January–February

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Bombing for peace

January 1, 1973, 9:40 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

OVAL OFFICE

“I saw him aging right before my eyes,”^* Charles Colson, special counsel to the president, wrote of Richard Nixon as he appeared at the end of 1972. The year had promised in November to end on a high note for the White House. Not only had Nixon won reelection by a historic margin, but Henry Kissinger, national security advisor, had managed to negotiate a preliminary accord in the Vietnam War peace talks in Paris. At the time, Kissinger leaked news of the breakthrough to Max Frankel, senior editor at the New York Times, much to Nixon’s dismay. When the accord fell apart a month later, Nixon felt the added pressure of public opinion to force the enemy to return to the talks, and he ordered massive bombing of North Vietnam to begin on December 18. Critics feared that the war had begun all over again, but when the North Vietnamese capitulated at the very end of the month, Nixon had the satisfaction of ending the so-called December bombing. Still exhausted from the pressure of the previous weeks, the president was in his office on New Year’s morning, discussing with Colson the imminent departure of one of his more potent aides, Alexander Haig, soon to be named army vice chief of staff.

…

NIXON: Well, all in all, the New Year starts though—you know I was just thinking through the years—not that we wanted to go through the agony of these last—I mean, it was not easy, the Christmas bombing, so forth and so on. But in a way, perhaps it was a good thing. You know what I mean? To the benefit of everything.

COLSON: I think on this one, Mr. President, I watched the toll that it took on you, and it was tough.

NIXON: Oh, I am fine.

COLSON: No, I can tell. I can tell looking at your face, when the strain was as great as it was, but in the end, if Henry [Kissinger] works out the settlement now, it will clearly be your settlement. And it was not headed that way. It was just as well that we have had this little bit of slip. There has been a difference between the two. And, it was too much—Henry was getting too much—public—

NIXON: Yeah. There is another thing too that is happening. That happens, looking at it from another standpoint. The end of the war is on any basis now, that is halfway reasonable, our credibility in the world is enormously increased by this.

COLSON: Yes.

NIXON: They can squeal all they want, but boy, I’ll tell you, when they squeal it just gives you a hell of a lot more respect among others.

COLSON: That’s right.

NIXON: So we’ve done that. We haven’t backed into it. We haven’t been political about it. They realize they are dealing with a tough man, a strong man.

COLSON: When they accept that it goes a long way.

NIXON: Here is this country, it allowed the Left, the McGovernites, to force them instead of sort of sucking back, to get out on a limb again. And I think you can saw it off.

COLSON: I do, too.

NIXON: [unclear] intend to saw it off.

COLSON: I think there are some more other advantages. One, if the South Vietnamese squawk they will have less credibility now.

NIXON: That’s right.

COLSON: Because everybody knows we did everything humanly possible and really put the North Vietnamese to the wall. And secondly, I think you have taken a hell of a toll on the North Vietnamese. [unclear] NBC, it was very interesting. I watched the network news last night and it is obvious what they had intended to do to us this weekend—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: —was just murder—

NIXON: [unclear] on the bombing. Sure.

COLSON: —and they had seven or eight minutes of Hanoi prisoner film footage, taken by a Japanese film company and distributed by the North Vietnamese—I mean propaganda film.

NIXON: Sure.

COLSON: But Jesus—

NIXON: And they ran it?

COLSON: Just leveled Hanoi. That was pretty devastating itself. They were showing civilian coffins.

NIXON: [unclear]?

COLSON: No, sir.

NIXON: You don’t?

COLSON: No, not now that it is over. I think—

NIXON: [unclear]?

COLSON: I think they were just building up to it. I think the bastards were building up a nice crescendo to the return of the Congress and they would have—

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: No, no. I think there was a beautifully orchestrated buildup coming, that New York Times piece yesterday, both NBC and CBS were playing it the same day.

NIXON: [unclear] maybe they were frustrated and upset by what happened. Don’t you think so?

COLSON: I think you pulled the rug out from under them, totally. I think when they—I don’t think they expected it. [unclear] take them by surprise.

NIXON: I think they expected a [bombing] pause, but they didn’t expect—Haig expected they would stop. They didn’t expect the North Vietnamese frankly to capitulate.

 

A call from the chief justice

January 2, 1973, 8:56 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Warren Burger

WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

Warren Burger, Nixon’s surprise choice as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1969, was in many ways a kindred spirit. Both men were born to families that struggled to remain in the middle class, Burger in Minnesota and Nixon in Southern California. Neither was the product of the Ivy League schooling that produced many presidents of their era and nearly all Supreme Court justices. Prospering even without personal popularity, both Nixon and Burger, conservative, highly ambitious Republicans, arrived in Washington during the World War II era. As 1973 began, Burger was considering one of the cases that would mark his court, Miller v. California, which simultaneously considered the definition and legality of pornography.

…

NIXON: Hello?

BURGER: Good morning, Mr. President.

NIXON: Well, I understood you called yesterday on the New Year and I should have called you.

BURGER: Well, not at all. Did we—I just wanted to—

NIXON: How are you feeling?

BURGER: Oh, just fine.

NIXON: Yeah.

BURGER: You certainly look fit.

NIXON: Yeah, well, we got the—my gosh, did you go to the game by chance?

BURGER: No, no. I have been to the—

NIXON: I never go to those games. Because, I tell you why I don’t is that whenever they are sellouts—I went to one, Oklahoma and—I mean, Texas and Arkansas about three years ago—and the problem was that it really causes such commotion because over a hundred people have to go when I go. Sixty press and forty Secret Service, well, that just takes a hundred seats away from people that just die—

BURGER: That takes some of the fun out of it.

NIXON: —and if you could see it on television. I went up to Camp David and I just saw it up there. I was working up there anyway.

BURGER: With the instant replay it is much better.

NIXON: It is the only way to see a game. Of course there is something to the excitement of hearing the audience.

BURGER: Well, I haven’t gone to one for years. I spent yesterday just the way you did. I was down here at nine o’clock and worked all day.

NIXON: That’s right.

BURGER: I even missed the game.

NIXON: This is the time to—actually in these periods like this when people are all gone, I am just—been in the office today and yesterday, and you can get a lot of the paperwork done that you just put aside and say, “I will do that when I get a few minutes.” You know?

BURGER: I wanted to start the year with a clean empty box.

NIXON: I do it every time. My box is just as clean as it can be.

BURGER: I unfortunately didn’t get out all my opinions, but I got all the little stuff out of the way. So now the decks are cleared for another session.

NIXON: Yeah, now you can—you get your mind clear so that you can make the big decisions.

BURGER: We will have one coming out pretty soon, too.

NIXON: Oh boy.

BURGER: I am struggling with this pornography thing. I don’t know whether, I don’t know how we are coming out. I am coming out hard on it.

NIXON: Good, good.

BURGER: Whether I get the support or not.

NIXON: You’re right. Well, I feel terrible. Of course I am a square. I’m like Alan, I am a square on that. I mean a square in the sense that I read those cases when I did the Hill versus Time thing [Time, Inc. v. Hill, a 1967 freedom of the press case before the U.S. Supreme Court, for which Nixon argued the Hill side].

BURGER: Yeah.

NIXON: And you know because it related to the whole freedom of the press thing, and let’s face it, it’s just gone overboard, that’s all. It is always a question of balance. I mean, maybe you can—they go back to this sixteenth-century stuff and say, “What’s wrong with that, that was great art?” Well, the stuff today is not great art. The stuff today, its purpose—what is that term that they have—you—

BURGER: Redeeming social purpose.

NIXON: Yeah, good God.

BURGER: One of the biggest frauds—

NIXON: Oh, that was a [Associate Justice William J.] Brennan opinion, wasn’t it?

BURGER: I think so.

NIXON: Yeah, yeah.

BURGER: That was a phrase that emanated from some of the campuses in this period.

NIXON: Redeeming social purposes. [laughs]

BURGER: It is, you know, all this means is that if they have one of the outrageous orgies then if they mention Vietnam, or the condition of the ghettos, it redeems the whole thing.

NIXON: Yeah, oh boy. Well, isn’t that something. What else do you have? Do you have other decisions? Is the busing thing coming out?

BURGER: No, that is way down the road.

NIXON: That’s good. The longer the better.

BURGER: The longer the better is right.

NIXON: Right. Maybe we can get some legislation passed and get that out of the way.

BURGER: We have got to—I think things are coming. I get impatient, but they are coming. And by the way, this young fellow, he is young now for you and me—by twelve years, [Associate Justice William] Rehnquist, he is a real star.

NIXON: Isn’t that great?

BURGER: He has got guts.

NIXON: Well, we will try to give you, one day, if we ever get a chance, to try and get another one.

BURGER: Get another fellow.

NIXON: I don’t—I have no ideas. I understand that they—you remember General MacArthur’s famous statement when he spoke to the Congress? I would put it a little differently for Supreme Court justices. Supreme Court justices never die and they never fade away. Right? [laughs]

BURGER: [laughs] You got to get some young fellows up here, and not any more sixties. Like—

NIXON: You guys are all right. My guys in their sixties are great. The Burger, [Harry] Blackmun, [Lewis F.] Powell triumvirate, but I tell you—let me say, I agree. I think one of the problems in the Congress—I was looking over a list here of our Republicans and good God! I mean we have got people over seventy that I hadn’t realized. I mean Les Arends, Bill Widnall, and so forth. They are too old. They are too old. You know what I mean?

BURGER: You can’t keep—

NIXON: Not because—understand, up until—I think you could, frankly—in a court, you could serve till seventy-five, because there it is a different kind of thing.

BURGER: The pace is different.

NIXON: But at the Congress I think in the House and the Senate you should be out of there by seventy. You know, that’s a murderous thing down there.

BURGER: That is the big reform that needs to be had over there. It is just getting some vigorous young guys in their forties.

NIXON: Nobody should run for the House if he’s over forty, because he can’t amount to anything. Run for the first time I mean, and nobody should run for the Senate if he is over fifty, for the first time.

BURGER: Yeah.

NIXON: You see because you have to be in so you can serve for twenty years. I have been trying to preach this. George Bush is going to help a lot in that respect. He is a great choice for chairman.

BURGER: Well, he will be an attractive guy to attract candidates, the young—

NIXON: Yeah, you see we have Bush on that point. And [Bill] Brock is going to be the Senate campaign committee man. He is a young, vigorous fellow, and Bill—Bud Brown, you know, the son of—

BURGER: Clarence?

NIXON: Clarence’s son. Who is just bright as a tack. He is going to do the House job. He is—well, he is a big, smart, not nearly as abrasive as Clarence and almost as smart. So I think we will have a fine team getting candidates this time.

BURGER: Well, it is mighty nice of you to take the trouble to call back. We just wanted to leave our greetings—

NIXON: Well, we will see you on the inauguration. I mean, you are the guy who has to swear me in, you know?

BURGER: Yes, the vice president I talked to the other day. I guess that tradition has varied with the vice president.

NIXON: Yeah.

BURGER: But he called me and asked me if I would do it, and I said yes and I will do two for the price of one!

NIXON: That’s right. That’s right.

BURGER: Well—

NIXON: Well, actually what happens is that in—the vice president actually normally does pick somebody else. I had [William F.] Knowland swear me in in ’56. I don’t know who did it the other time. I’ve forgotten. Knowland did it in ’56, but it doesn’t make—it’s a matter of—it varies, and I think it is really neater to have you do both.

BURGER: Yes, it reduces one more body on the platform.

NIXON: That’s right. That’s right. [laughs] I hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t thought of that.

BURGER: Space is going to be a premium.

NIXON: That’s right. Well, we will look forward to seeing you.

BURGER: We are looking forward to seeing you, too.

NIXON: One of the beauties of my oath, you know, it is very short. His is quite long. His is the same as the—you know the difference. Did you know there was a difference?

BURGER: Yeah, yes.

NIXON: His is that long one that you give to senators, but mine is very short. I just swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

BURGER: About seven lines long.

NIXON: Yeah. Even I can remember that. Okay.

BURGER: Good to talk to you.

NIXON: Bye.

 

“As long as that court proceeding is on, the Congress should keep its goddamn hands off.”

January 8, 1973, 4:05 P.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING

On Monday, January 8, 1973, the Watergate scandal arrived in the most prominent venue to consider it up to that time. The U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge John J. Sirica presiding, heard the case of the five men arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters the previous June, along with two White House aides suspected of complicity: G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Sirica, a longtime Republican, didn’t intimidate Nixon, however. He was far more concerned with plans then accelerating in Congress to broaden its initial, somewhat sporadic Watergate investigation, spearheaded by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA). As Nixon and his advisor Colson sorted through the powerful Washingtonians then reacting to the scandal, they focused on Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell and an infamous operator in her own right. They also discussed the lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, counsel to the Democratic National Committee and owner of the Washington Redskins football team. Nixon and Colson seemed confident in early January that the scandal could be contained, discounting the dogged determination of others to find out, as Sirica put it just before the trial began, “What did these men go into the headquarters for? What was their purpose? Who hired them to go in there?” ^*

…

NIXON: Incidentally, Haldeman was telling—told me that apparently that Hunt is going to [unclear] now—very definitely. I think it’s the right thing for him to do, Chuck.

COLSON: He’s doing it on my urging.

NIXON: Well, I understand that Haldeman is after some kid they’ve got that—whether he was—quit because he wanted him to bug Gary Hart.

COLSON: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, he was the one that bugged McGovern headquarters. Yeah, I suspect so.

NIXON: But how could that be, for this reason: Watergate came before McGovern got off the ground and I didn’t know why the hell we were bugging McGovern.

COLSON: Well, remember that was after the California primary.

NIXON: Watergate was?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: Oh.

COLSON: We knew, I mean, at that time [unclear].

NIXON: Hmm, Christ. I hope he didn’t tell McGovern.

COLSON: [laughs] Well—

NIXON: Well, suppose—I told Haldeman, I said, well, “Suppose those in the—Congress does call him [Hunt].” He said, “He didn’t do it.” You know, nothing. That’s the thing about all of this. We didn’t get a goddamn thing from any of it that I can see.

COLSON: Well, apparently we did, of course, at Watergate—mainly [Howard] Hughes, and we knew.

NIXON: I don’t know. Well, don’t let it get you down.

COLSON: Oh, hell no—

NIXON: I know it’s tough for all of you—Bob [Haldeman], John [Ehrlichman], and the rest. We’re just not going to let it get us down. This is a battle. It’s a fight. It’s war and we just fight with a little, you know—remember, we’ll cut them down one of these days. Don’t you agree?

COLSON: I do. The only thing I hope is that the trial—apparently Liddy is going to go the trial.

NIXON: Not now.

COLSON: That’s probably a good thing because the only one who’s in a—is in a very desperate—

NIXON: Sensitive position is Hunt.

COLSON: —and the others will just tell the truth and prove their case. But there is one advantage to it. There will be a hell of a lot of stuff that’s come out.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: And there will be some counts that will not be, that will be dropped, I think, against Hunt at this point, and there will be appeals pending in the other cases. Now that has got to be [unclear]. That makes it very, very—

NIXON: As long as this trial is going on, the Congress will keep its goddamn cotton-pickin’ hands off that trial—

COLSON: Well, it could be because obviously they will prejudice the defendants in this connection. You could get a—it—a lot of this only comes out, this will delay the Congress getting to the point where they could even immunize the witnesses. A question of prosecuting because of lack of rules of evidence and that kind of specifics, et cetera. And the only question we have hanging from it at all is the fact that [unclear] no government reports, providing these guys did what they—Ehrlichman.

NIXON: Well, first of all, they’re going to make the government prove its case, but none of them are going to testify, isn’t that correct?

COLSON: Correct.

NIXON: Are they?

COLSON: That’s another subject—McCord [unclear] hanging on to [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear] appeal for all these guys.

COLSON: [unclear]

NIXON: But you know, Chuck, it’s something they all undertook knowing the risks. Right? What do they think?

COLSON: I [unclear].

NIXON: Did they think they’d get caught?

COLSON: No, I don’t think that at all. I think they thought that, well, practically—

NIXON: The Democrats would drop it after the election? No?

COLSON: I think they figured that these were all guys who—CIA.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: And—

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: —they all were taking orders from people like [unclear] acting on behalf of John Mitchell and others [unclear].

NIXON: Mitchell would take care of them [unclear]. How could he?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: No way.

COLSON: That’s what they were—Hunt’s lawyer, he said he thought he, Hunt, objected to it violently because of the way Liddy handled the job. He said Liddy ordered him into Watergate. [unclear] He said he didn’t want any part of it. So we won’t have to. But, he and Hunt may recognize—

NIXON: Well, I’m glad that you [unclear]. [unclear] because basically I—question of clemency—Hunt’s is a simple case. I mean, after all, the man’s wife is dead, was killed. He’s got one child that has—

COLSON: Brain damage from an automobile accident.

NIXON: That’s right.

COLSON: [unclear] one of his kids.

NIXON: We’ll build that son of a bitch up like nobody’s business. We’ll have Buckley write a column and say, you know, that he should have clemency, if you’ve given eighteen years of service.

COLSON: [unclear] We’ll write one.

NIXON: That’s what we’ll do.

COLSON: He served under Hunt in CIA, of course. [unclear]

NIXON: We’ll call him after. That’s it. It’s on the merits. I would have difficulty with some of the others.

COLSON: Oh, yeah.

NIXON: You know what I mean?

COLSON: Well, the others aren’t going to get the same—aren’t—the vulnerabilities are different with the others also.

NIXON: Are they?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: Why?

COLSON: Well, because Hunt and Liddy did the work. The others didn’t know anything direct that is [unclear]. [unclear] bankrupt today.

NIXON: Well, I think I agree, but you know—

COLSON: See, I don’t give a damn if they [laughs] spend five years in jail in the interim.

NIXON: Oh, no.

COLSON: What I want of course—they took that attitude—

NIXON: They took that attitude because—

COLSON: I mean they can’t hurt us. Hunt and Liddy were direct guardians of the meetings. Discussions are very incriminating for us. More important that they—

NIXON: Liddy is pretty tough.

COLSON: Yeah, he is. Apparently one of these guys who’s a masochist. He enjoys punishing himself. That’s okay as long as he remains stable. I think he’s tough.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: He’s an ideologue, not the kind who [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear] Let’s not hope by God—

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: Jesus.

COLSON: [unclear] Good [unclear] they right wing—

NIXON: [unclear] Well, it’s the last day I’m fifty-nine. [unclear]

…

NIXON: I wrote a little note to Ed Williams—his offer—about his offer to go to the game, and that sort of thing, a nice little note.

COLSON: What the hell does he want?

NIXON: Would you be bugged if I see him?

COLSON: No, the guys won’t see him. He hasn’t set the [unclear].

NIXON: Now, I assume, Chuck—

COLSON: Yeah, he is coming.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: He wanted to come in at three thirty today—

NIXON: That’s right. I thought it would be good.

COLSON: And I just don’t know [unclear]. [unclear] said that he got drunk because he was—

NIXON: He does look like [unclear] of the Irish, remember?

COLSON: Yeah, and he was lamenting the fact that he ever took the Watergate case out with him because he said he missed that. It ruined his chances of getting appointed to the Supreme Court.

NIXON: Well, maybe he has a good chance for it. Now, you know what I mean?

COLSON: That’s what he wants.

NIXON: Well, you could point out, you know, the fact that if they make some mental notes [unclear] what the hell [unclear]. When you get to—presidents have always—Bobby Baker, say you want the facts. [unclear] Let’s face it, the Johnson [unclear]. Democratic Party—and all that, and frankly that, the president is sort of puzzled that they seem to take the Watergate as a vendetta. It’s not—I’m not angry, you understand, because you’ve got to represent the client. Just was puzzled by it. And they got word that they got out before [unclear] much really happened. Good—get the point?

COLSON: That—I think that I—

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: The thing I’m sure he recognized is that the Watergate matter was completely out of his control. That’s his [unclear].

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: He only gets to the civil side. He can’t—there’s nothing now that he can do with the Watergate.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: And he realizes we’ve had wild publicity adverse to what the jury [unclear] they could indict him. Right? [unclear]

NIXON: [unclear] but let him feel there’s no hard feelings. We don’t have hard feelings, but that’s the—we can handle people. I’m a great believer in just being, you know—

COLSON: He wants to [unclear].

NIXON: How is he?

