incorrect. It was Nixon who had asked Richardson to delay resigning until after the crisis was solved; Richardson declined and resigned anyway. Haig’s deep background guidance for Woodward was that Richardson had asked Haig about the Middle East and said, “Elliot Richardson is interested in the Mid-East and always has been.”81
Most significantly, however, is that these notes, which are cited here for the first time, show the ongoing reporter-source relationship between Haig and Woodward. It was not the first time the two men had talked, as Haig said during the conversation when he told Woodward that he knew that “you and your colleague will be fair as you have in the past.”82 It again exposes the lie Haig told in his memoirs that he did not know Woodward until after Nixon resigned.83 Woodward could reach Haig when he needed to, and the president’s chief of staff felt comfortable enough in their relationship to share his side of events and realize he would be treated fairly, which was not something most people on the inside of Nixon’s White House believed about the press at that time. Haig’s comments also indicated that he had spoken to Woodward previously for stories written by him and Bernstein, another sign of their ongoing relationship.
Haig badly needed to get Ford confirmed, and as the confirmation hearings approached, he received reports from the FBI as its agents conducted the background checks on Ford. One day in late October, he called Ford’s office to relay information to the nominee, and Benton Becker, an attorney Ford recruited to help with the hearings, heard Ford’s end of the conversation. “And it is very obvious to me that Al Haig was getting reports from the Bureau on the background checks that the Bureau was making on the nominee, which background checks and reports were going to be given to the committee chairman only, and not to the nominee,” Becker said.
Becker walked around Ford’s desk and motioned to him that he wanted the phone. Ford gave it to him, and Becker listened as Haig continued talking as if Ford was still on the line.
“General, general, general,” Becker said. Haig finally realized Ford was no longer on the phone. “Let me give you my name. My name is Benton Becker, and I’m representing him before the House and the Senate, and before we’re finished before these committees, I can tell, I guarantee you, he will be asked and re-asked the question, did the White House feed in any information about the FBI reports—the White House prepare him improperly—because the members were not getting the reports, just the committee chairman?”
“When that question is asked, General, the answer is going to be a truthful answer, and the answer is no,” Becker continued. “We don’t need or want you to do this anymore. He’s in good hands, he will be confirmed well and it will be fine.”
There was about eight to ten seconds of silence, before Haig said, “May I have your name one more time, please?”84
That was Becker’s first encounter with Haig. Ford was indeed asked the question multiple times during the hearings.
By October 23 more than twenty bills calling for Nixon’s impeachment had been introduced in the House since Nixon fired Cox. Albert urged Congress to confirm Ford as vice president as soon as possible, which mattered because the Twenty-Fifth Amendment required both the House and the Senate to approve the nomination. In dueling news conferences, Richardson and Haig offered their versions of what led to the Saturday Night Massacre. “There had been issues drawn earlier in the week in which I had made clear that if certain actions were taken I would be forced to resign,” Richardson said.85 Haig, accompanied by Ziegler and Charles Alan Wright, said the White House position had been “subject to a great deal of misunderstanding, a great deal of misinformation over the past weekend.”86 That message found few takers. Three days after the firing, public opinion had crystallized: Nixon fired Cox because of Nixon’s continued cover-up of Watergate.
Wright also appeared in Judge John Sirica’s court that day with a stunning announcement: Nixon would turn over the tapes that Cox had been fired trying to get. The president changed his mind because he now believed that a continued fight jeopardized Ford’s confirmation chances and because of “a need to relieve the domestic crisis in order to reduce the temptation the Soviets would feel to take advantage of our internal turmoil by exploiting the international crisis in the Middle East.”87 Nixon knew firing Cox would start a controversy, but he did not know just how bad it would be. “To the extent that I had not been aware of this situation, my actions were the result of serious miscalculation,” Nixon wrote.88 Nixon miscalculated because Haig had so isolated him that he heard mostly only from Haig and Ziegler; others had difficulty breaking through that wall.