COLSON: [unclear]

NIXON: Anyway the point is that you want to see him for other—that you never know, we’ve got to play every string we’ve got here. Don’t you agree?

COLSON: Absolutely.

NIXON: Think he’s worth seeing?

COLSON: [unclear] definitely see him. No problem with that.

NIXON: He is a friend of the soothsayer—[Martha] Mitchell.

COLSON: Mitchell.

NIXON: She signed his letter, you know. That’s how we got the letter, and it’s obvious that he’s trying to at least make a—hold out some sort of a [unclear].

COLSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because the way that really came about is he called me and asked if she could run it over and give it to him. Send it over—I told him, I said, “Forget it.” I said [unclear], “I don’t know what you’ve got.” I’m glad I gave it to him. But, I did call him back and I said, you know, “Be glad to have you drop by and say hello to people.” He just said, “Set a time.” He couldn’t believe that George [unclear].

NIXON: Well, we’ve got to figure it, Chuck [unclear]. This could go on and on and on [unclear] it would be one witness after another.

COLSON: I don’t think that’s important at this time. I’m not worried about the court proceeding—

NIXON: Well, as long as the court proceeding is going on [unclear] by God, Mansfield, the opposition has clearly—[unclear] great, great danger for the Congress to get [unclear]. They cannot—it—Jesus Christ, suppose it’s for the Communists [unclear] everybody else would be jumping down the throats of the Congress for interfering with the rights of the—the quote charged but not yet proven guilty individuals.

COLSON: Look at Ellsberg.

NIXON: Look at the [murderer Charles] Manson case. You remember what I said about that? Christ, that’s a—now what the hell is this? Where is the single standard here, Chuck?

COLSON: Well, this is the classic case of the double standard. There hasn’t been, except for Bill Buckley, one single iota of sympathy for these fellows. None at all.

NIXON: Well, the point is, too, it isn’t just the sympathy. The point is there hasn’t been any outrage about whether they’re guilty or not, no cry of outrage raised about the Congress meddling in their civil rights. Goddamn it, the Congress goes forward with an investigation while they are still in—I think that’s why the court proceeding has its advantage. As long as that court proceeding is on, the Congress should keep its goddamn hands off.

COLSON: Well—

NIXON: I think some of our guys up there have got to do that. They’ve got to say that.

COLSON: [unclear]

NIXON: Or will they?

COLSON: No, I think they will. I think they have been relatively silent on this and that’s just as well because at this point let’s not throw—

NIXON: Democrats.

COLSON: —Democrats into the wash here.

NIXON: Yeah, but Mansfield’s not optimum on this.

COLSON: Yeah, but that was Watergate written quite some time ago. [unclear]

NIXON: Oh, was it? Is that so?

COLSON: He wrote that letter back in November. Just released it. I think the reason he released it frankly was to—

NIXON: Take Teddy [Kennedy] off the hook.

COLSON: Yeah, take Teddy off the hook. And also, it was kind of a warning that you’d better have an open trial. And I think the timing of that was more designed not to let us think we could get away with being able to suppress, without complications, suppress [unclear] because throughout the [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear] sweetheart. Yeah.

COLSON: That’s right.

NIXON: [laughs] Unfortunately. Unfortunately. We’re not that way. Can you imagine the way Johnson would have handled it?

COLSON: Yeah. I can.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: The U.S. attorney would get off his fanny like that or [unclear]. Just take a little tip. [unclear]

NIXON: [unclear] Well, I don’t know. We can’t control that show. I don’t—we can’t get away [unclear].

COLSON: I don’t think so.

NIXON: No.

COLSON: No, the stake will be sort of a stalemate.

NIXON: That’s what it amounts to basically. That’s all Watergate. And incidentally we’ll survive it.

COLSON: Oh, sure.

NIXON: I just don’t believe that as time goes on. I think people can tire of it too. The Watergate thing can hang around like ITT and I think you get tired of ITT.

COLSON: Terribly. Terribly.

NIXON: You think so?

COLSON: Yes, I do. I think they’ll develop the Watergate probe on this, unless they get a big name. If they do that it’s a different story—so be it.

NIXON: What do you think, if they get big names, the big name denies it but, that’s what happened in Africa, but you really must be [unclear] to fix somebody. That must be very basically a hearsay proposition all, all up and down the line from what I—well, now you told me that. I just sensed it, what the hell—at least Mitchell was that smart. He was close to it but not in it directly.

COLSON: No.

NIXON: No, they can’t—

COLSON: This is perjury.

NIXON: Perjury that’s a damn hard rap to prove. [unclear]

COLSON: [unclear]

NIXON: We did it with [Alger] Hiss. Well, I’ll tell you, it ain’t easy. You gotta get it. They haven’t got that kind of evidence on Mitchell, [unclear], or anybody else. Have they?

COLSON: No, I don’t think that—I don’t know who the hell—I keep finding that difficult to build a case on this [unclear].

NIXON: You fight from [unclear]. I don’t know what to fight.

COLSON: No, well, I think if they get to the stage where they are volunteering and the Senate gets really serious, really concerned about putting them on television. Complicates the justice. That’s one of the things I get most concerned with him and that was last week was the [unclear] agreeing to drop certain counts of Hunt’s indictment in exchange for a guilty plea on three counts.

NIXON: They can do that?

COLSON: Yes, but you see, that precludes him from taking jeopardy on two different counts. Therefore, he couldn’t refuse to accept congressional immunity [unclear] even though it may be given, but the Fifth Amendment says I can’t be forced to testify against myself [unclear]. I am not questioning the way duty is [unclear].

NIXON: Oh, you fight that right through?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: And, if necessary you say, “I want to—”

COLSON: I mean, Bittman’s admitting he can take that one to the Supreme Court.

NIXON: You don’t want—a hell of a [unclear].

COLSON: [unclear] will probably pass enough time, so that by then he will have served his sentence.

NIXON: I don’t think that’s—I don’t know [unclear].

COLSON: Teddy’s in an awkward position. The way it looks, we can’t [unclear] him. It’s hard to figure about this.

NIXON: Oh, did he?

COLSON: Yes, sir. Yesterday, in the Washington Post [unclear] to go through the [unclear], just takes a jackhammer to attract.

NIXON: [unclear] I’ve read that one chapter—

COLSON: Yeah. Fantastic. I was going to tell you to take that [unclear] right now. This gal was under that portrait in the Barbados report.

NIXON: He may be destroyed before he gets off the ground, Chuck.

COLSON: Yeah, I think so. I think Ted Kennedy may be [unclear]—

NIXON: Because you see, come in in the first chapter is [unclear].

COLSON: [unclear] run into it.

NIXON: Well, that’s what you’re doing.

…

NIXON: Let me tell you one thing, that your president is working on [unclear] looks good now. The Watergate thing goes too far and we start getting investigated for it. We will have to get out and get everybody’s [unclear] on it. The Johnson bugging of the president, for example. Now you talk about bugging the Democratic Committee and failing that, for example, and bugging a candidate for president the last two weeks of the campaign—

COLSON: Or close to it.

NIXON: —by the FBI.

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: By the FBI. Deke DeLoach did it. Johnson ordered him. Deke DeLoach has told Mitchell—Hoover had told Mitchell that it was done. The question is whether or not Mitchell will say that and whether he believed Deke DeLoach [unclear] job. Liddy is a former FBI man and he [unclear] like that and said, “I was ready to do it,” you see, under oath. Would he mind doing it?

COLSON: He works for [PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer] Don Kendall.

NIXON: Well, I don’t want to, but I just say [unclear]. But say that “I heard they’re going to play for keeps.”

COLSON: Well, there’s another thing that has to be brought out too, and that is if we get really in thick, and if the going gets rough in Congress—I don’t know whether it will, you know. The court proceeding is going to run its course, and that’s beyond our control—the country’s control. Then I think we’ve got to prepare—whether or not we use it, or not—[unclear] floating around. Birch Bayh [unclear] security money [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear] can we [unclear]. Well, I just don’t know. I just don’t know. If we did, why have we done it before?

COLSON: Well, because Clark Mollenhoff ran a whole series on Birch Bayh’s funding. I think they kind of look the other way. The Justice Department—but those were [unclear].

NIXON: Statute of limitations problem. [unclear] I don’t know. But anyway we’ve got that on the [unclear]. I don’t know how [unclear]. How do we get such stuff out [unclear]?

COLSON: With Kennedy, when Kennedy said [unclear].

NIXON: That I don’t know about. But that’s one story.

COLSON: The point is that the only way that those guys [unclear] they really [unclear].

NIXON: But the point is—but let me say, having that in mind, would you not agree, though, that, that the Johnson thing would indicate to you that the president of the United States [unclear] would—I would frankly hope and wish we could add that half of the problem. I would like for it to happen. Although maybe it was better that it not happen. Because Johnson cannot deny that it happened.

COLSON: Just knowing Johnson, I wonder if he actually saw the need to call up Marvin Watson and say, “Marvin, you get DeLoach’s ass over here and tell him what you want done.” [unclear] Regardless, it doesn’t matter whether it was someone close to Johnson or Johnson.

NIXON: Of course he says he did it because of Vietnam and—all that. But nevertheless, he [unclear] to great deal McGovern [unclear]—his talks with the North Vietnamese, the [unclear] and all that.

COLSON: [Former press secretary to presidents Kennedy and Johnson] Pierre Salinger or [unclear]. Handed it to the president.

NIXON: Close to the election, close to the election but [unclear] a hell of a lot though.

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: That’s the whole point.

COLSON: I was thinking if it came to it that that could be something [unclear].

NIXON: With what kind of an effect—it would have some effect on [unclear].

COLSON: I [unclear].

NIXON: They would certainly say now [unclear]. Look here, what the hell are we talking about here? [unclear] We would deny on a stack of Bibles that he didn’t know anything about it. And now who the hell is going to believe it?

COLSON: Nobody.

NIXON: Well, we would say it was done for political purposes—

COLSON: It would be like the January 25 announcement when you talked about a whole series of issues and went on—everybody after that including some where a list of questions [unclear]. Mansfield said, “Well, that’s what we’ve been urging it on the president all the time [unclear]” he says it is [unclear]. And your answer would be, “I’ll let the court proceeding go ahead [unclear] and now that, now that you’re not satisfied with justice [unclear] and meet with—”

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: Let’s call a spade a spade. Somebody had to deal with it. Deke would do it. He would do anything.

 

The end of American aggression in Vietnam

January 20, 1973, 1:04 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

On January 15, President Nixon momentously ordered the end of all U.S. bombing, shelling, and mining in North Vietnam. Among the many who voiced approval was the Senate minority leader, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. Scott was a staunch Nixon loyalist—a feeling that was never fully mutual. The president’s move to end the bombing was patently intended to draw a signature from Hanoi’s representatives on the long-delayed peace agreement. That part of the strategy seemed to work, but another key party to the peace accord, the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, proved jittery and elusive—even more than usual—sorely trying Nixon’s patience. ^*

…

NIXON: Whatever people thought of the bombing last week, which is the result of a media thing. Good God! With this development now—you know, if they can, and that is why you mustn’t say it too soon till we sign the agreement. And we still have got the problem of that son of a bitch Thieu—we’ll get the word on him tomorrow, but he’ll go. He’ll go before committing suicide, but put yourself in the position of the opposition. How the hell do you think we got it? When Henry [Kissinger], after ten days—you remember the cables?—

COLSON: Oh, yes.

NIXON: —he gave up. We would have been in the war for three or four more months!

COLSON: That’s right.

NIXON: And hundreds of Americans would have been killed. What do they want?

COLSON: That’s right. That’s exactly right. Now, I think the war issue, Mr. President, I think it’s going to take a big bounce when it really is locked up and people know it is locked up and they get a—you know, it is going to take—they are going to be from Missouri—they are going to take two or three days to say “show me,” but then it is going to turn on the critics. I think they are going to have one very tough time for a few months. I really do. Hugh Scott took a whack at them yesterday. He was on television last night.

NIXON: For a change? Good God, his first statement was terrible.

COLSON: Yeah, he was horrible, but he said the critics cut off threats that lengthened the Vietnam War and that the—

NIXON: He—what?

COLSON: He said it lengthened the war. It was ill advised.

NIXON: Good.

COLSON: The only thing that could upset peace is the possibility that Hanoi is misled by the critics of the [U.S.] government.

NIXON: Good.

COLSON: It is starting. Well, you see, all that reflects is that Hugh Scott, who smells the political winds.

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: He knows that we have got an issue now that he’s been on the right side of. No, I think you’re going to find a very—

NIXON: Now listen, Chuck, as I told Haldeman, your job is to see that by God we put it to them. I mean assuming it works out.

COLSON: I want it—

NIXON: It is going to work out one way or the other. If Thieu doesn’t go that’s going to—that isn’t too bad either.

COLSON: Nope, it isn’t.

NIXON: We go ahead and make our deal—

COLSON: Sure.

NIXON: —and we sink Thieu and everybody says, “Thank God he was a tough son of a bitch on both sides.” To hell with him.

COLSON: That’s right. Well, we accomplished our objectives. We gave the people in South Vietnam an opportunity [to survive], and if Thieu wants to hang himself that’s his business. No, I think if we get our prisoners back and you have a cease-fire—

NIXON: But if we do more than that—get the prisoners back, a cease-fire, and you know—

COLSON: Survival of the Thieu government, and—oh, hell, there will be—

NIXON: Peace with honor when they would have bugged out, and then we just pour it right to them.

COLSON: And we really can, Mr. President. I think at that point we really will. We’re beginning to hurt them.

 

“There are times when abortions are necessary.”

January 23, 1973, 6:22 P.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING

On January 22, 1973, the landmark case Roe v. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this excerpt of a conversation that covered a variety of topics, Nixon and Colson discuss the case’s impact on expanding abortion rights. While the audio quality is especially poor, Nixon seems to suggest that he understands why some people might want an abortion, such as in the case of an interracial pregnancy.

…

NIXON: What is the situation, incidentally, with regard to the Supreme Court decision on abortion [unclear]?

COLSON: [unclear] two dissenting [unclear].

NIXON: Who?

COLSON: [unclear]

NIXON: Well, it doesn’t make any difference.

COLSON: It doesn’t make a difference at all. I wanted to look and see [unclear].

[Unclear exchange]

NIXON: A girl and a boy, and the girl gets knocked up, and then the couple, of course, doesn’t worry about the pill. She goes down to her doctor to get an abortion. [unclear] three-month rule. Shit! And the doctor says, “I thought it was three.”

COLSON: The ruling though, Mr. President, I’m not a Catholic, but I’m—

NIXON: I know, I know. And I admit, I mean there are times when abortions are necessary. I know that. You know, [unclear] between a black and a white. [unclear]

COLSON: Or rape.

NIXON: Or rape. [unclear] You know what I mean. There are times.

COLSON: The reason I oppose it—I have a fourteen-year-old daughter.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: It encourages permissiveness.

NIXON: That’s right. It breaks the dam.

 

“This will be a very brief meeting.”

January 23, 1973, 8:38 P.M.

Richard Nixon and cabinet (Spiro Agnew, William Rogers, George Shultz, Elliot Richardson, Richard Kleindienst, Rogers Morton, Earl Butz, Frederick Dent, Peter Brennan, Caspar Weinberger, James Lynn, Claude Brinegar, Roy Ash, John Scali, Anne Armstrong, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Henry Kissinger, Peter Flanigan, William Timmons, Ronald Ziegler, Raymond Price, Herbert Stein, Kenneth Cole, and George H. W. Bush)

CABINET ROOM

Nixon was never one for long or substantive cabinet meetings. He never put anything important to a binding vote of his cabinet. He was the president, which in his mind meant he was to make the decisions and inform his cabinet of his actions. Here, Nixon briefs his cabinet on the terms of the Paris Peace Accords, which had been initialed by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho only two hours earlier in the French capital. Nixon reviewed the televised address that he planned to make that evening, the official announcement that the nation’s longest war was finally over.

…

NIXON: This will be a very brief meeting. The purpose is, frankly, is to be sure that the cabinet is in the eyes of the world and the eyes of the nation [unclear] before the announcement is made. Let me tell you why the announcement must be very brief and why our discussion must be brief about the announcement today and why the, for example, the briefing—the legislative briefing will only be pro forma like this, is that we’re going to have a legislative briefing again tomorrow which will be quite substantial. Well, let me start by saying that I will announce at ten o’clock a very brief talk on television that we’ve completed an agreement today to end the war [unclear] peace with honor [unclear]. I will read a joint statement that is being issued at ten o’clock. That’s one of the reasons why this has to be tight until then even though I can inform you. I will read the statement to you here now, and I will explain briefly why it meets our goals. “At twelve thirty today Paris time, January 23, the agreement on ending the war and preserving peace for Vietnam was initialed by Dr. Henry Kissinger on behalf of the United States, and Special Adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This agreement will be formally signed by the parties participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam on January 27, 1973, at the International Conference Center in Paris. The cease-fire will take effect at twenty-four hundred Greenwich Mean Time, January 27, 1973.” I will explain that in a minute. “The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will ensure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.” That is the announcement to be made in Hanoi and Washington, and done at ten o’clock tonight. Now, what this agreement does, and what the protocols which are tortuous and fairly important, to the extent that the protocols in the agreement ensure anything, is to accomplish all of the goals that I laid down in the January 25 [1972 speech]. You remember there were four. I said first, that there had to be a return of all of our prisoners of war, and an account for all of those missing in action. I said that there had to be an internationally supervised cease-fire. I said there should be a withdrawal of all American forces, and there should be a right of the people of South Vietnam to determine their own future, outside [unclear]. All of those conditions have been met. As far as the implementation is concerned, as it affects the prisoners, is in sixty days from Saturday all prisoners will have been returned and all missing in action will be accounted for. Sixty days from Saturday all American forces in Vietnam are to have been withdrawn, and in terms of the internationally supervised cease-fire, the cease-fire [unclear] at seven o’clock Washington time [unclear]. In terms of what it means for Cambodia and Laos, and so forth, I think it is—let me say this, at this point that this is a subject that will come up with the [congressional] leaders meeting—in other words, we will probably have to answer it. I think it will be for Henry to take just a moment on Cambodia and Laos, because the Vietnam thing is all that I am really going to talk about tonight. It is very significant that this covers Vietnam and has an understanding with regard to Cambodia and Laos. Now, do you understand that Cambodia and Laos are not all that specific, but they are vitally important—go ahead, Henry, take over on that.

KISSINGER: The major thing is that it is essential not to talk about that.

NIXON: That’s right. We’ll all wait until tomorrow when the agreement comes out.

KISSINGER: Well, but that won’t—

NIXON: Even then—

KISSINGER: —that won’t be the agreement either.

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: We have strong reason to believe that there will be a cease-fire in Laos within fifteen days of the agreement in Vietnam, so by around February 10. The two parties there are already negotiating, and we have as I said a strong reason to believe, which can be jeopardized only by [unclear] of talk here. Secondly, with respect to Cambodia, the situation is more complex because there are factions there that are not all in control of the parties involved, but we believe that a de facto cease-fire will emerge there which will be a little bit messier than the one in Laos over a comparable period of time after the agreement is signed by the secretary of state on Saturday. But the degree of formality with respect to the Laos cease-fire is greater than the degree of formality of the Cambodian cease-fire, but we have understandings with respect to both.

NIXON: These are understandings that you will not see in the agreement so when I use the term “Indochina” that is what we are basing it on. And of course they are going to enforce the [unclear] with Laos and Cambodia have been a sanctuary for—oh, a couple of other points should be made. After a great deal of pulling [unclear], the government of South Vietnam’s general and present views in particular are totally onboard and they will issue a statement, I presume a—practically issued already—

KISSINGER: Thieu is going on television half an hour after you, Mr. President.

NIXON: I will make a statement in here that he totally supports this and that is because he has told us that he does.

KISSINGER: That is correct and he will express that publicly within half an hour of your speech.

NIXON: So he—now, as far as the problems are concerned we have to be aware that between now and the cease-fire that there will be fighting. Both sides will be trying to grab as much as they can. When I say there will be, I assume that because that happens in all cease-fires. After the cease-fire, that there will be inevitably—in this kind of guerrilla warfare where you do not have a line, there will be violations, and that is why the supervisory body is so important. Which is, what is it, eleven—

KISSINGER: Eleven [hundred and] sixty [members], Mr. President.

NIXON: I wouldn’t want to be one of them.

KISSINGER: Well, actually it is eleven sixty in the international body, and in addition to that there is, for a while, a commission on which we serve which has thirty-three hundred members of which we supply a fourth, and after we drop out of it, there will be a supervisory force composed of the two Vietnamese bodies that has about sixteen hundred. So the total supervisory mechanism will range from thirty-three hundred to forty-six hundred, and it is being distributed over the country in a very effective way. Now whatever limitations these supervisory bodies have had in the past, these international forces are four times larger than any that has operated there before. The two-party commission never existed at all, and the machinery by which they operate, including provisions for minority [unclear], it sets a better stance to get something done that the treaty—

NIXON: One little note of interest is this, [unclear] the question is always “When did you believe that it was going to break?” Well, as I informed the leaders on the tenth of January at their first meeting, after a tortuous ten days of negotiations in December, the negotiations reached a total deadlock, not simply on details but totally. The North Vietnamese were stonewalling. It was obvious that they were going to continue to stonewall. [unclear] it was then we resumed the main policy and then on the thirtieth of December they, at our invitations to return to the conference table, started pushing. The technical talks began on the second. Henry arrived on the eighth of January and began talks. You might indicate, Henry, what happened on the eighth or the ninth. Obviously he was there for more than that. He was there for four or five days.

KISSINGER: My talks—the talks on the agreement itself resumed on the eighth.

NIXON: Let’s say on Monday.

KISSINGER: That was Monday. The first day was brutal in every respect.

NIXON: As Bill [Rogers] knows, Henry’s message the first day made us all think, “Here we go again.” The first day was no hope.

KISSINGER: It was a total absolute deadlock. So, at the president’s instruction, I told them—I sent them a message that I would have to leave on Wednesday night. Then, on the next day, which happened to be the president’s birthday, we made a very major advance on the two outstanding issues in the agreement and they began to work with great energy on the technical agreement and up to then they had an unbelievable [unclear] in charge of the technical agreement. They put their vice minister in charge, and I asked the fellow to discuss the technical thing, so that started moving on the ninth, and that happened to be the president’s birthday and I sent him a cable saying they had broken our hearts before but if this is maintained another day or two we would have a breakthrough. He said, “Well, let’s not get too optimistic, but if it is it would be the finest birthday present I have ever had and—”

NIXON: The cable [unclear]. [laughs]

KISSINGER: Then it continued so, and by the end of that week we had—nearly we had settled almost the entire agreement and that is when we exchanged messages with all the principals with respect to the protocols. Then, having a set of the principles, details had to be worked out that occasionally logistics and arrangements for the [unclear] last week. So when I arrived last night there were, in respect to the agreement itself, only three things to be done which we settled very quickly this morning—I mean with respect to the protocols, three things to be done. Then a great deal of the surrounding problems, the international conference and so forth, was one of the most—they were determined to settle today by twelve thirty.

NIXON: Well, for example, they had—another interesting side note is that today—I thought that because of President Johnson’s death that that might give the [unclear] an opportunity to take a little more time, they would take it. So I sent a message over to Henry and just pointed out that obviously, but also I thought it might help a little to clear up with the South Vietnamese. Henry fired back, he said that they are so determined to settle that we better go. So that didn’t shake them a bit. When they were ready they were ready. They didn’t want to be put in the—

KISSINGER: It kept them from settling today.

NIXON: Right, yeah. [laughs]

KISSINGER: But their confidence that—we had decided that after four years of negotiations [unclear] that last night that we finished the English and Vietnamese texts they took the English text home with them and locked it in a safe lest we take a page out and slip in another one. [laughs]

NIXON: Let me just summarize the Saigon leadership by saying, it is quite interesting to note while Mel [Laird] is here that without the success of the Vietnamization program there could have been no settlement because the South Vietnamese would not have settled unless they were confident they could defend themselves and the North Vietnamese would not have the incentive to settle if they thought the South Vietnamese were all easy to knock over. So Vietnamization played a part. Our own military actions of course played a very decisive part because without our cunning, which means without our quick doing something that they didn’t want us to do—they had very little incentive. I would say also that I would have to say that the settlement was not made easier by the totally irresponsible actions of the Congress. I do not refer to the whole Congress, over and over again over the past four years—the Congress particularly the Senate and even in this session when they knew we were going back to the conference table passed resolutions which called basically for a settlement which was far less than they were willing to settle for, and far less than we got. Just so some of them would worry, I say it one sentence in my speech tonight, actually three [unclear], I’m speaking to many people of this so-called Mansfield resolution—prisoners for withdrawal. Isn’t that a good deal? We get our POWs back after we withdraw. Isn’t that a good deal? Well, I’ll tell you the people that understand that probably better than anyone else, and better than most senators and congressmen of that persuasion, are the wives of the prisoners of war who said our people, our men, did not become prisoners and they did not suffer and they did not wait, and we did not fight this war just to get them back. And their colleagues did not die just for the purpose of getting our prisoners of war back. The difficulty with the POW for withdrawal proposal, which is the proposal—the most responsible proposal of all the irresponsible ones, this is the least irresponsible I would say. The difficulty is it would end the war for us, but the war for fifty million people in Indochina would continue. The agreement we have is a cease-fire for Vietnam, and with the possibility of a cease-fire for Laos and Cambodia. And so what we have done, by insisting on “peace with honor,” we not only have our prisoners back for our withdrawal in return for a supervised cease-fire stopping the war for the Indochinese, and also we have the right for the South Vietnamese to determine their own future under proper supervised [unclear] something which also we would not have had with the prisoners for withdrawal. What I am trying to say is it has been rather long, it’s been rather painful, it’s been very difficult on you, I know. You wondered, “Why we didn’t get out? This was Johnson’s war anyway. Why didn’t we blame it on the Democrats and get out and so forth and so on?” The reason is this isn’t Johnson’s war, or Kennedy’s war. I mean, I [unclear] what I think irresponsible—it happened that it started under Kennedy’s administration and it continued in Johnson’s administration and in my view it was very badly handled and they much knew they made mistakes. But the point is whatever happened, the United States was involved. We have now withdrawn our forces down to the minimal group that is there. We have now achieved an agreement which achieves our goals of peace for Vietnam that has had war for practically twenty-five years, and the right of the people of South Vietnam to determine their future without having a Communist government imposed upon them against their will. And in my view the fact that we [unclear] we as a country, it will mean a lot certainly to the seventeen million in South Vietnam. But the fact that the United States was responsible will have, in my view, a decisive effect on what is going on in the world. We hear it said that the United States by engaging in Vietnam [unclear] in the world, I assure you that if the United States did not prove to be responsible in Vietnam, did get an end to this war with defeat, with surrender, prisoners for withdrawal, the Chinese wouldn’t consider us worth talking to. The Russians wouldn’t consider us worth talking to. The Europeans with all their bitching would not consider us to be reliable allies and so what is involved here which most of the members in the Senate and the House eventually will understand, which all of us around this table must understand, is the United States must play a role to keep the peace. And as the only one that can save the free world we have to be responsible, and that is what this peace is all about. [applause]

 

“The American people are hoping that this mess in South Vietnam is over.”

January 24, 1973, 8:36 A.M.

Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and congressional leaders (Michael Mansfield, Robert Byrd, John Stennis, John McClellan, J. William Fulbright, Henry Jackson, Gale McGee, Hugh Scott, Robert Griffin, Strom Thurmond, Milton Young, George Aiken, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, John McFall, Gerald Ford, George Mahon, Thomas Morgan, Samuel Stratton, Joe Waggonner, Leslie Arends, William Bray, Elford Cederberg, William Maillard, Samuel Devine, and Jack Kemp)

CABINET ROOM

The morning after his televised announcement, Nixon gave a wider briefing for bipartisan congressional leaders. This followed the typical pattern of briefings for any major White House announcement: Republican leaders, congressional leaders, and the cabinet. While Nixon drew on history to defend his Vietnam policy—like Eisenhower, he said, major bombing at the very end of negotiations was needed to “prick the boil” and achieve a breakthrough—he faced a much more skeptical crowd in this meeting than he had with his cabinet the night before. The fault lines seen here were a prelude to White House–congressional disagreement to come once the Paris Peace Accords started to fail only a few months later.

…

NIXON: The Korean cease-fire, and I was in this room when we talked about it, President Eisenhower had to order as I recall—he ordered devastating bombing and, deliberately, in the case of civilian areas of North Korea, and that pricked the boil and was done. But, we still haven’t got peace in Korea, as you know. That’s why we deal with it [unclear] we’re working on it. As far as this is concerned, we would have to agree, there are problems. You have raised some of the problems. But, I would say that it would be extremely helpful if the members of the House—the Congress—Democrat and Republican, to the extent as leaders that you can, that instead of consoling our fears on this one—don’t be, of course, going out and saying well, everything’s done, it’s going to be all that. Be quite honest, and you’ve got to be honest, but also don’t—I think it’s very important for us not to, after getting this agreement, to send messages to Hanoi and messages to Saigon that well, we don’t think it’s going to last, and all that sort of thing. If you talk that way, the way [unclear]. It’s going to happen. Now we’ve got to talk to—I would like if you can, you can simply say what I said last night. It’s a good agreement. It’s peace with honor. It not only ends the war for us, which of course the prisoners-for-withdrawal deal, which many members of the House and Senate, just the week after we announced the agreement, had voted for. The prisoners for withdrawal, assuming the other side would have given it, which I think was very doubtful—well, I know it was doubtful—would have ended the war for us, and the war would have continued with a thousand casualties a week for fifty million people, in South [unclear], and Indochina, and in Vietnam. So what we have here is, we’ve got our prisoners. We have more than that. We’ve got peace, not only for America, but peace at least, as fragile as it may be, for all of the people of Indochina, and certainly for Vietnam, for a while.

…

KISSINGER: There is no specific provision for the replacement of North Vietnamese forces. There is a provision requiring the demobilization and reduction of forces. Essentially, there is a provision that prohibits the introduction of new personnel, of new military personnel. There is a prohibition against the use of Cambodian and Laotian base areas. There’s a prohibition against the use of infiltration routes through Cambodia and Laos, and there is a prohibition against the movement of military units across the demilitarized zone.

…

NIXON: The point is—the point I’m going to say is, that we’re not going to indicate that it’s all going to be peaches and cream, that there aren’t going to be any violations of the cease-fire. The Russians [unclear] going to go along. Le Duc Tho will make a statement today which will be very conciliatory, and so forth and so on. After what Thieu said last night, Le Duc Tho’s got to come out and say something. If Thieu talks too much about victory, he’ll talk about victory. And the response of the Russians, and the Chinese, their public statements may say one thing, and they may do something else. What I am saying is that the United States, your government, this administration, I can assure you, will use every influence we have to bear to get the Russians and the Chinese—each of whom wants something from us, and we want something from them—to cooperate with us and see that this part of the world, which for twenty-five years has been cursed by war, the Japanese, civil war, and so forth, finally has a period of peace. And that’s what it’s really all about.

…

AIKEN: Now Mr. President, I just think we ought to face up to the hard facts of life. The American people are hoping that this mess in South Vietnam is over, and that the costs of the war will be over, and that the defense budget can be drastically cut. And the bitter medicine in this whole thing, and I think it’s inevitable, I’m not saying that, the bitter medicine is that you’ve got to come out with billions of dollars to support both South Vietnam and with billions of dollars to support North Vietnam. I believe even LBJ earlier, and I think he on a previous occasion has said we’ve got to spend a billion on war rehabilitation on South and North Vietnam. And then, this is going to present an awful matter, total, in view of the fiscal situation in this country. And the American people are going to be upset at the end of the war about how can you go on giving billions of dollars over a long period to South Vietnam, and then the aid to the North Vietnamese. And that’s a bitter situation, and then when we put that in the defense budget, it’s going to be bad. I think we can put it in the foreign aid bill, and the foreign aid bill is the most unpopular bill we have but Defense is in such trouble that I don’t think we better put it in Defense, and the uprising among the rank-and-file man on Main Street against rebuilding North Vietnam and Hanoi is going to be bad. It’s going to be a hell of a situation. I think they’re happy today, but they’ll be [unclear] as hell [in a few weeks] when they find out the facts of life.

NIXON: Well, I remember, George, when you and I were on the Herter Committee. We knew it was going to be damn unpopular, soon after that war, to pour those billions of dollars into Europe. But we had to come back and sell it, because it was a darn good investment in peace. Let me also say, however, it’s a question of doubts. The question is here, in comparison, yes, there will be some expenditures for economic and other purposes in this part of the world. But, it’s going to be one hell of a lot less than the expenditures of continuing this war. That’s the point.

…

JACKSON: Mr. President, I thought maybe you could answer, maybe you’re going to cover it, I don’t know, I shouldn’t ask it—

NIXON: No, no, you can get this out of the way, right now.

JACKSON: The first thing we’ll all be hit with is: When will the list come out, and other details regarding the supervision and the investigation of all prisoners and their names? We’re just going to be deluged on that one point, I would think.

KISSINGER: The provisions for supervision are being published today, together with the other supervisory details. The list of prisoners will be handed over on the day of signing, which is to say on Saturday—

NIXON: Saturday.

JACKSON: They will be made public at that point.

KISSINGER: Then, they should be made public Saturday or Sunday. The investigation of the missing in action and the visit to graves, a procedure has been established for exchanging information and for investigative teams to look into disputed cases.

…

NIXON: I’m not suggesting this peace is perfect. No peace that is negotiated is perfect. The only one that is perhaps perfect in many things is unconditional surrender. And I may say, that has serious shortcomings, too, in Vietnam. But I do say, this is a peace that can work and give the people of Viet—Southeast Asia a chance to determine their own future. And I can only say thank God for those who stood by. I have great respect, as I say, for those who had a different view. Thank God for, also, a lot of brave men, who went out there, and didn’t want to go to war any more than any of us wanted to go to World War II and the rest, brave as we all taught them. They gave their lives, some of them became prisoners, and we ought to be damn proud.

 

“The all-volunteer army means not having them drafted”

January 26, 1973, 8:37 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Republican congressional leaders (Spiro Agnew, Hugh Scott, Robert Griffin, Norris Cotton, Wallace Bennett, John Tower, William Brock, Gerald Ford, Leslie Arends, John Rhodes, Barber Conable, Robert Wilson, George H. W. Bush, Roy Ash, John Ehrlichman, William Timmons, Richard Cook, Thomas Korologos, Kenneth Cole, Frederic Malek, Ronald Ziegler, Richard Kleindienst, George Shultz, and Caspar Weinberger)

CABINET ROOM

Today few people remember that following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War, Nixon ended the military draft and established what was then termed the all-volunteer army. The draft had been universally hated, yet it was difficult to end the practice as long as continued war required fresh deployments. “The draft survives principally as a device by which we use compulsion to get young men to serve at less than the market rate of pay,” the economist J. Kenneth Galbraith said.

Nixon vowed to end the draft as early as his 1960 bid for the presidency. He repeated the pledge during his 1968 campaign, saying, “It is not so much the way they are selected that is wrong, it is the fact of selection.” Here, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Caspar Weinberger briefs Nixon on the expected cost increases of establishing all-volunteer armed forces. “Mr. President,” House Republican leader Gerald Ford said, “the American people wanted the all-volunteer army, so they have to pay for it.”

…

WEINBERGER: This is the rather familiar story now to everyone except the press, and that is that the priorities have changed very drastically. The human resources expenditures, this is in dollars over here, have gone from about sixty billion up to close to a hundred and thirty-one billion by the end of ’75. This is projected out through 1975. Defense stays just about level in dollars, very little change at all, and in percentage, Defense is going way down. It’s under thirty percent now. And human resources are about forty-seven percent of the total budget. So, the change there is very dramatic, a complete reversal, and it is illustrative of the different priorities that we now have. This is a little further explanation of the Defense outlays, seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-four point eight [billion dollars], these are almost level figures. And they will jump in 1974 about four billion dollars, but all of that is pay and price increases. All of that is the amount associated with the all-volunteer armed force and the other pay increases that have been had in the military, plus the additional pension fund. There is no increase in activity at all, here represented there. As a matter of fact, there is a rather substantial decrease in the number of men that will be in Defense, and you can see that here. Here, with 1968 there were three and a half million military personnel. This year, in 1974, the president is requesting funds for two point two million, now, in a very steady decline. But this line shows the average pay and allowances for each person in the military, uniformed personnel. And that’s gone from fifty-five hundred average to ten thousand dollars a year average, and that’s where the increase has come, in the costs of military personnel. We have another chart that isn’t blown up but will be in the chart book.

ARENDS: Could I ask a question? Is that approximate amount of money spent for Defense still approximately fifty-eight percent for personnel, personnel cost out of the total budget of the military?

WEINBERGER: That’s right. Yes, sir. The payroll costs in the military now run just about fifty-eight percent, and the interesting figure you have here, it’s in the chart book, I didn’t have it blown up. How much will a billion dollars pay for? In 1964, a billion dollars would pay for two hundred nineteen thousand men. In 1974, a billion dollars gets a hundred thousand men. And, actually, that’s the difference that has occurred on this question, and that’s why although there are sharp reductions in Defense, we stay just about level rather than having this big peace dividend that everyone [unclear]—

NIXON: The point, Les, let me make a point that you and John [Stennis] and the Armed Services Committee fellows should be aware of—are aware of I am sure—is this. That is why any comparison basically in dollars or rubles, whichever way you want to explain it, of the amount we spend or percentage of GNP or whatever you have, between ourselves and the Soviet Union, is totally irrelevant, because when they put, say, seventy billion dollars, shall we say, equivalent, in defense, if they put seventy billion dollars in defense, my guess is the amount of their personnel costs is much less, because—and their hardware is much more. They’re buying more hardware; we’re buying more men. We pay more for the men. In other words, their men come cheaper. Now, as a matter of fact, they have a bigger—because of their great emphasis on land forces, they have [unclear], but their costs for men are infinitely less than ours [unclear]. So, this poses—let me tell you about this defense thing, and this is where I am going to argue that the other side [unclear]. God knows we’d like to keep it as low as we can, but you have to have enough. You have to have enough in order to bargain, as we go into the second round of SALT talks, and the rest, and MBFR, et cetera. But we also have to have enough for our own defense. And at the present time, we see that number, fifty-eight percent, all the costs going into personnel, you aren’t buying a hell of a lot of hardware. You’re buying a lot, but not as much. Roy, of course, one of the things even though he is going to be now on the budget side of State, that’s Roy Ash, is acutely aware of this subject, right, Roy? It’s a real problem.

ASH: Certainly vis-à-vis what the Soviets are doing, actually it’s very critical—

NIXON: Yes. Yes, sir. The main reasons with these comparisons, as we go down the line, and say how much, if you look at our new stock, how much we’ve got, and so forth and so on. We’ve got a huge outlay of men and women and so forth in the army, of course what you’re not getting [unclear].

UNKNOWN: Mr. President, I think we have to accept this is the price we have to pay for an all-volunteer army.

NIXON: Because it is. And of course, let me say, I would hope when you fellows go to campuses and so forth this year, if the all-volunteer army means not having them drafted, that’s not a bad point to emphasize. I think it should have some appeal, shouldn’t it, Jerry?

FORD: Mr. President, the American people wanted the all-volunteer army, so they have to pay for it.

 

After the war

January 31, 1973, 10:10 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

On January 27, 1973, each of the factions involved in the Vietnam War accepted the Paris Peace Accords, ending the war—or at least getting the United States out of it. Four days later, Nixon was scheduled to appear at his first news conference since the previous October. In the morning, he and Kissinger discussed the day’s agenda and the practical ways by which the United States would ensure that the peace accords remained in effect. As a start, Kissinger was to travel to Hanoi during a mid-February tour that also included Beijing and Tokyo.

…

NIXON: What about—oh, I see some leak to the effect that—that Thieu and I will meet in Hawaii.

KISSINGER: Well, that must have been—

NIXON: Well—

KISSINGER: —either Vietnamese—

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: —or from the Agnew party.

NIXON: Yeah. Well, I’ll simply say that I hope at some time to meet with him. Don’t you think so?

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: Say it publicly. One other point: with regard to the resupply of North Vietnamese and VC in South Vietnam, how do they do it? I mean, if Cambodia is closed, and Laos is closed, and the DMZ—

KISSINGER: They will—

NIXON: —allows only civilian modalities—

KISSINGER: Well—

NIXON: What—what’s the deal?