Events in the Middle East finally took precedence over Watergate on October 24, but not in the way anyone desired. What transpired was a series of events unparalleled in U.S. history during the nuclear age. A checked-out Nixon, who had spent the night of October 23 at Camp David, was reduced to being a footnote in the most momentous decisions of the day.
Egyptian and Israeli forces had violated the cease-fire Kissinger had negotiated with the Soviets. Brezhnev wrote Nixon to urge the United States to curb the Israelis. Kissinger told a meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group, a small group of high-ranking national security officials, that U.S. pressure on the Israelis had stopped the gunfire between the warring parties. Haig, Kissinger said, had called the Israeli ambassador, and “Israel knows they cannot survive without us. They know they would have lost this war except for us. They were on their knees on October 13 and they couldn’t have recovered.” Reflecting on what he had engineered on his own, Kissinger called it “the best-run crisis we have ever had.”89 Such optimism would not last.
Brezhnev sent another note to Nixon that called for joint U.S.-Soviet action to stop the continued cease-fire violations. By this point, the Israelis had reversed the Arabs’ early gains and were moving on both Cairo and Damascus. The United States had gained a diplomatic advantage with both sides during the crisis, which Nixon did not want to cede to the Soviets. Brezhnev’s message hinted that if the United States did not agree, the Soviet Union would go it alone, perhaps by sending combat troops to the region, a notion that alarmed the White House.90 Everyone believed they had to do something, but the accounts by Nixon, Haig, and Kissinger all obscured how Nixon remained a bystander. Nixon claimed he was sufficiently alarmed by the threat of unilateral Soviet intervention that he ordered a special meeting at the White House. “Words were not making our point—we needed action, even the shock of a military alert,” Nixon wrote.91 Nothing on the record, however, shows that Nixon or his top staff had contemplated an alert at that point. Haig claimed Nixon called the situation the most dangerous since the Cuban Missile Crisis. “We’ve got to act,” Haig wrote that Nixon told him. In Haig’s telling, Nixon told him to lead the meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group without him. “As usual, he preferred to let others set the options while he made his decision in solitude.”92
However, the record shows that Haig and Kissinger, who spoke on the telephone at 9:50 p.m., worked on their own without waking Nixon. “I just had a letter from Brezhnev asking us to send forces in together or he would send them in alone,” Kissinger said.
“I was afraid of that,” Haig responded.
“I think we have to go to the mat on this one,” Kissinger said.
Haig said he did not believe the Soviets would commit troops at the end of the war, while Kissinger said they could still send in paratroopers. The Israelis should agree to back up, Kissinger said.
“We didn’t expect the Israelis to take that sort of thing,” Haig said. “Do the Israelis know? I mean, have you brought them along?”
“I have kept them informed,” Kissinger said. “Should I wake up the president?”
“No,” Haig answered.93
Haig and Kissinger spoke again at 10:20 p.m. “I don’t think they would have taken on a functioning president,” Kissinger said, again reflecting his contempt for the incapacitated president. “Don’t forget this is what the Soviets are playing on. They find a cripple facing impeachment and why shouldn’t they go in there?”
“If they do and start fighting, that is a serious thing,” Haig said, adding that he suspected the Soviets were already “on the ground all over the place.”94
Haig asked Kissinger to have a meeting at the White House and then spoke to Nixon, although there is no independent record of what they discussed for eighteen minutes, including if Nixon ordered Haig to call a military alert.95 There is, however, no proof that Nixon knew anything about an alert before it happened.