KISSINGER: They will get—this is something: the legal entry points have yet to be determined, but—

NIXON: Right.

KISSINGER: —there will probably be two seaports and one point at the DMZ.

NIXON: And, as I understand it then, that, on the basis of the agreement, that they can supply people over those seaports. Is that right?

KISSINGER: Well, all they can do is to re—is to—

NIXON: I know.

KISSINGER: —replace weapons.

NIXON: But, replace weapons that are—

KISSINGER: They cannot—

NIXON: —worn out, used, et cetera, et cetera. Right?

KISSINGER: They have no legal right to bring in anything else.

NIXON: Anything new. I know, I know. I know. [laughs]

KISSINGER: Nor—nor, for that matter, have they got a right to bring in uniforms and things like that, technically speaking.

NIXON: Yeah. I know, I know. The—we all know that if the agreement is kept—and there’s nothing wrong with the agreement; it’s just a question of whether they keep it.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: You could add fifteen thousand clauses; it wouldn’t mean a thing.

KISSINGER: Exactly.

NIXON: This agreement is just—is, is a totally airtight agreement if it’s kept.

KISSINGER: Exactly—

NIXON: No question about it.

KISSINGER: Exactly—

NIXON: No question. I just wanted to know that. These are questions Ron [Ziegler] thought might come up, and I want to—

KISSINGER: Right. I wouldn’t, incidentally—I sent you a note yesterday—volunteer anything about their murdering activities there, in the context of their—of attacking Hanoi, if it’s done in the context of replying to people who are accusing us of—of carpet bombing.

NIXON: Well, that’s the only way I was going to use it.

KISSINGER: Right.

NIXON: Big no—

KISSINGER: Because they’ll—

NIXON: —because if they say that we’re—if they say we’re killing civilians, we’ll say, “Well, now, there are a lot of civilians killed in the South.”

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: Which we’ve got to do. We can’t be—

KISSINGER: So, in that context, it can be done. And, I think if one volunteers too harsh an attack on them, it—

NIXON: I don’t intend to, but I’ve got to answer that in case they—

KISSINGER: Oh, yes.

NIXON: —say that we’ve killed people in the North.

KISSINGER: Absolutely.

NIXON: Because, we’ve been—I mean, we have to realize here that, shit, we have to be rather gingerly, but they haven’t been too [laughs]—I mean, they’ve gone from—

KISSINGER: They’ve been pretty restrained in their public comments about us—

NIXON: Restrained—restrained. Right, right. But, I mean, on the—in terms of the—I’ve been very restrained in terms of the—what is achieved, and all that sort of thing. But, be that as it may, we shall see. Well, those are the only things I have. You have anything else on that? Anything else you think—?

KISSINGER: On the military activities, now—

NIXON: They’ve receded, I see.

KISSINGER: They’ve receded. The biggest fight is now going on in an area where the South Vietnamese tried to grab some territory [Sa Huynh, Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Vietnam] right after the cease—right at the cease-fire. They tried to seize a naval base—

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: —along the shore—along the coast, north of the Cua Viet River. And the North Vietnamese are trying to retake that. That’s the only big fight that’s now going on.

NIXON: But, it’s really going quite well, isn’t it?

KISSINGER: Well, the South Vietnamese—

NIXON: Even—

KISSINGER: —have fought extremely well.

NIXON: Even—but what—no, not on that. But, I meant—I meant the cease-fire is going quite well.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: I mean, the very thing—

KISSINGER: It’s the activity inside of—

NIXON: —the very thing that we said, that it would recede—

KISSINGER: Yes.

NIXON: —even the press—

KISSINGER: Every day is getting—

NIXON: —reluctantly [laughs] concludes that it’s going down.

KISSINGER: Exactly right.

NIXON: They’re going to have one hell of a time with this thing. They’re going to have one hell of a time. I mean, you know, assuming that some of this does recede.

…

NIXON: Now, with regard to the Cambodian unilateral cease-fire, is that in force and still in force? And we, according to the—looking at the news—the summary this morning from the intelligence, we are not bombing in Cambodia because of that. Is that correct?

KISSINGER: That is correct.

NIXON: And, that’s seventy-two hours, and the enemy is respecting it up to this point?

KISSINGER: Up to this point, yeah.

NIXON: In Cambodia. But—so, it might be extended another seventy-two. I just have—

KISSINGER: Oh, no. This will, this will be extended indefinitely. Lon Nol’s is indefinite. We just stood down for seventy-two hours, to see—

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: —how it would work.

NIXON: No. And if it’s—

KISSINGER: And, as long as it holds, we will observe it.

NIXON: Mm-hmm. And, as far as Lao—Laos is concerned, we can just say, “We have reason to believe there will be a negotiated cease-fire on a—”

KISSINGER: “In a reasonable time—in a reasonably short time.”

NIXON: Yeah, that’s right. Okay.

KISSINGER: Right.

 

“This energy crisis is much deeper . . . much more severe than anybody in this country realizes.”

January 31, 1973, 4:52 P.M.

Richard Nixon and John Connally

OVAL OFFICE

By 1973, John Connally was a Republican in everything but party affiliation. A loyal aide to Lyndon Johnson and former governor of Texas, nonetheless he served as Nixon’s secretary of the treasury and organized Democrats for Nixon in 1972. He grew close to Nixon, who eventually considered Connally his preferred successor in 1976. A change in party affiliation was inevitable, but—out of respect for Johnson—Connally refused to make it while LBJ was still alive. Here, only a week after Johnson died, Connally discusses his plans to switch parties but first warns Nixon of a looming energy crisis.

…

CONNALLY: I think, Mr. President, you’ve got—you have two major problems. If I may be presumptuous enough to suggest two of the problems that you’re going to face—

NIXON: [laughs] You ought to know!

CONNALLY: —right away. One, and I—you and I have talked about this many times, and I’ll just mention these and then leave them alone—but, I mentioned both of them to George Shultz this morning—I’m going to tell you that he and I had breakfast this morning—I think this energy crisis is much deeper, much broader, much more severe than anybody in this country realizes. And I think it’s going to require a great deal of your personal understanding and attention. You could well see gasoline rationing in the United States this summer. You got fuel rationing now—fuel oil. You got gas rationing right now.

NIXON: Really?

CONNALLY: And it’s going to get worse next year than it is this summer—at this point. We don’t have the refinery capacity. And as our demand increases. And this—even in this last cold spell, universities were shut down. The University of Texas, for instance, in Austin, Texas, delayed its open—reopening for one week because it had no heat. The San Marcos State Teachers College, where President Johnson went, could not reopen. Many industrial concerns shut down their production completely, because they had no fuel. The gas companies are rationing their industrial customers anytime there’s a cold spell. Now, most of these customers can use fuel oil. Like the utilities, they can burn fuel oil to generate electricity. But, it’s more expensive for ’em, so they like gas. Plus, the environmentalists raise hell when they burn fuel oil. So, they don’t like to do it. Fuel oil, now, is being laid down on the East Coast for six—over six dollars a barrel. I will not be at all surprised to see crude oil laid down—if you can get it—on the East Coast of the United States, this year, at five dollars a barrel. The idea that domestic crude is going to kick the lid significantly is not going to happen. Foreign crude is really going to happen—or, the price increase is going to happen for domestic crude. Because this is one of the things that the Arabs—OPEC nations, the Arab nations are doing—they are, in fact, taking over control of the oil itself to market. They are marketing it to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder, it could be Japan, Germany, Italy, and so forth. And the United States is going to have to posture itself, very quickly, to get into this issue, where, as a nation, we can compete with other nations in buying oil, because the oil companies can’t do it. And I would predict that in this year, if not more than eighteen months, you’re going to see a complete revolution of the manner of production and sale of oil, and pricing of crude products around the world. It’s going to have a hell of an impact on this country.

…

CONNALLY: I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. Nellie [Connally] and I have talked about it. Frankly I have talked to some of my very closest friends [from the Johnson White House]. [Former press secretary] George Christian, [former special counsel] Larry Temple, some of those that I have been politically associated with over the years. They all think that really there’s no—that I don’t have any choice, and I don’t think I really have a choice. In my lifetime I don’t think the Democratic Party will ever come back to mean what I stand for. I don’t think that I could ever be, in my lifetime, even comfortable with the Democratic Party. I don’t think there’s any question about it. From the standpoint of principle, all future political aspirations aside, just on the basis on what you stand for, what you like to see preserved and protected and promoted in this country, I have to leave the Democratic Party. Now, becoming an independent is no answer. So the only—it’s a two-party country, so the only answer to me, not that I agree with the Republican Party per se at all times. I subscribe to your policies I think a hell of a lot more than I do—in any event that your policies are the Republican policies. So I have no real problems with that, and I am prepared to do it. I don’t want to do it. I want—I have thought about doing it in a low-key way. I talked to Dick Kleindienst yesterday, and Dick talked about it [unclear].

NIXON: Oh yeah? Good.

CONNALLY: He brought it up. I’ve been talking to him.

NIXON: He’s a good politician.

CONNALLY: Yes he is. He suggested that the way to do it, and it may not be a bad one, is to just do it on [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear]

CONNALLY: And I thought about talking to Chuck [Colson] about the possibility of just announcing it maybe tomorrow morning on the Today show. I think it ought not to be a studied—

NIXON: Yeah.

CONNALLY: —sort of thing that almost has to come out casually. Just a fairly casual thing, and I admit I don’t know that I will do it tomorrow because I really need to talk to—

NIXON: You need to sort of let some people know.

CONNALLY: I really need to let some people know it. And I think it is premature to do it tomorrow, but [unclear].

NIXON: That might be the best thing. [unclear]

CONNALLY: I think you pick a time—it is a very delicate thing. And it’s [unclear] with Johnson passing away.

NIXON: Makes it a lot easier.

 

Nixon in China again

February 1, 1973, 9:45 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

OVAL OFFICE

With the struggle to end the Vietnam War over, Nixon turned his attention to a topic of great interest to him: U.S. relations with China and the USSR. He and Kissinger discussed the possibilities for further realignment in a post-Vietnam era. While Kissinger was heading for his extensive post–Vietnam War tour through eastern Asia, Nixon dreamed of another visit to China for himself—a trip that was not to be.

…

NIXON: I also think when you’re in Beijing you should explore the possibility of my taking another trip there. I don’t know whether we should or not, but let me say—of course, if I go we have to put Japan on.

KISSINGER: But that might not be bad.

NIXON: Japan is always a problem because of the radicals. But at the present time, I saw something—a Japanese poll indicating that sixty percent thought that the emperor should visit us, and seventy-eight percent wanted the president to go to Japan. So we have a lot of friends in Japan, you know. The Japanese are not all that dumb.

KISSINGER: But if you want that option we have to invite the [unclear] emperor over here.

NIXON: Have the emperor first?

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: I don’t mind having the emperor.

KISSINGER: I mean, if we could put him on the schedule—

NIXON: That will be the only other visit this year, Henry. It can’t be the Zulus or anything else.

KISSINGER: But if you have him here then after that you have the option of going there.

NIXON: I would like to go to China, you see, at a time, again, there might be a better time of year [as opposed to February, when Nixon first visited] when it’s more pleasant. We might get a better reception too with the Chinese at that time.

KISSINGER: Oh, no question.

NIXON: And I just don’t see him again, you know what I mean? Zhou Enlai?

KISSINGER: Oh, you certainly would get a popular reception next time.

NIXON: Yeah. And that could be helpful.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: See?

KISSINGER: I’ll get this [unclear] set with Zhou.

NIXON: Well, just tell him I’d like to do it. There are great important things that I feel that—that I have got to turn this country around. You can tell him things like that. But I did not want to do it, but tell him that we have to meet with the Russians on the other thing. But I want to keep talking to them.

KISSINGER: Well, then I’ll tell him that—

NIXON: That I would like to do it.

KISSINGER: Well, also that we expect if the Russians attack them it’s very useful to have [unclear].

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah. Another point we have to have in mind is what the hell we do on Taiwan. Now, as you know, I think they might call in our chip on that. You think they will?

KISSINGER: They will, yes. Well, what I thought—

NIXON: Our chip there is not too much anyway. All we promised is that we’d—

KISSINGER: Pull out our forces.

NIXON: Cut down our sources—forces, right? Vietnam-related forces come out anyway. That would be—

KISSINGER: The Vietnam-related forces come out immediately. And the other ones would be reduced gradually.

NIXON: So do it.

KISSINGER: I thought I should preempt it by telling them when I get there that we will pull out the Vietnam-related forces and give them a schedule.

NIXON: Right.

KISSINGER: That way they can’t raise the other forces.

NIXON: Yeah. But you see, what the Chinese have done to work out, Henry, is this. And I don’t know whether this is in their—I mean, it wouldn’t be possible with the jackasses from North Vietnam. You see what I mean? The Chinese may be subtle enough to understand. Taiwan is such a bustling, productive, et cetera, community, they ought to work out some kind of a federation, you know what I mean?

KISSINGER: I think they’re willing to do that.

NIXON: What I call—like basically, Puerto Rico. And I mean let both flowers bloom. See my point?

KISSINGER: What I think they will come to, what they will gradually accept—

NIXON: Otherwise it’s war. You know what I mean?

KISSINGER: No, they won’t use force. That you can count on.

NIXON: Well, not with us. But how else are they going to get the Taiwanese, for example? I mean [unclear]. But I don’t see—the Taiwanese are doing so well economically, Henry, they’re never going to let, never going to say, “All right, we’re now going to become part of the PRC.” Never.

KISSINGER: No, it’s not going to happen that way. I think what they will want from us is—well, first, that we pull out some of our forces. That will get us through this year.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: For the time being, what they really want from us is protection against Russia. Taiwan is subsidiary. Eventually, we may have to come to a position similar to Japan’s, which is that we maintain consular relations in Taiwan and diplomatic relations in Beijing, in return for a promise by them they wouldn’t use force against Taiwan, but we hope that Chiang Kai-shek will have died before then.

NIXON: Japan has consular relations with Taiwan?

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: It’d be a bitch for us.

KISSINGER: It’d be a bastard.

NIXON: Well, the thing to do is to have it build up—

KISSINGER: But this wouldn’t be, I don’t see that—

NIXON: The thing to do is have it build up in American public opinion before then. We just got to do it.

KISSINGER: It can’t happen much before ’75.

NIXON: The later the better. I still think Zhou Enlai should consider—reconsider—not Washington, but San Clemente. You see my point?

KISSINGER: Let me talk to him about it.

NIXON: You see my point?

KISSINGER: What he could do is go to the UN.

NIXON: He could go to the UN; we’ve talked about that. And then we’d meet up there, you mean?

KISSINGER: No. In connection to that, stop in San Clemente.

NIXON: Oh, I see. I will not in four years go to the UN. I’m never going there again.

KISSINGER: But of course, it hurts you. If he goes to the UN, he’s going to give a tough—

NIXON: Sure.

KISSINGER: —talk. Now the disadvantage of having Brezhnev in October is that he’ll certainly go to the UN.

NIXON: Oh, well, Henry, that’s part of it. What the hell do we care?

KISSINGER: We shouldn’t care.

NIXON: Look, we always worry about them huffing and puffing. There are worse things.

KISSINGER: I think, Mr. President, from our point of view, assuming we could find a formulation on that nuclear treaty that doesn’t drive the Chinese up a wall. The Russians are sufficiently eager to have it, so that if we could keep it out there in front of them until October it would buy us good Russian behavior for the rest of year.

 

“The charges against our Democrat friends”

February 3, 1973, 11:05 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

OVAL OFFICE

Five days after his U.S. District Court convicted two men associated with the Watergate break-in—the other five pleaded guilty—Judge John Sirica boldly asserted that another court should expand upon the case. Sirica was more outspoken both on the bench and outside the court than he had ever been before, and certainly more so than most federal judges. Nixon was aghast, and he was no less frustrated with the fast-moving situation in Congress. When he turned his attention to the impending investigation in the Senate, he suggested that his staff, including Counsel to the President John Dean, go on the offensive. Specifically, he told Colson that he wanted Dean to dig more deeply into long-standing (and ultimately disproven) charges that Democratic senator Daniel Brewster of Maryland had accepted bribes from the Spiegel catalog company.

…

NIXON: What the hell is the strategy going to be here now? We just have to—all we’re doing is just to sort of letting him—you know, here’s the judge now saying—his goddamn conduct is shocking as a judge.

COLSON: It is.

NIXON: He’s not being—I mean I suppose he’s on the other side. What’s he bucking for? Is he looking—is he young enough to look for an appointment from a Democrat in four years?

COLSON: No, no, no. I don’t think—Sirica is a tough, hard-boiled, law-and-order judge, who—

NIXON: You can’t blame him—I’m not blaming him. I just wonder why he’s going far beyond.

COLSON: No, he’s a Republican. I know him pretty well.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: I have been with him at various events—social events—

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: Very decent guy. Dedicated to you, and to Eisenhower. I can’t understand what happened to him. He’s been ill. The only thing I can figure is that he didn’t—this case just got under his craw for some reason. He’s a hotheaded Italian and he blew it. He’s handled himself terribly, awful—refusing to accept the plea. And of course the odd thing about this is, Mr. President—the U.S. attorney who has been prosecuting this case—

NIXON: Silbert.

COLSON: —is not our guy. He’s—I would imagine he is a Democrat—has been there since 1964 at the U.S. attorney’s office, but I think Sirica could easily be doing what he is being told to do.

NIXON: I mean, I don’t know—now what happens? He is trying to keep the Senate from conducting a big investigation. And I thank God it’s Ervin. I mean when you really come down to it, Ervin—at least—he’s now going to be hoist on his own petard because he’s the great constitutionalist, and if they talk about hearsay and all the rest, if I were [unclear].

COLSON: I don’t know that Ervin has decided what to do. I’ve talked to him once. He is very reasonable. He says you know this fight over separation of powers has gone on for two hundred years. It will go on for two hundred more years. He said it is just one of those things that Congress and the Executive will always be debating.

…

NIXON: Getting back to this once again. I noticed Jackson said he didn’t take it [chairmanship of what would become the Ervin Committee] because maybe his own campaign was involved. He means that—he thinks we were spying on him. Huh?

COLSON: No, I think Jackson knows that we were feeding him a lot of stuff in the campaign—not we, but we were arranging for stuff to be fed to him.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: And I think he wants to stay out of it.

NIXON: Well, what if anything there is being done or can be done on the counterattacks? Are any of charges against our Democrat friends being investigated? Have they been, and will they be?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: I just don’t know.

COLSON: There isn’t anything that balances—

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: No.

NIXON: Well, let me ask one other thing. This [former senator Daniel] Brewster [scandal related to his acceptance of an illegal gratuity] thing is, according to Bobby B[aker]—he says runs a hell of a lot deeper and runs to a number of Democratic senators, and maybe a Republican or so. Now, what are we doing about having an investigation, calling in Spiegel, putting him under oath, the FBI, and say what other senators—go right down the list. What are we doing about that?

COLSON: That’s a good point. I don’t know what we are doing.

NIXON: I think it should be done. I think there should be—now, understand—the ability to [unclear]. I think you ought to discuss this—with who?

COLSON: John [Dean].

NIXON: John Dean. And say—and it should get over to Kleindienst. And say, after all, “Brewster has made very a serious charge on television this morning and that there are a lot of senators involved. This charge must now be investigated. And therefore, I think that the attorney general ought to order the FBI to call in Spiegel and various people and conduct an investigation.” You see my point?

COLSON: Reopen the grand jury.

NIXON: Yes.

 

A “cool detachment” from the United Nations

February 3, 1973, 12:12 P.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

OVAL OFFICE

Nixon’s choice to replace George H. W. Bush as ambassador to the United Nations was a former television reporter, John Scali. During his years as diplomatic correspondent at ABC News, Scali had not only reported on Cold War developments, he’d even become involved in some of them, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he was a liaison who was trusted by both Soviet and American officials. Though a longtime Democrat, Scali impressed Nixon and left broadcasting in 1971 to serve for two years as his special advisor on foreign policy. In December 1972, Nixon announced Scali’s UN appointment, which was set to take effect in mid-February. Nixon’s antipathy toward the UN had been present since the international body was founded, but it was unmistakable in 1973.

But first, Nixon discussed his admiration for Great Britain’s place in international relations. Nixon’s enthusiasm extended to the British prime minister, Edward Heath, who had been in office since 1970. Heath had been the head of Britain’s Conservative Party for five years before that. Nixon, who could be astute regarding other nations, seemed naive regarding the complexity of Heath’s attitude toward the United States. In fact, the prime minister distrusted the so-called special relationship between the two nations, regarding it as a form of domination by the United States. It was a trap he avoided in person with Nixon, as well as in British-American affairs. Instead, Heath was focused on making Europe Britain’s priority for the future. The problems that would challenge the special relationship later in 1973 had a basis in Nixon’s simplistic, even nostalgic concept of Great Britain. ^*

…

NIXON: You know, I am so glad that we got Heath over here—

KISSINGER: Oh, that was a good meeting—

NIXON: —because we’ve got to have a friend in Europe—

KISSINGER: That helps.

NIXON: —and he’s the only solid one we’ve got.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: And, by golly, let’s play them.

KISSINGER: Definitely—

NIXON: I mean, you’ve got a good relationship with him. I mean, as you know, when I need to talk to him, and I think that we—

KISSINGER: You have a superb relationship with Heath.

NIXON: With Heath now we’ll want to play to get him and we’ve got to play with him. See, what I think he appreciates, Henry, is that we didn’t bug him on Northern Ireland.

KISSINGER: No way.

NIXON: He knows that. He appreciates the fact that we didn’t bug him on Rhodesia. He appreciates the fact that we didn’t bug him on other things—

KISSINGER: But then you did it in such a delicate way when you said, “All right, now, we’ve talked about Northern Ireland.”

NIXON: Yeah. We’re—God, now, and—but now, therefore, on a much bigger thing he didn’t give us hell, and as a matter of fact made all the right noises. But I really feel—the thing I want to say to you is that I know we’ve got some studies going on in view of the role of NATO and so forth and so on. What I was trying to do in talking to you was to push the British—

KISSINGER: But they’re doing it now.

NIXON: —into thinking about this.

KISSINGER: No, no.

NIXON: And I actually think that our guys—I have the feeling about this being about the British. You may disagree. They’re no longer a world power, but the British are bright and they think strategically. And I think the right British guy is better than the right guy in the State Department.

KISSINGER: No question.

NIXON: Now, what I want you to do—

KISSINGER: They’re better trained.

NIXON: —what I want you to do—take a fellow like Thompson. We haven’t got anybody in our government that is as good as Thompson on that field. Take a fellow like that guy, that [British defense expert] Alastair Buchan. I don’t find many people around here in the State Department that think as, you know, in the broad terms as you do. I don’t know if you agree with me, but what I think—I would like for you to take the best British brains and the best American brains and put them together in—combine. The only question I ask is whether we are missing out on a good Frenchman. The French civil service, according to what I hear, and I think certainly on the economic side, is as good as any in the world—

KISSINGER: No question—

NIXON: On the foreign policy side are we missing some people? Now, you know, for example, we’ve got two or three French newsmen that you rate as well as the British. Right?

KISSINGER: But the French are different. The French, in terms of intellect and maybe even education, may be even superior to the British, but they don’t have the—they don’t—they are too doctrinaire.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: And they don’t have the tradition of thinking in global terms. The French have always thought largely in European terms. But, I think it’d be too dangerous to do—

NIXON: Okay. All right. Fine.

KISSINGER: —before March.

NIXON: Very well. What about—?

KISSINGER: After the election we should try.

NIXON: Oh, we will. Of course, of course. Nothing now. I was thinking of then, after the elections—

KISSINGER: I think—

NIXON: —not the German one. Let me ask about that. Do you have anybody among the Germans that [unclear]? They say the defense minister’s a pretty good man—

KISSINGER: No, the old defense minister, Helmut Schmidt.

NIXON: They threw him out, huh?

KISSINGER: No—

NIXON: Promote him?

KISSINGER: They made him finance minister. They had a crisis with their finance minister leaving. Then, in order to—it was a complicated maneuver. In order to appoint a new minister they would have had to convene Parliament. They were afraid that if they convened Parliament, they might get a vote of no confidence, so they shifted—

NIXON: Yeah?

KISSINGER: They played around with the ministers that were already in office and then they didn’t have to be confirmed by Parliament. This shifted Schmidt from Defense to Finance, which he wanted because Defense—Schmidt wants to become chancellor. It’s awfully tough to go from Defense to become chancellor.

NIXON: What is the situation on Brandt’s throat?

KISSINGER: Unfortunately, it’s not malignant. Now that’s a terrible thing to say—

NIXON: I know what you mean.

KISSINGER: What I mean—

NIXON: You mean, unfortunately, he’s in very good health.

KISSINGER: Unfortunately, he’s likely to hang on in there, yeah.

NIXON: He is a dolt.

KISSINGER: He is a dolt—

NIXON: He is a dolt—

KISSINGER: —and he’s dangerous.

NIXON: Well, I’m afraid he’s dangerous. I really have to agree with you. I agree. God, you know, isn’t it a shame, though, with the—? I was thinking of the German minds, of, well, basically, of the late nineteenth century. And frankly there were some pretty good—well, I guess the Germans have had their problems, but the Germans, in terms of producing global thinkers—there’s no Italians—

KISSINGER: There was a curious—

NIXON: I had a curi—I had a very interesting talk with Heath in the car, you know. He was—we were talking about—there were lots of—I said, “Tell me, what men in Europe have you got?” As I said, we were talking about World War II and afterwards. I said, “What leaders in Europe have you got?” [unclear] And you know his beautiful understanding, he said, “Well,” he said, “I’m afraid I find it rather difficult to think about that at the moment.” He said, “Pompidou.” And he—Pompidou, this is my point, I said, “Pompidou has the brains and so forth to do it, but his interests are basically inward and parochial, and not outward and global.”

KISSINGER: No.

NIXON: He said, “Exactly.” He said he had had the same experience with him. When he talked to Pompidou, they’re always talking about tactical things for tomorrow, or economic things and so forth. Brandt he considers to be—he didn’t say it quite as bluntly—he just considers to be dumb.

KISSINGER: Well—

NIXON: And—but interestingly enough he picked the one guy—he likes the Italians that I have met. [Prime Minister Giulio] Andreotti—

KISSINGER: Very good. Andreotti is very good—

NIXON: Yeah, but he picked the one—I said, “Now, look at the small countries. Who have you got?” He says, “None, yet there is one fellow that is quite good: [Austrian chancellor Bruno] Kreisky.” He knew exactly where I was hitting. Down in that damn little country of Austria you’ve got one bright guy.

KISSINGER: Yes.

NIXON: Kreisky.

KISSINGER: Kreisky, he was impressive when you saw him—

NIXON: Remember?

KISSINGER: —in some—

NIXON: Well, the point about Kreisky is that. You see, I look back and I think what you and I’ve got to do is to think in terms of how we get the best brains in the world to work on some of these matters. And maybe we’ve just got to do it ourselves [unclear].

KISSINGER: No, we can certainly do—

NIXON: But I—do you remember after World War II, do you agree? I mean, not—well, after World War I you had [Paris Peace Conference negotiator Jan] Smuts and people like that on the scene. After World War II, you can pick five or six leaders of Europe who were worth talking to. The Dutchman was very good. Do you remember his name? After World War II the—when he went to the World Court, you know, all that sort of thing? The Dutchman. There was a good Dane there. I remember, the—but at the present time, whether it’s the diplomatic corps—

KISSINGER: You see at that time the Europeans—take Holland. It had an empire many times larger than itself, so it had to think in big terms—

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: The Europeans have become provincial, and one thing you’re doing by letting the British in on these things is you’re really doing them a favor—

NIXON: Oh [unclear]—

KISSINGER: —by enabling them to continue to think in big terms.

NIXON: Yeah. Did you notice, no interesting thing that, you know, we had all those briefing papers on the economics and the rest, and I did spend an hour and a half with Shultz in which we ran it through, but the interesting thing was to me that Heath, instead of getting down—he got in serious on this side—but did you notice he wanted—he, himself, really wanted to talk about the big picture?

KISSINGER: Oh, yeah.

NIXON: In other words, Heath has changed enormously since 1970. Remember our first meeting? He was talking in more minute terms—

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: —and more immediate terms, but now Heath is thinking globally and the rest. And that’s the reason why I wanted to talk to him yesterday to give him sort of—so he could start with—

KISSINGER: Well, I thought—

NIXON: —his view of the world, and then to come in on this. And then—

KISSINGER: Well, I thought—

NIXON: —he didn’t say much, but he got—

KISSINGER: Well—

NIXON: —the point.

KISSINGER: Well, I thought—well, partly because even he cannot think in these big terms anymore. If you haven’t got the power, then you haven’t really got the incentive to think in those—

NIXON: Yeah, I know.

KISSINGER: —terms.

NIXON: I know.

KISSINGER: And—but I thought, as you were talking, that there’s really no leader in the non-Communist world today who could make such a survey without notes. We didn’t give you any talking points.

NIXON: No. We always don’t. I’ve—actually, the one guy that enjoyed it was Burke Trend.

KISSINGER: Oh, yeah. Oh, he was—he’s very impressed by you.

NIXON: He’s just a great guy, too.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: It’s a shame he’s leaving, though, isn’t it? What is it—his age?

KISSINGER: Sixty. He’s reaching retirement age, which is compulsory in Britain.

NIXON: Well, we do a lot of business [unclear]. What I have in mind is that the British could block for us in the [European Economic] Community.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: Now, they won’t want to waste it, but now that they’re in, they can make the Community turn [unclear]—

KISSINGER: And I think we should have—

NIXON: —and the British can also, in the NATO thing, force the Europeans to think a little more, you know, as to what their obligations are. They can help us. They can help reassure NATO, no doubt. [unclear] Heath and Trend both asked a very perceptive question. They said, “How much of this can you tell to NATO?” Now, the point is you can tell them goddamn little.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: But on the other hand, the British can, knowing what our thinking is, it occurs to me that Heath—add to it, and it occurs to them as well—can sort of lead the Europeans and reassure them, so that as we do—but, I’m keenly aware of the fact that as far as that FBS is a concern, like you talk in your briefing papers, it’s a goddamn good tradeoff. But, as you know, we’ll scare them to death.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: So, therefore, the thing to do is to prepare it so that they can see that the tradeoff is in their interest. I also realize that in terms of conventional forces and the rest that how much more we can do remains—is problematical. And yet, we’ve got to—we’ve got to prepare the Europeans for the fact that they’re living now in a world so different from what it was when NATO was set up that we’ve just got to rethink it. What you said about seven thousand tactical weapons, now is—and that we found uses for a hundred in the last exercise. Now, what in the name of God have we got them there for, and why can’t we use nuclear tradeoffs? They’re getting [unclear]—

KISSINGER: Exactly, Mr. President. This is a key point.

NIXON: [unclear] But what—we don’t hear any of this. It’s like when we have NSC meetings. You know, they sit there and you ask and then the Chiefs give their views, and Laird gives his—I think Richardson will be much better—

KISSINGER: Much better.

NIXON: Don’t you think so?

KISSINGER: Much better. I spent two hours with him—

NIXON: If we force him to think about it—

KISSINGER: —this morning.

NIXON: Force him to think about it—

KISSINGER: I spent two hours with him, and I said—I told him, “Look, Elliot, I give you two weeks. I won’t send out a directive for two weeks to you. Get some directive to the Chiefs along the lines of what the president has said to you. Establish yourself as the president’s man in the Pentagon.” Because I think it’s better anyway if he takes on the Chiefs.

NIXON: Yeah. But coming into this, coming around to this, my view is that when you get back from China—first, you ought to take off two or three days. Second—

…

NIXON: When do you—When will you meet again with the Russians over there in connection with [unclear]?

KISSINGER: About the first of March.

NIXON: And then you’re going to have to have some positions? Well, that would be fair. You’ve always been able to handle the agreements—

KISSINGER: Well, we don’t have to have a position on the Middle East, although it would help. We do have to have a position on that nuclear treaty.

NIXON: That’s right. We’ve got to have something to give them.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: Right?

KISSINGER: Right. And we may have to go a little further than the British want us to go.

NIXON: That doesn’t bother you?

KISSINGER: But we may be able to use it—

NIXON: You’ve got to realize that in this instance, even though we reassure the British and the Europeans all the time that the game is between the Russians and ourselves. You know it, I know it—

KISSINGER: And we may use this Poseidon deal to keep the British quiet, and to keep the Russians quiet we just weasel the odds if we do the Poseidon deal.

NIXON: Keep the Russians quiet?

KISSINGER: Well, supposing we tell the Russians—

NIXON: Announce the Poseidon deal then?

KISSINGER: Suppose—well, because if we tell the Russians, “Look, we’ll go halfway towards you on this nuclear treaty but in order to keep our allies quiet we have to do—”

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

KISSINGER: Then they have to choose. Because I think it is in our interest to keep the British in the nuclear business. The pressure on us will become too great if we are the only nuclear power.

NIXON: Absolutely. Well, I am rather surprised that Heath is willing to state it. Aren’t you?

KISSINGER: He realizes they’ll be a nothing country if they’re not in it.

NIXON: Is that it?

KISSINGER: They’ve got no grounds for it. They haven’t got the domestic structure for large armed forces.

NIXON: They’ve still got a fleet.

KISSINGER: Yeah, but not—

NIXON: Not much?

KISSINGER: Not much.

NIXON: Poseidon would really give them a psychological lift, wouldn’t it?

KISSINGER: Yeah. It’d give them another ten years’ lease on life. Of course, it’s now clear that if we had given them the Skybolt, their airplanes would still be useful.

NIXON: That was a terrible mistake, Henry.

KISSINGER: It was a disaster.

NIXON: What did he do that for?

KISSINGER: Because we wanted to get the British out of the nuclear prison. Then he didn’t have the guts to go through with it.

NIXON: Well, it was the McNamara decision, wasn’t it—?

KISSINGER: Yes.

NIXON: Wasn’t that the McNamara period?

KISSINGER: Yep. And then Kennedy, as always, having taken the first step, then when he met [Prime Minister Harold] Macmillan he caved and gave him Polarises. And they figured they’d screw them on the Polarises later.

NIXON: But Skybolt would really have—what it would have done would have kept in being a very good British air force. Right?

KISSINGER: It would have kept in being a hundred and fifty British airplanes, which would stand. [unclear] The first Skybolt only had a three-hundred-mile range, but if you had extended it, they could still be—they’d still be a major factor.

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah.

KISSINGER: It was a disastrous decision.

NIXON: God, what we’ve done to the British in this is unconscionable. What we did to them in ’56 [during the Suez crisis] was terrible.

KISSINGER: It was a disaster.

NIXON: What we’ve did and done to them since then, unbelievable what we’ve done. And when you think of what the British have done for the world, you know? Goddamn it, without the British, Hitler would have Europe today.

KISSINGER: No question.

NIXON: Hitler would have them.

KISSINGER: Own them.

NIXON: The son of a bitch would still be living.

KISSINGER: No question.

NIXON: Right?

KISSINGER: No question.

NIXON: Without the British—they were the only ones that had kept the line. We say it over and over again, but we talk about our sacrifice—

KISSINGER: Of course.

NIXON: —and, sure, we did a hell of a lot, but the British stood there alone, they held the tide back, and, also, the psychological, too.

KISSINGER: [British historian Hugh] Trevor-Roper thinks we were a little too effective in World War II.

NIXON: Why?

KISSINGER: That if we had made a partial settlement—

NIXON: With the Germans?

KISSINGER: —with the Germans.

NIXON: I agree. Oh, I always felt that.

KISSINGER: But he doesn’t think—he said the tragedy was—we were speculating what would have happened—

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: —if one of these plots on Hitler had succeeded.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: And he felt then we should have made peace quickly—

NIXON: Absolutely—

KISSINGER: —but he felt that we shouldn’t have.

NIXON: Absolutely. The unconditional surrender thing was wrong. I mean, I know how we all felt at that time, but we were totally wrong. And what would have happened, and it would have happened without a question, is that the Germans then would have been there as a—

KISSINGER: As a barrier—

NIXON: —shield against the damn Russians.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: And, also, the tragedy is—the tragedy is that we threw it all away at a time that we were looking down the Russian throats. That’s what burns me up.

KISSINGER: That’s right.

NIXON: Henry, for God’s sakes, the United States had ground forces, we had a monopoly on the bomb, the British were still there—

KISSINGER: Well, Mr. President—

NIXON: —we were looking down their throats and damn it, and the fact that Roosevelt was sick, probably, everything else, we just gave them everything.

KISSINGER: Well, considering what you have done—

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: Uh—

NIXON: You wonder now, the point that I made to Heath and I really feel, I don’t know if—I don’t know whether we can make it. We now have parity. The only reason I don’t think we can—we may be—there’s a considerable doubt if we can make it—is because of the will of Europe, the will of America, and also—now, the other side of the coin is—the other side is that the Russians have some problems, too.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: And that—that’s why the theory that you expressed yesterday of assuming that they are—that some evil genius is directing all this, that may be true, but it could also be true that there is not an evil genius, that they’re trying to—that it isn’t a planned thing, that it’s just a bureaucracy moving along, moving along—

KISSINGER: That could be. That could be. That could very well be. But we have one practical matter on the SALT delegation.

…

NIXON: Well, let’s put in the back of our minds that I am going to offer Mrs. [Lyndon] Johnson the UN thing, you know, the Shirley Temple position.

KISSINGER: Oh, yes. That would be good.

NIXON: She would probably—

KISSINGER: She would be spectacular.

NIXON: —but I am going to offer that to her.

KISSINGER: Scali would be [unclear]. [laughs]

NIXON: I was so amused when I was talking to [unclear] at the dinner. I said, “By any chance will you be coming over to speak at the UN anytime soon?” [unclear] He said, “I abhor the place so much. I just can’t bring myself to go there.” Goddamn it, the British are sick of the UN. What has turned them off on it so much?

KISSINGER: Well, it’s all these racial problems, all the African problems, then the Suez. It is always the double standards.

NIXON: Just remember I will never go before them again.

KISSINGER: No.

NIXON: I am not going to do it. Even if it is Scali there, and all the rest, I won’t go meet with Bush. I don’t care who is there. The UN, now that is the job of the secretary of state.

KISSINGER: And actually you were there twice and they treated you—

NIXON: I was there several times. Basically not only by the membership of the UN but also, let’s face it, by the damn Secretariat. By his staff—

KISSINGER: Well, it was—

NIXON: —[unclear] waving their arms around.

KISSINGER: —said he couldn’t meet you at the door because he was at a dinner of the Pakistan ambassador. It was an outrage. And then this idea that we don’t know where [unclear] sit on the floor listening to [unclear] speak. I mean that is ridiculous.

NIXON: Sitting there, nobody got up when he came in. I think with the UN just a cool detachment is what is required. I even gave a twenty-fifth-anniversary dinner for the poor bastards. We have done everything. I have gone the extra mile.

KISSINGER: Oh, yeah.

NIXON: I want you to have, incidentally, a talk with Scali soon, before he gets up there, and tell him, “Now, look, John, there is one thing to be understood. Under no circumstances—your job is [unclear]. The president is not going to be available. Not in this term. We have done it twice now.” You know what I mean? [unclear] Henry, with the UN, I think the American public now is getting pissed off. I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was the [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] hijacking thing.

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: They let it go on. They didn’t support us on it. The right of liberation I think is also their favorite [unclear]—

KISSINGER: Well, also the way they jumped up and down when Nationalist China was evicted.

NIXON: That was horrible.

KISSINGER: That was revolting.

NIXON: Remember how they danced?

KISSINGER: Revolting.

NIXON: Like a bunch of apes. Well, have a good time in New York.