At 10:30 p.m. Haig, Kissinger, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, CIA director William Colby, Adm. Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jonathan Howe, a navy commander and a member of the NSC staff, gathered in the White House situation room. Moorer took notes that reflected the unique and impromptu meeting. Early on, the participants agreed they needed to respond vigorously to Brezhnev’s letter. Kissinger said Israel’s violation of the cease-fire triggered the Soviet move. “Today, they only made one proposal to us and this proposal escalated the dialogue to a threat,” he said. “The overall strategy of the Soviets now appears to be one of throwing détente on the table since we have no functional president, in their eyes, and consequently, we must prevent them from getting away with this.”96
Haig, Moorer noted, “seemed to be convinced that the Soviets were going to move at daylight—which was just a few hours away.” The Soviets, Haig continued, realized they were losing influence in the Middle East and were trying to capitalize on the uncertainty caused by the Saturday Night Massacre, which also “has served to weaken the president. Haig said the Soviets only invited Kissinger to Moscow when they realized their client, Egypt, was losing.” Moorer said the facts showed that Israel, not Egypt, had violated the cease-fire and that “the Soviets were correct in saying that the Israelis had violated the ceasefire.” Schlesinger also mentioned the possibility of the Soviets moving into Egypt, and Kissinger again mentioned how they were taking advantage of Nixon’s weakened condition. On Friday, before the firing of Cox and the resignations of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, conditions were stable. After that, however, Nixon was faltering and open to exploitation, Kissinger said. Moorer doubted the Soviets could move troops as quickly as Haig and Kissinger surmised, but Kissinger was having none of it. “The overall strategy of the Soviets now appears to be one of throwing détente on the table since we have no functional President, in their eyes, and, consequently, we must prevent them from getting away with this,” Moorer recorded Kissinger saying.97
The U.S. response, completed at 3:30 a.m. on October 25 after five hours, was extraordinary. The nuclear alert level for U.S. forces was raised to DEFCON III, the third-highest level, although the top two levels—I and II—had never been declared. U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea were sent closer to Egypt and Israel, and forces in Asia and Europe were alerted. Haig and Kissinger essentially acted on their own and without Nixon’s input. While Nixon, Haig, and Kissinger claimed later that Nixon was intimately involved in the decision, the facts show otherwise.98
Haig and Kissinger told Nixon about the alert at 8:00 a.m. on October 25. They all pretended that Nixon had made the decision. Kissinger later met with a skeptical press corps to explain the reasons behind the alert, which most analysts considered extreme.99 Rather than make Nixon look strong, the alert made him seem desperate enough to change the topic from Watergate to push the country close to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Nixon believed his own hype enough to conduct a rare news conference at 7:00 p.m. on October 26. He described a world that only he could see, one in which he firmly guided the nation through unrivaled crises. “The tougher it gets, the cooler I get,” Nixon said. “I should point out that even in this week when many thought that the President was shell shocked, unable to act, the President acted decisively in the interests of peace and the interest of the country,” he said in an account of events that ignored how his aides declared a nuclear alert while Nixon slept. He claimed that his personal relationship with Brezhnev helped solve the Middle East crisis, gliding over the nuclear alert declared just more than a day earlier. “It’s because he and I know each other, and it’s because we have this personal contact that notes exchanged in that way result in a settlement rather than a confrontation,” Nixon said.
He also defended firing Cox and made news by announcing that he authorized Acting Attorney General Robert Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor who would have the independence needed to do the job properly and cooperation from the White House. Nixon may have felt better after the thirty-nine minutes of questioning by reporters at the news conference, but Kissinger and Haig did not.100
“The crazy bastard really made a mess with the Russians,” Kissinger said in a call to Haig that started at 7:55 p.m., just fifteen minutes after the end of the news conference.
“What?” Haig asked.
“Didn’t you listen to his press statement?” Kissinger asked. “First we had information of movements of Soviet forces. That is a lie. Second, this was the worst crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis. True, but why rub their faces in it? Third, Brezhnev and I exchanged brutal messages. That has never been acknowledged before. Four, Brezhnev respects me because I was the man who bombed Vietnam on May 8 and mined the harbors on May 18.”
“I don’t think that’s a third of the problem,” Haig said. “He just let it fly. He got all he had about the Middle East from you. I assumed you had cleared that. I was surprised.”
Kissinger compared Nixon’s news conference with a recent one in which Kissinger said there was no serious confrontation with the Russians.
“How about the rest of it?” Haig asked. “Disaster.”
“Yes, a disaster of something that is already a disaster,” Kissinger responded.101
The two colleagues, often rivals but often bound by their ridicule of Nixon, decided that Haig needed to call Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, and reassure him of the administration’s intentions. Kissinger, in his 2003 book about the crisis, skipped this telephone call completely.102
Haig spoke with Dobrynin at 8:04 p.m. “I just came back from the President and I told him that his remarks tonight were I thought overdrawn and would be interpreted improperly,” Haig said. “And I wanted you to know that he did not in any way have the intention of drawing the situation as sharply as he did.” Nixon, Haig continued, “is quite upset about it because he did not intend it to be that way.”103 Haig invented Nixon’s alleged feelings, because Nixon’s schedule includes no record of Haig and Nixon speaking between the end of the news conference and Haig’s conversation with Dobrynin. Nixon’s records show he tried unsuccessfully to call Haig at 7:51 p.m. They did not speak until Haig and Nixon met at 8:16 p.m. for more than one hour.104
Dobrynin objected to the military alert, saying no one gave him a heads-up before it was declared, which emphasized the alert’s ad hoc status. The unnecessary alert, Dobrynin said, damaged the progress made during Kissinger’s recent visit.105
Kissinger and Haig continued to lose patience with Nixon and the hard-liners in the Defense Department who distrusted the Israelis. “I do not think we can survive with these fellows in there at Defense—they are crazy,” Kissinger said in an early afternoon call on October 27 during which he and Haig also dealt with the continuing blowback from Nixon’s news conference the previous evening. “Schlesinger wants to check on whether the Israelis are lying—will you please help me with him?” Kissinger asked. “I will do my best,” Haig said.106
During an October 24 news conference, Bork reinforced Nixon’s claim that he would appoint a new special prosecutor and said he wanted someone who would have “a mandate no less free than Archibald Cox.” He could not tolerate being forced to pick someone beholden to the White House.107 That, however, was not Bork’s decision alone to make. The real selection fell to Haig, who would not repeat Richardson’s mistake with Cox. This time, Haig determined, the prosecutor would know the difference between the real crimes related to Watergate and the national security issues, primarily the FBI wiretaps and the Pentagon spy ring, which threatened Haig.
For advice, Haig turned to his old friend from Lyndon Johnson’s Pentagon: Morris Leibman, the lead partner in a Chicago law firm and an ardent anticommunist liberal active in national security issues. In modern terms, Leibman would be called a neoconservative, a term that did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting in the 1950s, Leibman represented two brothers from Chicago, Morris and Jack Childs, who had infiltrated the U.S. Communist Party and who were informing on the party to the FBI and William Sullivan, Haig’s longtime friend who ran the bureau’s anticommunist network. “It has been one of the greatest experiences of my life working these past years with Bill Sullivan,” an effusive Leibman wrote J. Edgar Hoover in 1961.108 Information acquired by the Childs brothers, known inside the bureau as Project Solo, informed the FBI that Stanley Levison, one of the close advisors to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was affiliated with communists.109 That inspired Sullivan to write an anonymous letter to King urging him to kill himself.110 With conservative foundation executive Frank Barnett, Leibman started a variety of anticommunist groups, such as the Institute for American Strategy, that worked with FBI and CIA officials to trumpet the dangers of international communism.111