 

A new face on the FBI

February 13, 1973, 9:48 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

OVAL OFFICE

The death of J. Edgar Hoover in May 1972 rocked the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which Hoover had headed since its inception forty-seven years before. Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as acting director in the void that followed. A longtime navy officer, Gray had served in Nixon’s Justice Department since 1969, but he was a newcomer to the bureau. As a result, he depended heavily on Hoover’s seasoned associate director, Mark Felt, who was later identified as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s secret source “Deep Throat.” One month later, news broke of the event that would affect both men dramatically, the Watergate break-in. Quietly and very efficiently, FBI agents undertook the first and perhaps the most thorough of all of the investigations of the Watergate scandal. At the same time, Gray, Felt, and at least one other veteran FBI administrator, William Sullivan, were maneuvering to nab the permanent directorship. That process wouldn’t end even after Nixon formally nominated Gray for the job on February 15. As Nixon traded ideas about the FBI, Colson remembered him “leaning back in his chair, crossed legs resting comfortably on his massive carved mahogany desk.” When Nixon’s thoughts turned to Watergate, Colson expressed his opinion that the White House should find out who ordered the break-in. Nixon “dropped his feet to the floor and came straight up in his chair,” Colson recalled, “‘Who do you think did this? Mitchell? Magruder?’ He was staring intently into my eyes, face flushed, anger in his voice.” ^*

…

NIXON: Well, you need a man. Would you keep Gray?

COLSON: Yes, sir. I would now.

NIXON: Now, you mean send him to the Senate for confirmation?

COLSON: Yep, I would.

NIXON: Why?

COLSON: Well, because first of all, I would back him up with a very strong deputy. Because I think if you took Gray out now, with all of the turmoil in the bureau, I mean—there’s a—everything that’s going on in that bureau is being leaked out.

NIXON: Yeah. Well, how could we stop it?

COLSON: By creating certainty. You see, I’m afraid one of the problems over there is that there isn’t anybody who knows they’re in charge. Now—

NIXON: Who’s the deputy you have in mind?

COLSON: Well, I’ve suggested a fellow by the name of Bill Sullivan who’s a—

NIXON: They say he’s the first one [unclear] out of a lot of them—

COLSON: Oh, he is.

NIXON: —because he was not a Hoover man.

COLSON: Well, he was our man. That’s—

NIXON: I know.

COLSON: Al Haig called me yesterday and said, Jesus, you know, get Sullivan back in there. Haig is very high on Sullivan. I don’t know Sullivan, but I know of so many people who do think highly of him, and that those are all the people I—

NIXON: What about putting [unclear] in that job. Do you think that would be a good idea?

COLSON: No, sir. I don’t think so.

NIXON: Did you think also it might be a reflection on Gray, too, I suppose, about his investigation of the Watergate hearing?

COLSON: Yeah. I think in a way it is. And you might want to move Gray at the end of the year, but I’d get through this year without rocking that boat and I would try to get him—confirm Gray. He’s, after all—Gray’s loyalty to you—

NIXON: Totally.

COLSON: Totally. So give him the strength and back him up with some tough people and make sure he understands what he has to do. I mean there—the most important thing over there is to be goddamn sure that that department and that bureau understand that we’ve got enough troubles with the Hill without creating any more for ourselves.

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: And this is a partisan game. This is no longer law enforcement or investigation. This is part of—

NIXON: Sure. What’d you mean, Watergate?

COLSON: Watergate.

NIXON: Oh, hell, yes.

COLSON: And I read this—

NIXON: The partisan press builds up Ervin now as Mister Civil Liberties. Shit! Ervin is a goddamn racist. [unclear] everything!

COLSON: [laughs] Hysterical. But they’re going to make a—they’ll have a political circus. But it is—

NIXON: Remember how they built up that poor jackass [Senator] Ralph Flanders?

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: I mean [unclear]—built him up as the greatest thing. Poor bastard—well, he was an idiot!

COLSON: Well—

NIXON: He’s a sweet guy—Ralph Flanders.

COLSON: Well, no—he was nothing.

NIXON: But he took [Senator Joseph] McCarthy out.

COLSON: McCarthy’s great comment about bring the butterfly net [unclear]. [laughs]

NIXON: Oh, God, I wish we had more of Pat Grays. Well, anyway, that’s that. [unclear] In my view, there’s a couple of good guys who work around here. Everyone around here forgets the goddamn thing in the White House. [unclear] You just figure you’re going to have some leaks in the television, the press, and just say that’s going to be that way. How are you doing on it? Is there anything else you could do?

COLSON: Well, the only thing you can do, Mr. President—

NIXON: I mean if you can’t—you’ve got to get for example Magruder’s operation, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman and the rest—Dean.

COLSON: Yes.

NIXON: If they all get into this, they’re going to go through the ITT thing in spades.

COLSON: Well, of course, that’s what they want to do to us, you know? That’s the whole point of that exercise.

NIXON: To burn some others?

COLSON: Correct. Correct.

NIXON: Now don’t you agree we should stay away?

COLSON: I think we have to—I don’t think there’s any choice but to go up there and tough it through. And I do think we have to be very, very hard-nose with that committee. And if they want Haldeman, Ehrlichman, me—I’m sure they will—we have to limit the areas that they’re going to go into, and I mean—

NIXON: Well, I’m not sure. The best thing there—we can work it out—is to—you can let them have lower people like Chapin and Strachan and the rest. Hell, I never talked to Chapin and Strachan and the rest. Let them have them, and—but in terms of the people that are direct advisors to the president you can say they can do it by written interrogatories, by having Ervin leading in the majority, the two counsel, majority and minority leaders do it—written interrogatories. But don’t go up there on television.

COLSON: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: How does that sound to you as a possible compromise?

COLSON: I think it’s a good compromise. There’s a risk, you know, but—

NIXON: They may not. They may not accept it. But I don’t think—I had thought that maybe we ought to just hard-nose and say nobody can go. I’m afraid that that gives an appearance of total cover-up, which would bother me a bit—you know, I should just say no. You can’t have Chapin. You can’t have Strachan. You can’t have, you know—and since the White House won’t allow anybody, you might give them some others. I don’t know. I mean maybe we could think about it. I can’t get him to talk about it just to testify. That’ll break it down to Kissinger—break it down to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Can’t do that. And of course that’s why you can’t go. The people that are—who have direct access to the president can’t go.

COLSON: Well, you know the difficulty with it, Mr. President? I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend. I tried to talk it through with one of my perceptive law partners, who’s a brilliant trial lawyer. And his point was—which I thought was a goddamn good one—he said you can’t go at all. He says there’s nothing in the facts of the Watergate—the Segretti—that you had any involvement in at all. But they’re going to start asking you other questions, and—

NIXON: That you were involved in also.

COLSON: And they’re going to come—well, something that I may not even be thinking about right now. But—

NIXON: In the campaign.

COLSON: In the campaign, sure. Or in the precampaign period, and things that have not a damn thing to do with Watergate, or Segretti, but—

NIXON: Well, their license, apparently, is to go into everything in the campaign.

COLSON: Yeah, that’s right.

NIXON: That’s the problem.

COLSON: But why should one—you know, that’s an area where you don’t know where to draw the line. You can’t be a little bit pregnant and—

NIXON: Well, we’ll decide, of course, [unclear] cross that bridge till we get to it.

COLSON: Now, I think you’re right in terms of trying to limit those who have had direct access to you because that creates a problem and—

NIXON: I’m sure—absolutely.

COLSON: I would—

NIXON: But even there, I mean, [unclear]. I don’t think you can [unclear] as a certainty at the Chapin and Strachan level. I don’t think I would go that low.

COLSON: No, and I don’t think you need to.

NIXON: I’d say no, [unclear].

COLSON: Sure. That doesn’t make any difference. Let them do it. And let them take the whole damn committee apparatus. Of course, the other point which I’m going to mention to Haldeman before I take off is that if—whoever did order Watergate, if it’s going to come out in the hearings, for God’s sakes, let it out.

NIXON: Step out now.

COLSON: Let’s get rid of it now. Take our losses.

NIXON: Well, who the hell do you think did this? Mitchell? He can’t do it. He’ll perjure himself so he won’t admit it. Now that’s the problem. Magruder?

COLSON: I know Magruder has.

NIXON: Well, then he’s perjured himself, hasn’t he?

COLSON: Probably.

NIXON: All right. What’d you say then? Let’s take our losses. Who the hell’s going to step forward and say it? See my point? You’ve got it set—Liddy, of course, is—he directed Watergate. But who do you have in mind? I mean I’m afraid that we can’t risk it, Chuck, unless you have somebody in mind.

COLSON: No! I—well—

NIXON: My advice—would you suggest Mitchell go in and say, “Why”—well, he’d say, “Well, I—this must’ve occurred. I did not realize it at the time, but—”

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: Mitchell seems to have stonewalled it up to this point. I can’t figure out what he said.

COLSON: Well, he’s—you know, John has got one of those marvelous memories that “I don’t know. I don’t remember what was said.”

NIXON: “I was busy at the time.”

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: Do you think it’s going to come out?

COLSON: I don’t know.

NIXON: That’s the point.

COLSON: I haven’t seen anything yet related to this whole incident that has not come out one way or another. And it’s just that slow painful process of pulling it out piece by piece.

NIXON: Of course, I don’t want you to blatantly [unclear] his memory [unclear].

COLSON: Oh, hell!

NIXON: When I’m thinking about Watergate, though, that’s the whole point—they went through this tremendous investigation [unclear]. Unless one of the seven begins to talk. That’s the problem.

COLSON: That you never know. You never know.

NIXON: Well, then the question is as far as the seven, that the only ones that really know—Hunt knows, I would imagine. I imagine Liddy would know. McCord?

COLSON: Probably.

NIXON: All right. Those are the three.

COLSON: Well, what my prospective [law] partner—who knows Sirica very, very well and has tried many cases in front of Sirica—what he thinks Sirica will do, at the critical moment, is call in one of them and say, “Okay, you don’t go to jail if you tell me everything you know.” And—

NIXON: Make a deal for his immunity?

COLSON: Make a deal with them before he sentences them.

NIXON: Would they accept this?

COLSON: Would they accept it? I don’t think Hunt would.

NIXON: You don’t?

COLSON: No. No, I really don’t. No. I mean I think he’s a—

NIXON: Extremist?

COLSON: Yeah. He’s too much of a believer. On the other hand, who knows, you know? He’s lost his wife, which was a great source of strength to him. He’s got four kids.

NIXON: Trouble in Hunt’s case, which is that he has contact with you and Ehrlichman on other matters.

COLSON: Sure.

NIXON: That’s the problem.

COLSON: Sure. But it—but they’re not matters that I’m really concerned about. So he went and interviewed someone on ITT, but that’s perfectly logical as hell. That’s what you have a fellow like that available for.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: But the—you know, the whole—the unfortunate part of it is, and you’re—it’s imperative that people here not get bogged down in it.

NIXON: Yes. That’s right.

COLSON: The unfortunate part of it is that it is a diversion. There’s no limit to what they can do with it if they wanted. And the reason you have to hard-line it with certain people—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: —is that there is no limit to what they can do to it in terms of, well—hell, you know—even arranging the Democrats for Nixon ads. Yeah, we had some technical violations of the statute. A few mailings that were done by different committees outside of here. Yeah. Those were technical violations of the statute.

NIXON: Sure.

COLSON: Nobody evaded the statute. [unclear] can’t. But you know, if you wanted to make them into capital cases, you can.

NIXON: Weren’t there technical violations on the other side?

COLSON: Sure. Sure, but—

NIXON: [unclear] reasons for them.

COLSON: But the—certainly, but the problem is that they’re just going to get the—if they could get Ehrlichman, Haldeman, or me, to say under oath that we were aware of anything that was a violation of a statute, then they’ve got a circus on their hands.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: And either you have to have a John Mitchell–type memory or [laughs] or not appear.

NIXON: Well, that—your view would be to let Strachan go, or Chapin go.

COLSON: My view has along, always been, Mr. President, that in the case of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and I, the only three you can probably do this with—that they should be either written interrogatories or appointive-type things where they list out some highly specific areas. And that’s it and not beyond that. And if they try to get beyond that, you just—you hard—you stonewall it or you just don’t remember something when you have to.

NIXON: Right. Right.

 

“I don’t want to give the indication that we’re afraid of anything.”

February 14, 1973, 10:13 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Charles Colson

OVAL OFFICE

When Colson made known his plans to resign from the White House as of March 1973 in order to work at a Washington law firm, Nixon gave him a final assignment, and an attractive one, to tour Europe for three weeks on various errands. In a final talk, the two men analyzed the options for concealing the extent of activity surrounding Watergate among members of the White House staff. The need for a united front and consistent information reminded Nixon of a previous cause célèbre, the Alger Hiss case of 1948–50. When Hiss, a New Dealer and diplomat, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union, he denied the charge and it seemed likely to fade. At that juncture, Nixon, who was then serving in Congress, aggressively pursued the case. In fact, he staked his career on it, and he persisted, despite what he considered a concerted effort at stonewalling by the Truman administration. Hiss was eventually imprisoned, but not for espionage. With Nixon pressing every point—including some still considered dubious—Hiss was convicted of committing perjury in some of the early remarks he made in his own defense. Nixon and Colson discussed the myriad men and institutions—including the FBI—that would have to be controlled in order to contain the scandal of Nixon’s presidency. The Hiss case haunted Nixon throughout his maneuverings during the Watergate scandal. Though the two episodes were far more different than alike, they shared one thing of importance: Richard Nixon, in a state of desperation, all of his own making.

…

NIXON: Well, are you on your way?

COLSON: Yes, sir. I think—I’ve just been packing and getting briefed—

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah.

COLSON: —by the State Department.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: I’ve finished up my office work.

NIXON: Well, I think when you’re there—now, the thing to do is to try to put out of your mind all of the problems in which I—you’ve got to fish these things out. We always do. We [unclear] around here. Watergate and all that sort of thing is going to be there. It’s going to be [unclear] for what it is. And I think that you’ve got to take periods like this. You’re off at least two weeks—three weeks.

COLSON: I’ll be off and it’ll be about three weeks.

NIXON: Good. Just get out there and don’t read any papers, and—

COLSON: Well—

NIXON: Take the New York Herald.

COLSON: It’s—

NIXON: It’s the only paper left, which is basically the Washington Post [unclear]. It’s worse than the Washington Post.

COLSON: Right.

NIXON: [unclear] the Post—the Times—the New York Times.

COLSON: Yeah, they take the worst of each. It’s—

NIXON: Awful.

COLSON: Terrible.

NIXON: For political people in Europe, it’s [unclear] up the wall. All right.

COLSON: Well, I very much appreciate your—

NIXON: Yeah. What is your last-minute assessment of the Watergate thing and so forth? What’s going to happen on the—

COLSON: Well, I had a long talk—

NIXON: —sentences this week?

COLSON: I had a long talk with Bob [Haldeman] about it yesterday, Mr. President.

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: After we talked—and then I met last evening for a couple of hours with [Colson’s attorney and law partner] Dave Shapiro. He’s a—apart from being a splendid trial lawyer and smart—and he gave me a rationale which he’s writing up for John Dean for invoking executive privilege for all but certain defined areas where individual wrongdoing might be involved. He believes we’re on very solid ground if that’s the course we want to take.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: His analysis of it is that if you can’t have a confidential—the president cannot have immediate advisors and a confidential relationship unless he is assured that that confidentiality can be preserved, like a law clerk with a judge or congressional aide, and—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: It makes a very, very good case, and expresses it very articulately. I talked to [Fred] Fielding, who is Dean’s assistant, this morning and told him that Shapiro would come in and work with him next week if he is—this week if you want to. I think it’s the only course to take. I mean it—you—

NIXON: Start breaking over and [unclear]. The problem is that, I guess [unclear] the precedents are so important—is the break over on Flanigan and [executive privilege] justified that.

COLSON: Well, no, Flanigan we did just that. We said that it was a privileged relationship—separation of powers we argued. However, we would voluntarily make it available for a restricted area negotiated in advance. And—

NIXON: Well, I expect some additional area—

COLSON: That’s what we do this thing with. And—

NIXON: Oh, yeah.

COLSON: And, uh—

NIXON: Do you mean you’d have Haldeman testify?

COLSON: Well, I told Bob yesterday I thought perhaps Bob should not at all—

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: Ehrlichman, MacGregor, and myself, Timmons—only as the clearly defined areas in which—where we waive the privilege, basically.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: On any matters that have already—we’ve already been questioned by the FBI.

NIXON: The point that I think, is this—the point that I’m concerned about is you’ve got to figure which is worse—to waive the privilege in this town, or just—and people say, “Well, they stonewalled it.” I knew this—that the charge of cover-up and innuendo of charges that we’ve done—it’s all of—are worse than what comes out. You know, I think you’ve got to realize that I’ve got—I always go back of course to my own experience in the Hiss case. The Hiss case, of course, the administration was doubly guilty. First, he was guilty. But second, what really creamed him was that—the charge that the administration was trying to cover it up. [unclear] Justice Department didn’t have the wisdom to drop the case after they—after we got the facts on him. But you only have to use the red herring—not knowing all these facts, of course—and we killed him. It was the cover-up that hurt, not the fact that Hiss was guilty. Get my point?

COLSON: It’s—of course, this instance is distinguishable in that you have had a very exhaustive investigation. No one can really uncover—

NIXON: True. But—

COLSON: What—what—?

NIXON: When they say the investigation—you see that, Chuck, the line is the investigation was not followed through; it was covered up. No, I don’t think we have a choice. That’s my point. That’s why I don’t want to give the indication that we’re afraid of anything—that’s my point. I think it should be extremely limited though. I don’t want to see you down there, whether [unclear] you know, they get you into other things—

COLSON: That’s got nothing to do with this. That’s the point Shapiro made that I thought was most perceptive. He said, “Where you have already testified to a grand jury or to the FBI—”

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: “—in that area you have already exercised a waiver—beyond that, no.” Now, if you do that that’s fine, of course then they can do it, hell. If I had me on the witness stand and I wanted to create a headline a day, I could ask about when one of the milk producers first came into—

NIXON: Yeah, I know—

[Unclear exchange]

COLSON: Nothing to do with Watergate—nothing to do with Segretti. I never heard of him, but you could go on a fishing expedition.

NIXON: The thing is the—that they’re going to want to get you based on Hunt.

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: They just—that’s something we just can’t get into.

COLSON: Well, you’re—

NIXON: The thing is, for example, too, like a story “Colson this morning commented that Liddy had the FBI internal security taps.” But I can’t believe that’s true. I mean, I don’t know what they’re talking about.

COLSON: I—that could have been true. They had that [White House “Plumbers”] security unit set up in the basement of the EOB which Bud Krogh ran.

NIXON: Oh, I see. They were, at that time, in the country—

COLSON: Oh, sure. And they were—that was perfectly legitimate. I mean that’s the kind of thing they were hired to do—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: Investigating the authenticity of—

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: —of the [ITT lobbyist] Dita Beard letter [describing a pledge of campaign funds in exchange for an antitrust settlement by the Department of Justice] was a perfectly legitimate thing. And, I told the FBI about that. There wasn’t anything to hide. The thing you can’t do is you can’t get partway pregnant. You can’t start talking about one aspect of a relationship—

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: —with a White House employee and not another—

NIXON: What is—what does Shapiro think Mitchell should do?

COLSON: Shapiro believes that if Mitchell was indeed responsible that he should step forward now and take the heat, and—

NIXON: Not go to jail! He can’t do that.

COLSON: Well, his point is he’s going to anyway. Shapiro’s point is if he was guilty and if it’s going to come out in the hearings, then don’t let it come out in the hearings. Take our own losses ourselves.

NIXON: Well, that’s very nice but let’s come back again to [unclear].

COLSON: It depends on what John knew. I don’t know what he knew—

NIXON: Well—

COLSON: —firsthand.

NIXON: Right. They claim that he knew he was aware of—talked to Hunt and all that sort of thing. Is that correct? Is that what’s going to come out? That hasn’t yet.

COLSON: That hasn’t yet. That’s right. But you see, John doesn’t have any privilege. John doesn’t have any—

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: —immediate relationship to you. He was a—

NIXON: No.

COLSON: —cabinet officer and he had—did have—

NIXON: I was talking about the campaign.

COLSON: So, he doesn’t—

NIXON: Nothing about his—the campaign. I stayed miles away from it.

COLSON: Shapiro’s only analysis, just as a cold-blooded analytical lawyer—if you’re going to have a big explosion on national television and let goddamn Magruder—

NIXON: Magruder—those are the two, I guess, that are really a problem.

COLSON: You’d have the same problem, of course, if he knew about it.

NIXON: Oh, he did—

COLSON: I’m sure he did.

NIXON: He had to know about it.

COLSON: I know he did.

NIXON: How about Mitchell? Do you think he did?

COLSON: John is—John has the most marvelous—

NIXON: Great stone face.