Leibman chaired the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Education against Communism, which put him in close contact with longtime Haig ally Fritz Kraemer in the army.112 Kraemer had recommended Haig for his first job at the NSC, while Sullivan set up the FBI wiretaps with Haig’s help. In 1964 Johnson named Leibman to his informal group of sixteen “wise men” to advise him on military policy, a panel that included former secretary of state Dean Acheson and Gen. Omar Bradley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs and army five-star general.113 In collaboration with Sullivan, Leibman arranged for Hoover to write an article about the Ku Klux Klan for the ABA’s monthly journal, an article that was actually written by members of Sullivan’s staff.114 On December 5, 1969, Leibman was among members of the prowar Tell It to Hanoi committee, which met with Nixon in the White House to promote the idea of setting a deadline with North Vietnam for peace talks.115 After the deadline, the group wanted an all-out push to win the war on the battlefield, a position that Nixon had long abandoned, although group members did not know that. When Kraemer celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday on July 3, 1973, Leibman, Barnett, and Sullivan, along with Vernon Walters from the CIA, were among the small band of friends who presented him with a crusader’s sword made by the Wilkinson Sword Company as a gift.116
Leibman advised Haig to talk to Texas attorney Leon Jaworski, lead partner in a Houston law firm and a former ABA president.117 Jaworski had investigated major cases for Johnson and cooperated with the Warren Commission, which was investigating the Kennedy assassination, while working for the Texas attorney general. Although Jaworski was a Democrat, he understood the need to protect national security. It was no accident that Haig, who had multiple national security secrets to hide, sought help from Leibman and no surprise that Leibman recommended Jaworski.
Jaworski’s impeccable Establishment credentials belied his rough upbringing. The son of Polish immigrants, he grew up speaking German at home in Waco, Texas, where he went to local Baylor University at fifteen. He spent one year as a Baylor undergraduate and then entered the university’s law school, from which he graduated at nineteen. Jaworski then became the youngest lawyer in Texas history. His practice grew steadily and took him to Houston. After Pearl Harbor, the thirty-five-year-old Jaworski was too old to volunteer for combat, so he joined the Judge Advocate General’s Corps and became a colonel. After the war’s end, he joined the prosecution corps for postwar war crimes trials.118
Jaworski was not surprised when Haig called him on October 30. Haig had enough regard for Jaworski’s skills to know he was among the few people with the gravitas and experience to handle the chore of being the new special prosecutor. Richardson has also put out feelers to Jaworski about the job in May. Jaworski had also received a call from a close friend, who said that Haig would call him. Haig wrote in his memoirs that he had asked John Connally to make the call to Jaworski, which neither Connally nor Jaworski confirmed.119 “I can tell you that I had a call before that—although I will not disclose who it came from—that I could expect a call from Haig,” Jaworski said. “I have never disclosed who that call came from.”
But Fulbright & Jaworski was one of the nation’s biggest law firms. If he stayed absent for too long, Jaworski would have to cash out, a step that could cost him millions of dollars in partnership payouts and taxes. Haig sold Jaworski hard.
“I very much need to talk with you about a matter that is of great importance to this country,” Haig told Jaworski. “In fact, I know of nothing that is as important to the country right now than what I’m about to say to you. We want you to serve as a special prosecutor to take Archibald Cox’s place.”
“Well, General Haig, are you aware that I looked at this matter once and didn’t see that I could accept it under the circumstances that exist?” Jaworski said.
“What are you having reference to?” Haig asked.
“Because I just wasn’t assured of the independence,” Jaworski said. “On top of it, now Cox has been fired which looks, to me, as though there is no independence!”
“Now wait just a minute!” Haig said. “We can give you the independence that you want.”