COLSON: Yeah. And convenient memory. I mean, he can—

NIXON: Yeah, yeah. But the point is memory or not—you mean that this concern about Hunt cracking which you expressed—correct? I suppose if the judge calls him in—do you think that Hunt might just say, “Well, I’ll tell my whole story.” My view is that he won’t tell the whole story. My view is that he’d say, “All right, I will tell what it is.” But, the—I think what he would do frankly is to tell on Mitchell. Do you think that’s what he would tell them?

COLSON: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Or Magruder.

COLSON: Well, I don’t—

NIXON: My view is that he would limit the losses. He wouldn’t go all the way.

COLSON: No. He would limit the losses.

NIXON: I don’t think he would come in and say, “Well, I worked here for Colson on the Dita Beard thing and I worked on this, that, and the other thing.” Or would he?

COLSON: No. Because there isn’t anything that—

NIXON: But they didn’t—the judge doesn’t need to get into that.

COLSON: There’s nothing to do with Watergate.

NIXON: But he’d say, “I will tell you about Watergate [unclear].”

COLSON: He might do that—I don’t think so. But, normally I wouldn’t question Howard Hunt. Normally—

NIXON: No. I know, because of his emotional problem.

COLSON: But he’s just too—

NIXON: He thinks he’s killed his wife, and so forth.

COLSON: Yeah. It’s a tough one. It’s a really tough one.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: I don’t think he’ll crack. But I—but who knows? I mean, how do you know what goes through the minds of anybody in a situation like this?

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: God only knows.

NIXON: [unclear] it’s very tough. You see these blacks, for example, go in [and burglarize]. None of these guys [Watergate burglars] had weapons, did they?

COLSON: No.

NIXON: Gee—

COLSON: You know that’s the—of course that’s the—

NIXON: Burglary without weapons!

COLSON: That’s the travesty of the whole damn thing, Mr. President. No one was hurt. It was a stupid thing—dumb. But, my God, it isn’t like the Hiss trial. It isn’t like the [unclear]. There’s no—

NIXON: [unclear] I know that.

COLSON: In terms of the—

NIXON: I just—

COLSON: —consequences publicly it’s just preposterous—

NIXON: My point isn’t that Hiss was a traitor—it was the cover-up.

COLSON: Yeah.

NIXON: The cover-up is the [unclear].

COLSON: That’s the problem—

NIXON: That’s where really we’ve got to cut our losses. My losses have to be cut. The president’s losses have got to be cut on the cover-up deal.

COLSON: Right.

NIXON: Not the merits of the thing, Christ. I pled the merits all the way up. I said, “Well, they did it and it was wrong.” Period.

COLSON: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: But as far as this here we’re not covering up a damn thing.

COLSON: Hell! We’re not covering up any—

NIXON: The problem with Magruder is that basically he’s so close to Bob. Do you think that’s what it is? I suppose they figure if Magruder it’ll be into Haldeman. Correct? Is that where you think that one trail leads?

COLSON: That’s what they would assume, but—I mean, that’s what some people would assume, but I don’t—I think he was divorced publicly well enough in advance of all of this stuff that—

NIXON: Well, he’s not—Bob had no contact with Hunt. Did he—?

COLSON: No.

NIXON: Or McCord?

COLSON: No.

NIXON: Or Liddy?

COLSON: No. I don’t believe so. Oh, hell no. I don’t think that’s—

NIXON: His contact was with Magruder, correct?

COLSON: Yeah. Or through Gordon Strachan, which was the other link that—

NIXON: Well—

COLSON: —that they would draw. But Bob is in a different position. Bob is so much an extension of you. I mean, his everyday—his day’s work—

NIXON: I’m not talking about his privilege. I’m talking about what could come out on him and—

COLSON: The only thing that could come out is probably that they, you know, they—those people over there were crazy with memoranda. They wrote everything down.

NIXON: Every time Bob called in somebody would write it down.

COLSON: Sure. Or people would use his name. I mean, that happens to me. That happens to Ehrlichman.

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: And that’s another problem. You can’t control who says, “Well—”

NIXON: “Colson wants this done.”

COLSON: “—Colson wants this done.” And either that—I just—somebody just—

NIXON: Well, they [unclear]. They even use the—they say, “The president wants this or that done.” Or, you know, “The boss wants this or that done” and so forth. And of course [unclear] most people [unclear].

COLSON: Yeah. I never did that deliberately. But that’s—but a lot of people do do that, of course.

NIXON: Well, fortunately, I didn’t see any of them, you know? As far as my situation here—is extremely good. I never talked to—I divorced myself from the tactics of the campaign.

COLSON: Yeah. Very good.

NIXON: [unclear] my own schedule.

COLSON: Very wise.

NIXON: I wouldn’t let people come in and talk politics. Mitchell didn’t. [unclear] never saw Magruder until after [unclear]. Never saw him. Ehrlichman one day went over there and met all those guys [unclear]. MacGregor told me [unclear]. That’s good, too.

COLSON: Oh, no. I think I—I think the only pitfall, Mr. President, and this is the one that I’ve—I think I’ve got everybody—I think everybody’s thinking on the right line. The only pitfall is the moment you open up the Pandora’s box in the White House you can lead into nineteen other totally irrelevant trails—the ones that would cause daily embarrassment. My feeling is hard-line it in terms of what you are willing—

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: —to talk about.

NIXON: You know the thing about it of course is that you have this enormous difficult double standard in the press, for instance. You can take this story about today about the—that they had access to the confidential memoranda. Now, who the hell is that coming from, I would ask? See, they’ve got this and they’re dripping it out little by little. Who—where are they getting these stories, Chuck?

COLSON: The bureau.

NIXON: The FBI?

COLSON: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Did they question the FBI [unclear]. How did the FBI know?

COLSON: Well, the FBI would have been in a—would have been sending that information over to Liddy and Hunt.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

COLSON: And every leak we’ve had, Mr. President, has been out of the bureau. That’s one of the reasons that when you asked me my opinion yesterday, I don’t know whether—

NIXON: About Gray.

COLSON: I don’t know whether Gray’s the best man or not, but I—

NIXON: [unclear]

COLSON: Yes, certainly. Let him go in and fire some of the bastards that he thinks have [unclear].

NIXON: Yeah.

COLSON: The whole damn—

NIXON: You fire them, on the other hand, they go out and talk more. What then?

COLSON: Well, the hell—they’re talking now. If—there isn’t anything that I ever told the bureau that I haven’t seen come out in print. And, it does—it really does raise questions about the integrity of the bureau’s process. You have to be a little careful what you—

NIXON: [unclear]. Well, when Hoover was there it didn’t leak.

COLSON: It didn’t happen.

NIXON: Did not happen.

COLSON: Oh, hell no! They were scared stiff.

NIXON: I could talk to Hoover about all sorts of things and I talked to him very freely over the years and it never, never came out.

COLSON: Well, because they knew that if anybody talked—

NIXON: To the press.

COLSON: —to them. And—

NIXON: You take the [unclear]. I’d seen the thing this morning. They make a big thing out of some contribution we received that would sort of [unclear] more than a five-thousand-dollar contribution. You know that wasn’t really a blunder. Was it? Good God! Our people spent thirty-four million dollars. Where the hell [unclear]?

COLSON: No, that thing—he wrote off all the loans, which was a direct avoidance of the statute and we—

NIXON: Not an evasion.

COLSON: Sir?

NIXON: Not an evasion.

COLSON: Not an evasion.

NIXON: Not a violation, therefore.

COLSON: No, but my God, I mean if you’re going to write it on something—so the Seafarers gave us—Paul Hall gave us a hundred thousand dollars. Well, that’s—they’ve written about that now four days in a row. But [major donor to George McGovern’s campaign Henry] Kimmelman writes off a half a million and—which was an avoidance—

NIXON: You mean he loaned that much [unclear]? Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s a—are our people are going to make anything out of it?

COLSON: Oh, we screamed about it. We screamed about it during the campaign. But—

NIXON: So it’s a contribution?

COLSON: Sure. They carried it as a loan all through the campaign because they didn’t want to show this big sum of money coming from these people.

NIXON: Oh.

COLSON: After the election they’d write off the loan. So it becomes a contribution absolute.

NIXON: Wouldn’t our counsel get into that hearing?

COLSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

NIXON: Paul [O’Brien, CRP attorney] ought to be hanging on that.

COLSON: That’s the kind of thing that—where you know, if our fundraising and money is being held up to inspection, his should be the same way.

NIXON: Get Kimmelman right in and say, “Did you do this? Did you do this?”

COLSON: Oh, I’d call on every one of those guys. You can have a parade. If that’s the way they want to play the game, then they’ve got to know—the people on the Hill have got to know that’s the way our guys are going to play the game, which I think they would. But the bottom line, Mr. President, of all of this, really, is that I just don’t think the public gives a damn. Now they—everybody enjoys a sideshow and this town gets all excited over the—that kind of circus.

NIXON: I agree, too.

COLSON: But I think you just have to go up there and say the matter of principle that—and be very hard about it, and then say, “What the hell, if the country—”

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: You’re going to get the Left all exercised. Because it’s something they can talk about.

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: I just don’t think the man in the street cares.

NIXON: Right, right, right.

COLSON: The people that I have talked to the last forty-eight hours have—just have one overwhelming sentiment and that is my God, how proud they are to be Americans—how proud they are of you. Everybody—it’s been an interesting phenomenon. Everyone I’ve talked to has said, “Congratulate the president on the prisoners.” And that just—the impact of that is the equivalent of a thousand Watergates. He just—

NIXON: You know, even though it’s a symbolic thing when I ordered that they take the [POW] flag up.

COLSON: Wonderful. Beautiful statement.

NIXON: They [the press] buried the thing. The networks should have given [unclear].

COLSON: No. The Washington Post buried it [unclear].

NIXON: They did because they just—they knew it was very effective. But you think the average person got something?

COLSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No, I—

NIXON: [unclear] just stuck it right in the groin. [unclear]

COLSON: Yeah, your statement was marvelous. It’s the time to fly the flag high. I talked to [labor leader Frank] Fitzsimmons who of course was so thrilled. He’s staying with me Monday. Last night, my God, he would do anything. He said, “That man—I just love that man.” He said, “I am just so proud.” He said, “Think of the courage. Think of bringing those boys home. He brought them home. He brought them home.” But people are saying that. I mean that’s the way that—

NIXON: Here’s one place where our media friends have misjudged.

COLSON: Yes, sir.

NIXON: They thought the coming home of the POWs would be a time for national remorse and that sort of shit. All of a sudden it turns out that people are just delighted that POWs are brave and heroes—

…

COLSON: Mr. President, I thank you for allowing me to go on this trip.

NIXON: Oh, that’s fine. You go ahead.

COLSON: Without—

NIXON: Have a good time.

COLSON: I’ll be winding up when I get back. I don’t want to be maudlin but it was kind of ironic with the prisoners coming back.

NIXON: Well, I said that to Ziegler—forgive me for Helms being sent to Ghana.

COLSON: All right, sir. [unclear] Proudest thing I’ve ever done in my life, sir.

NIXON: Well, that’s—you’re not leaving. You’re just going across the street.

COLSON: [unclear] a block away—I, uh—

NIXON: Right. A block away, huh?

COLSON: Half a block away. I—at your service for anything, anytime—

NIXON: Right.

COLSON: —anyway.

NIXON: Well, I appreciate it. You went beyond the call of duty. Fine. Get a little rest. You go on.

 

“This envelope full of stuff”

February 14, 1973, 5:34 P.M.

Richard Nixon and John Ehrlichman

OVAL OFFICE

John Ehrlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs, was at the core of the president’s inner circle. Formerly a successful lawyer in Seattle, he had moved to the capital in 1969 to join the Nixon administration, and over the years he handled a wide array of issues, most of them regarding everyday government business within the United States. Ehrlichman also, however, involved himself enthusiastically in political activities that ranged from the simply zealous to the starkly illegal. Discussing upcoming confirmation hearings for Patrick Gray as director of the FBI, Nixon and Ehrlichman focused on the potential risks his testimony posed to an administration that shielded so much. Nixon was increasingly concerned about the many leaks that he perceived as emanating from the FBI, most of them concerning the widening Watergate scandal. In discussing the acting director, Ehrlichman described an envelope full of material especially damning to the White House that he and John Dean had given personally to Gray, for safekeeping. To both Nixon and Ehrlichman, Gray was essential, yet neither knew him well enough to know just how far he would or could go to protect their secrets. All the while, Nixon spoke of clearing the air and avoiding any type of cover-up.

…

NIXON: What about Gray’s process?

EHRLICHMAN: All right. If you’d like to get into that—

NIXON: I think this—I really don’t feel myself that—I’ve thought about it—these and some other things. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it. I think we had better take a known quantity with weaknesses that we’re aware of in this particular area than to try to take somebody else. Gray is loyal. I realize he’s weak in some areas. I realize there’ll be some confirmation problem, but let’s look at that for just a moment. Maybe it’s just as well to have Gray get up there and have them beat him over the head about Watergate, and have him say what the hell he’s done.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, he’s prepared to do that. I’ve been over this today with John Dean to see—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: —what he says the problems will be. He says it will be a very long, very tough confirmation, and will be an opportunity for a different set of senators to get into the Watergate than the Ervin group.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: It will be the Tunneys and Kennedys.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: And the Bayhs and so on. But recognizing that—Gray tells a very good story.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: And he could be expected—

NIXON: He tells basically the story that I think ought to be done. But the main problems with Watergate are not the facts. Sure, the facts—the this, that, and the other thing—the main problem is the cover-up thing.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Now damn it, we just can’t have an appearance of cover-up. And I think we can simply say that, yes, the—we want—and let him get up there. You see, if you don’t, if you kick him upstairs to the circuit court, they’ll say that we’re afraid. There’s no way we’ll get around it. It’ll look like a cover-up. It does get a different set. It gets Kennedy, and Tunney, and the rest. So that they’ll get after Gray. Gray, it seems to me, makes a rather good impression. I don’t know—I haven’t seen him on television. Does he?

EHRLICHMAN: Reasonably good. He’s very earnest.

NIXON: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: He’s very square corners.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: You know, kind of the retired navy captain. He’s vulnerable according to John’s analysis. He’s vulnerable on two counts. One is whether or not he handled Watergate adequately and John says, “I think he’ll acquit himself very nicely there.”

NIXON: He does?

EHRLICHMAN: The other is his stewardship of the bureau over the period of the last eight months.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: There, John says, the established bureaucracy of the bureau will be feeding all kinds of garbage—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —to the committee—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —and Gray will be on the defense.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: So he says we’re liable to be in for a few surprises, on other cases or the handling of other matters or things of that kind that are incalculable right now. But he said he doesn’t think that he is in serious jeopardy, and on balance, he thinks Gray is—as you say, is a known quantity. He is a guy we can tell to do things and he will do them. Now he’s been a little weak on that.

NIXON: I know.

EHRLICHMAN: Because of this.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: He’s been afraid of what he’d have to face at the time of confirmation.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: John says—

NIXON: Once he’s confirmed—

EHRLICHMAN: He thinks if—

NIXON: He’d be tough.

EHRLICHMAN: —if, but only if you call Gray over and you read him chapter and verse. And you say, “Pat—”

NIXON: I have agreed to do it.

EHRLICHMAN: He says you. Now I can do this, but he said you.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: You would say, “Pat, I had an arrangement with J. Edgar Hoover that up until now I have not had with you and I missed it. Once you’re confirmed, I want it understood that we go back to a personal relationship.”

NIXON: Without the attorney general.

EHRLICHMAN: “That when I call, you respond.”

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: And that “we have to have an absolutely tight relationship.”

NIXON: Well, how can we get it so that not only I call but if you call?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, then you could delegate that and go from there. As it is now, John says we made a mistake in the inception in not tying him down tight enough. But we did it for a number of reasons. He was contingent, and we had this thing hanging up, and he’s tracked reasonably well. Now, he has some guilty knowledge in connection with the Watergate that only Dean and I know about that has to do with Hunt. We turned some stuff over to Gray to get it out of here. That’ll never come out. He’ll never testify to that. There isn’t any way that he could testify to that.

NIXON: What if he—

EHRLICHMAN: Well, it just isn’t necessary. There’s no way for anybody to know. And that he understands that that set of circumstances never happened and it’s never, never appeared—never came out.

NIXON: Where are the files?

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t know where he’s got them, but he’s got them. We felt that we want to be in a position to say we had turned everything over to the FBI, so I called him up to my office one day, and we said, “Pat, here’s a big fat envelope.”

NIXON: What is this—stuff that Hunt did on that case in California?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, no, it’s other stuff, and Dean’s never told me what was in the envelope.

NIXON: I don’t know what Hunt dealt in myself.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, he must have dealt in a hell of a lot of stuff.

NIXON: [unclear] doing some things.

EHRLICHMAN: He did some things for Chuck, apparently, that he made a record of.

NIXON: Was that in this envelope?

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: That Chuck make a record of it?

EHRLICHMAN: No, but Hunt did.

NIXON: How did you get Hunt’s stuff?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, we opened his safe. See, Dean took everything out of his safe, and we turned everything over to FBI agents who came for it, except this envelope full of stuff. And, then I called Gray to my office. Dean came in. I said, “Pat, here’s an envelope. We want to be in a position to say we’ve turned everything over to the FBI, so we’re giving it to you. I don’t care what you do with it as long as it never appears.”

NIXON: Suppose that they ask him about other activities, with Hunt and so forth—what does he say about—?

EHRLICHMAN: Presumably he says, “I honestly don’t know of any because”—maybe he never opened the envelope. If he was smart, he didn’t.

NIXON: I don’t want to get into that with him—the envelope.

EHRLICHMAN: I understand.

NIXON: Can I avoid that?

EHRLICHMAN: But I want you to know about it. The—at some point in time, if you haven’t already, Bob or I or John Dean or somebody ought to give you the rundown on how this Ervin hearing is going to go—the kinds of things that are liable to come smoking up so you’re not surprised. But we think that there’s a reasonably good possibility of coming through it very much like we’ve come through the trial with a certain amount of day-to-day flak.

NIXON: Oh, sure.

EHRLICHMAN: And evening television stuff, but no lasting results.

NIXON: Well, I suppose this is all dependent—I talked to Bob a little bit about that case—given me some feel—but I suppose, John, it depends. See, [unclear] came back from California and I had a two-day meeting.

EHRLICHMAN: Right. Right.

NIXON: But really the problem is that one of these guys could crack.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: One of them could. The one that could crack that it would really hurt would be Hunt.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, Magruder could really hurt in a different direction.

NIXON: Well, Magruder, if he cracks, he goes to prison.

EHRLICHMAN: Yes.

NIXON: Well, I—unless he takes immunity. Is that what he would do?

EHRLICHMAN: Possibly. Possibly.

NIXON: What do you think?

EHRLICHMAN: There are several of these guys that we’re relying on. Sloan is not a problem.

NIXON: He doesn’t know anything.

EHRLICHMAN: But Magruder is a problem of—

NIXON: Magruder knows a hell of a lot.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: [unclear] bring them in. Let’s face it. Didn’t Magruder perjure himself?

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: Or did he? I don’t know.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure did.

NIXON: But I think he did. From what I’ve heard he must have.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure did.

NIXON: He said he was not involved—he didn’t have the knowledge and he did. Is that right?

EHRLICHMAN: Basically, that’s it.

NIXON: Yeah. But beyond that—I mean beyond Magruder—who the hell else perjured himself? Did Mitchell?

EHRLICHMAN: I assume so without knowing.

NIXON: Well, who else have we got?

EHRLICHMAN: The thing has a very good chance if it’s handled right. We cut our losses here, cut our losses there, try and shore up Howard Baker here and there.

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: Bill Safire [unclear].

NIXON: From what I had heard, I thought your [unclear]. I’m not going to be taken by surprise by anything.

EHRLICHMAN: Okay, well—

NIXON: When I say that I mean the only real problems that I see basically are whether if—to the extent that it ties into the White House staff—you know, I was just thinking it’s fortunate all that lip service and everything else we’ve done—at least I’ve never met any of these people.

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Except for Magruder. I don’t ever—I don’t—I never met Hunt. Never talked to—and haven’t discussed these things, fortunately.