“Well,” Jaworski chuckled, “you know, everything to date has been in the opposite direction.”120
As Haig tried to persuade Jaworski, Buzhardt went to Judge John Sirica’s court on October 31 and told him privately that two of the conversations subpoenaed by Cox and scheduled to be turned over by Nixon had never been recorded. One was a June 20, 1972, telephone call with John Mitchell, and the second was the April 15, 1973, meeting between Nixon and John Dean, which Dean had emphasized in his testimony in June. Sirica ordered Buzhardt to go into open court and tell everyone.121 Buzhardt claimed the tapes never existed, because the taping system, while thorough, was not perfect. However, the existence of the April 15 tape was in dispute. Also, Secret Service records of the tapes Nixon checked out on June 4 when he listened to all of the Dean tapes showed that the April 15 tape was included in that mix. Buzhardt’s latest revelation devastated Nixon’s already weak credibility. “People felt that I was toying with their patience and insulting their intelligence,” Nixon wrote later.122
Despite his reservations, Jaworski agreed to fly to Washington the following day, October 31. Haig dispatched a government plane to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston and a White House car and driver to meet Jaworski at Andrews Air Force Base and take him to the White House.
At the White House, Haig told Jaworski he was putting “the patriotic monkey” on his back to get him to take the job.123 Haig went into the Oval Office to talk to Nixon, emerged, and then a procession of remaining White House aides and cabinet officials—Melvin Laird, Bryce Harlow, Len Garment, Robert Bork, and William Saxbe, the Ohio senator and attorney general designate—all came to lobby Jaworski to take the job.
“There is no question—this—this was said to me by Bork; it was said to me by Haig in the presence of others who were sitting there,” Jaworski said. “I met with all of these people. They were all trying to persuade me to take it, and I met with all of them before I made my decision. They were all trying to say to me: Well, look, not only is this much needed; but you can have all the assurance—every assurance that you want. And all of them put in their oar to try to get me to accept it. And it was clearly stated to me that the calls had come—had gone to many people all over the country and that as a result of these calls, they had decided to talk to me.”124
Thus reassured, Jaworski agreed to take the job.
After meeting with Jaworski, Haig went to Capitol Hill to lobby nervous Republicans about Nixon’s innocence. He told them the tapes were “exculpatory,” particularly the tape of the March 21 meeting between Nixon and Dean, who then told the president about the “cancer on the presidency.”125 That tape, Haig told Republican leaders, was when Nixon first learned of the cover-up. But Haig knew then that he was telling the Republican members a lie. He had talked to Nixon on June 4, as the president listened to the Dean tapes, which showed that Nixon and Dean worked for more than a week in March to come up with a better story for the cover-up. The March 21 tape mainly recorded Dean’s worries about the blackmail attempts by the Watergate burglars, which were getting larger and more insistent. Haig and Buzhardt talked every day, and Buzhardt had long concluded that Nixon was guilty. Haig also realized early on that Nixon would end up leaving office before the end of his term. Haig’s assurances of Nixon’s innocence guaranteed that when Republicans learned the truth, they would react angrily and push for Nixon’s resignation or impeachment, which is exactly what would happen nine months later.
Haig may have won over Jaworski, perhaps with Leibman’s help, but he still faced problems connected to the military spy ring. Egil Krogh, the embattled former head of the Plumbers, filed a motion on October 31 seeking a range of White House documents he called vital to his defense. Among those documents were
certain tape recordings of conversations in which one of the participants was the President of the United States, to wit:
b) meetings of the President with John Ehrlichman and/or David Young in December, 1971, and January through February, 1972, in which the work of the Special Investigations Unit was discussed, the India-Pakistan leaks were discussed, and/or instructions were given on the necessity for absolute secrecy regarding the activities of the Special Investigations Unit.126
Before he was fired, Cox wanted some of these documents for his investigation. A Time magazine story that appeared in the final days of October reported that Cox wanted details on the Plumbers and the FBI wiretaps for his continuing investigation.127 Now Krogh was weighing in on the same issues.
Krogh’s motion went to the heart of the investigation into the military spy ring that Nixon called off and that Haig, Buzhardt, and Laird had derailed at the Pentagon. If the motion were granted, then the messy details of the military’s chronic lack of faith in Nixon and Haig’s betrayal of Nixon’s secrets could spill out into open court, much as the Plumbers’ existence was revealed during the Daniel Ellsberg trial the previous spring. Krogh’s motion had to be stopped.