EHRLICHMAN: Yep. I’ve met Hunt once. Never—

NIXON: I knew something—I mean the Segretti operation must have been—or that—or no—or Colson in areas other than Watergate, but purely political stuff.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Which was perfectly legal.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Nothing wrong with it.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: I think they did some work on Teddy Kennedy or something. That’s in the paper already.

EHRLICHMAN: Did some investigating.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: The other issue I—

NIXON: [unclear]—

EHRLICHMAN: —raise at this point—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —is because the handling of Gray in other hands—Eastland and his group could go in an unpredictable direction. I just don’t know. And so that’s the one lingering hazard. Now, the other prime candidate is Henry Petersen.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: The criminal deputy and he’s in just as bad shape.

NIXON: Oh, Christ. Yes.

EHRLICHMAN: You know—and without the ties that Gray has.

NIXON: He wouldn’t care what happened to us.

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, Ruckelshaus is a possibility. There’s one other fellow named Vernon Acree who’s the head of Customs who’s a possibility.

NIXON: No.

EHRLICHMAN: But that’s about the—

NIXON: On the Gray thing—

EHRLICHMAN: —about the spread.

NIXON: —for instance, I see your point. It’s two Watergate hearings.

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Would Gray—would not be called before the Ervin Committee?

EHRLICHMAN: No. Well, he could be, but probably wouldn’t be. So sort of double indemnity—what is—double—

NIXON: Double jeopardy.

EHRLICHMAN: —jeopardy.

NIXON: [unclear] come down on him.

EHRLICHMAN: Uh—

NIXON: It’s a tough [unclear]—

EHRLICHMAN: I—it really is.

NIXON: We just don’t have a good, strong man—a loyalist.

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, that’s it. We combed, you know, about as well as we can. Let me come at it from another side. We had the idea of nominating Maury Stans for a confirmable place.

NIXON: I heard about that.

EHRLICHMAN: The thought there is to pull out some of the poison—to air it in another proceeding. Maury’s pretty clean—tells a good story. He’s righteously indignant. So nominate him. Get him up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or some other committee. Let them ask him about campaign financing. Let him tell his story and be vindicated in that process. Pretty good collateral action. I’m inclined to think that there’s some of that in Gray—and the case could be made that the Gray thing would do the same thing. You’d have papers say, “Gee, now that he’s told the whole story, that was a hell of an investigation. And the administration really did turn over every rock.”

NIXON: Well, for example, they’ll ask, “Did you investigate—did you get it straight from Haldeman?” They didn’t.

EHRLICHMAN: No, the FB—the bureau never did it. At least not that I know of.

NIXON: But did they get one from you?

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, they got two from me.

NIXON: Colson?

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: Why not Haldeman?

EHRLICHMAN: They—it just never led to him. If they’d wanted to, he was available.

NIXON: And that’s what he would say.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: Could I [unclear]?

EHRLICHMAN: No problem.

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: I think I’d send him up. I’d simply send him up.

EHRLICHMAN: Okay. Okay.

NIXON: [unclear] You know, we constantly get this story repeated, John, which [unclear]. The Nixon administration’s program of investigating domestic subversive groups, as you know—that goddamn thing started—you know what I mean? On this—in the Watergate story this morning, that thing started as you know, years ago.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: And reached its peak under Bobby Kennedy.

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, the taps and stuff. Yeah. Sure, sure.

NIXON: And that those became available to Hunt.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: I don’t know how the hell they became available to Hunt.

EHRLICHMAN: They didn’t. They didn’t.

NIXON: Huh?

EHRLICHMAN: They didn’t.

NIXON: You sure?

EHRLICHMAN: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Those were available to you as I recall.

EHRLICHMAN: But there was never any connection between Dave Young’s leak operation.

NIXON: Oh, that’s Dave Young.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. See, and that’s where he tied in and now we had Hunt working for Dave Young for a brief period of time.

NIXON: Oh, I see.

EHRLICHMAN: And what he was doing down there was simply a job of analysis. He was taking all those leaks and matching them up—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —to see where a commonality among them was—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —to try and determine which documents they came from.

NIXON: But we had to check that?

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, why of course. But he never got tap materials—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —from anything.

NIXON: Did Dave Young get it?

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, Dave Young never got any of this domestic tap stuff.

NIXON: Who the hell did?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, I got some of it. Bob got a lot of it. Bob got most of it, I think. I’m not aware that anybody else ever did.

…

NIXON: The point is if you’re ever asked in the Domestic Council about it, I would show some outrage.

EHRLICHMAN: Why sure.

NIXON: That this, the Nixon administration—what the hell. We cut them back!

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right, way back. We cut the army clear out—see, they had the army doing all this.

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: We cut all that out.

NIXON: The army out of it and we had the number of domestic taps has been cut down to the barest necessary to protect the national security.

EHRLICHMAN: We’ll, we finally took them off. We took all of them off except the national security taps.

NIXON: But they’re done domestically as well as—

EHRLICHMAN: They’re done domestically but they’re done, you know, pursuant to that statute and the number is way, way down.

NIXON: I’m inclined to think that we just better [unclear] because I think at the present time we have the worst of both worlds. We can’t leave it uncertain. Now how do you handle Kleindienst on this? I’ve got to run.

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, I’ll just inform him. He’ll be happy as a clam.

NIXON: Yeah. That I’ve got to see him alone. I—

EHRLICHMAN: Right. I would not tell Kleindienst until after you’ve talked to Gray.

NIXON: Okay. Should we meet Gray more privately tomorrow?

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

NIXON: All right.

EHRLICHMAN: Okay.

NIXON: I’m going to the Pentagon at one o’clock and I could be back by, let’s say four o’clock.

EHRLICHMAN: Four o’clock.

NIXON: Because I don’t know how long it’ll take.

EHRLICHMAN: Okay, fine.

NIXON: You and I will see him together.

EHRLICHMAN: All right. All right.

NIXON: We’ll decide that damn thing.

EHRLICHMAN: I think just—

NIXON: Just you give me a very brief talking paper.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, all right.

NIXON: You can just say that “the president wants to have a candid talk with you about this.” [unclear] “Pat, we haven’t made up our minds. He wants to talk to you first.”

EHRLICHMAN: All right.

NIXON: That’ll keep him.

EHRLICHMAN: All right. Good. Okay, I’ve got other stuff, but I’ll—

NIXON: Tell him all the damn heat he is going to be through.

EHRLICHMAN: Yep, we’ve got to do that.

NIXON: You could bring it in in the morning if you want. I have nothing to—in fact, he could have come in this morning. Wait a minute. Tomorrow’s Thursday. No, I’ve put a cabinet meeting on Friday. Thought I’d let George [Shultz] send [unclear].

EHRLICHMAN: Good.

NIXON: [unclear] which is good and let—Agnew’s [unclear] a report [unclear].

EHRLICHMAN: Good. Well, I’ll get him in tomorrow afternoon. We won’t put it on your schedule. I’ll get a talker in before that.

NIXON: Okay.

 

Testing the mettle of Acting Director Gray

February 16, 1973, 9:08 A.M.

Richard Nixon, Patrick Gray, and John Ehrlichman

OVAL OFFICE

Two days after discussing Pat Gray in depth, Nixon and Ehrlichman met with him and had a long talk. They discussed leaks, loyalty, and the role of the FBI in serving the president and the nation—in that order. The underlying topic was Gray’s ability to deal with the press and two different congressional hearings, without compromising any secrets. Nixon’s part of the conversation, which developed into a paean to J. Edgar Hoover, was more lecturing than probing, with the result that Gray probably learned more about Nixon than the president did about Gray.

…

NIXON: Hi. How are you?

GRAY: Mr. President. How are you, sir?

NIXON: How are you? Nice to see you.

GRAY: You look great.

NIXON: Fine. How’re you feeling?

GRAY: Good.

NIXON: Fine.

GRAY: Mean—nasty. [laughs] That’s right. [unclear] a bit happy—

EHRLICHMAN: That’s because I got you up early this morning?

GRAY: A little bit early.

NIXON: Let me ask you. How is your health—

GRAY: Good.

NIXON: —since you had your operation?

GRAY: Good, Mr. President. I called that thing Sunday morning when we were waiting to go to Mass. I told Bea, I said, “That damn obstruction is back.” And that’s exactly what it was. There was no evidence of tumors, no cancer.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

GRAY: There’s just a simple adhesion down there.

NIXON: In other words, as far as your ability to work and everything, why there’s no question that you’re ready to put in the long hours.

GRAY: No—still doing it. Did it right in the hospital the day after the operation. I had my executive assistant up and started right away.

NIXON: Let me ask a couple of other things having to do with whether we decide here. As you probably are aware—what this—if you were to be nominated—and I think, of course I’ve talked to John Mitchell about Tolson. You obviously open up before a different committee than the Ervin Committee—the whole Watergate thing. Now the question is whether you feel that you can handle it—whether that’s a good thing, bad thing, and so forth. What I mean is the Watergate Committee, you know, has its—Ervin and three or four jackasses on it and so forth. It will be bad enough there. Your committee would have Kennedy and Tunney on it.

GRAY: Right. And Bayh.

NIXON: They’d like to make quite a deal about the thing. What I’m getting at is this—I’m not concerned about the substance—about the facts coming out. I am—all I’m thinking is whether it’s to the interest of everybody concerned to have the man who is to be nominated for director of the bureau be badgered and so forth on whether it’s good for us to have that story told twice before two committees, et cetera. So why don’t you give me your judgment on that? You must have thought about it.

GRAY: Oh, yes.

NIXON: You must have thought also of the kind of a story you’d have to tell when you’d be examined on it. It would not be limited to Watergate. They would probably ask you about such things as, “Do you know about any other things that the bureau’s done—have you got into this domestic wiretapping,” where incidentally, parenthetically, whatever you’re hearing, it’s time to start getting out the truth there—which is heighten the evidence that is on hand. It’s the Robert Kennedy administration—Justice Department, when there were over a hundred a year. It’s been cut down to a very small amount. Then I would be a bit goddamn defensive about it. I’d say, “Yes, we have to do it, because this involves the possibility of violent groups that we’ve got”—this, what happened to Wallace, [unclear] judicial judgment. [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: He can tell a strong story.

NIXON: Yeah, say, “Look, what do you want us to do about this? Do you want to let people get shot?”

…

NIXON: It has to do with national security. There’re a hell of a lot of people, these violent groups, who would threaten these—the Jews and all the others that run around—the Arabs.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Either side now. There’s this violent [American] Jewish Committee that wants to kill the Arabs and the Arabs want to kill the Jews and Christ, they’re—

EHRLICHMAN: Terrorism is a tragic problem.

NIXON: Terrorism—hijacking is another thing. And you’ve got to get into that. Right? Some of that requires wiretapping. Higher—and your authority—your responsibility in hijacking—your responsibility for this. I think that you’ve got to get—and I want, John and me for next time. [unclear] I’m already hitting them. I don’t believe we should be defensive. First of all, we’re doing less. Second, it’s extremely necessary. We must not be denied the right to use the weapon. The idea that we’re wiretapping a lot of political groups is bullshit.

GRAY: That’s right and that’s simply not—

NIXON: Let’s get back to the fundamental part of it.

GRAY: It’s the other—

NIXON: You know the mood of the Congress. As you know, they’re panicked—depressed by Watergate, and so forth. What should we do? Would it hurt or help for you to go up there and be bashed about that?

GRAY: I think, probably, Mr. President, I’m the man that’s in the best position to handle that thing.

NIXON: Why?

GRAY: Because I’ve consistently handled it from the outset, before Judge Sirica’s order came to play [United States v. U.S. District Court], when we were talking only procedure not substance, and I handled all kinds of questions from all kinds of press people and then when Sirica shut the valve, why I had to shut up, even on things procedural. I’ve been intimately connected with it. I’ve been responsible for quite a bit of the decision making insofar as the Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned. I feel that I would have taken a greater beating had not the Ervin Committee been established and this is always a possibility there that you’re not going to get too much flak before Judiciary. I think you’d—I think I’m going to take the expected heat from Kennedy, Bayh, Hart, Tunney—that group. But I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as severe as it would have been had not the Ervin Committee been established. I think that’s where it’s all going to hang out and I’m not ashamed for it to hang out because I think the administration has done a hell of a fine job in going after this thing and I think we’re prepared to present it in just that light. Now if you bring somebody else in, you can be attacked as ducking the issue, trying to put a new boy in so he can go up there and say, “I didn’t have anything to do with this. This happened on Gray’s watch. Get him back here and let him talk about it.” I think it’s a thing we ought to meet head-on, on every front.

NIXON: In other words, you’d be—let me say, what kind of story could you tell—and say that you just go in and, “We had a very intensive investigation. We ran down all leads.” Who’d you talk to? “Yes, we questioned at very great length—took sworn statements.” Did you swear in statements?

GRAY: Yes, we did.

NIXON: And that members of the White House staff—“Why didn’t you question Haldeman?” What do you say to that?

GRAY: Perfectly good reason we didn’t question Mr. Haldeman. Because no agent, even the case agent right at the lowest level, felt that any trail led to Mr. Haldeman. He did not recommend that a lead be set out to interview Mr. Haldeman. The field supervisor did not. The circulation charts did not. The bureau supervisor did not—

NIXON: It did—leads did lead to others?

GRAY: It did lead to others.

NIXON: Colson and so forth.

GRAY: And we went after them. This is one I had—

NIXON: What about Mitchell? You questioned Mitchell.

GRAY: Sir? Yes, sir.

NIXON: Yeah, Mitchell was questioned.

[WAITER enters.]

GRAY: Oh, thank you.

[WAITER leaves.]

NIXON: You questioned Stans and so forth.

GRAY: Yes, we—Stans three times—Mitchell once. Bob Haldeman not at all. I’m not really afraid of that thing because I called those agents in at the end of that first week and just gave them unshirted hell and told them to go and go with all the vim and vigor possible. I furthermore called Larry O’Brien that Saturday morning and I said, “Mr. O’Brien, I hear there’re some rumors around this town that the FBI is not pursuing this with vigor.” And, he said, “No, no,” he said. “Let me assure you we’re very happy with what you’re doing.” So, I’m going to lay that on their backs and other things like that. I don’t fear that investigation at all, Mr. President.

NIXON: What else do you think they will raise? Morale in the bureau, and so forth and so on?

GRAY: Well, I think they’ll do that but I think we can shoot that down easily because I’ve got all kinds of letters from the field that I wouldn’t let come to you. I stopped them. They tried to respond to this criticism that morale is bad. It’s actually higher than it’s ever been in the bureau.

NIXON: What is the situation, for example—you see, you haven’t been able to do anything or have you, up to this point, about the leaks—you know are all coming from the bureau. That the whole story, we’ve found, is coming from the bureau.

GRAY: Well, I’m not completely ready to buy that, Mr. President. We have done something. I’ve been wiping people out of there, you know, like the Assyrian [army] on the foe. I wiped out a whole division.

NIXON: Do we have any question about the leaks—those leaks coming from the bureau?

GRAY: Well—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, Pat and I talked about this issue and then—

NIXON: [unclear] wish he would come forth.

EHRLICHMAN: —there have been [unclear].

NIXON: That isn’t what our Time magazine guy says. He’s got a direct channel to the bureau.

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right.

GRAY: Well, he probably has. [Time magazine reporter] Sandy Smith used to talk to a lot of guys in the bureau and I won’t talk to the SOB anymore because if he lays the cards down—

NIXON: This is very high.

GRAY: No. We laid the cards on the table and that’s low—three times, right. Laid them right out there. Gave the same cards to Newsweek and each one wrote differently and I just said no more to this clown and I won’t deal with him.

NIXON: Well—

EHRLICHMAN: [unclear] there is no two ways about it—

NIXON: Smith has written stuff that is true, right out of the bureau—

EHRLICHMAN: There is no—

NIXON: Right out of the bureau?

EHRLICHMAN: —question, about their getting—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —the information—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —off the 703s or whatever those forms are—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —the investigation summary forms.

NIXON: So they—

GRAY: 302s?

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: And—

NIXON: Because, I would say if they were false, then I would just say it was time to—

GRAY: There are some things—

NIXON: —bring those things to an end. But this is a case where they have true information and I say well, damn it, that’s somebody from the bureau. Do you think Petersen’s office puts it out?

GRAY: Mr. President, you have to realize that other people than we get the 302s and I have put some pretty strong controls on our dissemination and our accounting. And, I don’t say that it’s not possible it can come from the bureau. It is possible.

NIXON: Well, let me ask you this, for example. Did you follow through on the directive which I understand was given that everybody in the bureau was to take a lie detector test as to whether—what part they played in the wiretapping of my plane in 1968? Has that been done?

GRAY: No, that directive was not given out.

NIXON: Well, it’s given now.

GRAY: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Yeah. Now, what happened there? Who dropped the ball on that?

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t know of it, Mr. President.

GRAY: Do—

NIXON: Yeah. There—that charge has been around. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But that is to be—that has to be—the Washington Star has the straight story. Johnson killed it in the Star, but it has to be checked out just for the integrity of the bureau.

GRAY: I checked out some of the allegations that John Dean gave me on [Johnson National Security Council staff member] Bromley Smith I guess the bloke’s name is, and what they were doing on [Republican] Anna Chennault [who was wiretapped on Johnson’s orders during the 1968 presidential election due to her contacts with the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese government] and how they tried to—

NIXON: But there was a wiretap. There was a phone wiretap for sure and there was an allegation that—

GRAY: On your plane, sir?

NIXON: Hoover told me—

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —that the bureau tapped my plane—

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —in 1968 and he told Mitchell the same thing.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Now I want everybody in the bureau who has anything to do with wiretapping at that time questioned and given a lie detector test.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Not because I’m telling you this but because the allegation’s been made and the Star’s been running the story—

GRAY: Right.

NIXON: —and we want to knock it down. Don’t you believe you should?

GRAY: Oh, sure. But I haven’t—

NIXON: You see my point?

GRAY: I didn’t have any directive like that. I had some questions from John Dean about Bromley Smith, Anna Chennault, and company.

NIXON: I understand. I’m not making charges, but I do know that that has come up. All we do is to play it very—

GRAY: I wouldn’t put it past them to do it.

NIXON: I wouldn’t put it past Johnson.

GRAY: No.

NIXON: It’s not trying to do him in but it is very important that it be known in the Star and I think the Star is working with one magazine—I don’t know which one—that it be known, that that’s been investigated. So that we just don’t say, “Well, the bureau didn’t do it.” I know the bureau’s sensitivity on that, but are the same people that do wiretapping for the bureau now, are they the same ones you had in ’68?

GRAY: We think, Mr. President, that if such an order came, it came to Deke DeLoach from Lyndon Johnson and that it—

NIXON: Well, then DeLoach must be brought in and put on a—

GRAY: Yeah, if Deke got it, he gave it.

NIXON: All right, he used to have it. He’s going to lie detector also.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: He’s out, I know, but he’s still got to take one. I mean, this has gotten—I want this—don’t you agree, John? We’ve got to get to the bottom of the damn thing.

GRAY: Well, I want to, you know—

NIXON: I’m not going to be in here denying it from here unless the director of the FBI tells me that it’s been checked.

GRAY: Right.

NIXON: The FBI cannot be above the law on this thing.

GRAY: Oh, I know it. No, if this was done we’ve got to look into it and if—even if the allegation is there we’ve got to look into it.

EHRLICHMAN: Was Felt there in those days?

GRAY: No. He was not at—he may have been in the bureau. I shouldn’t answer that too quickly.

NIXON: Who would you put—who do you think would be the fellow who would be the second man over there?

GRAY: I think, Mr. Nixon, that my recommendation to you now would be to continue Felt, but I think what I’ve got to do is and which I’m in the process of doing, is come up with an overall plan to submit to you and you and I should discuss that plan.

NIXON: The only problem you have on Felt is that the lines lead very directly to him, and I can’t believe it, but they lead right there and—

EHRLICHMAN: Well, you know we’ve tried to trap him—

GRAY: I don’t believe—

EHRLICHMAN: The trap is—set traps around to see if we can turn something up and—

NIXON: Well, why don’t you get in the fellow that’s made the charge then.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, maybe that’s the step to take.

NIXON: Of course he’s not a newsman, on the other hand.

EHRLICHMAN: No.

NIXON: He’s a lawyer—

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —for Time.

GRAY: I know who he is, Mr. President.

NIXON: And, well—

GRAY: I knew the reason. I knew the allegations existed, and I think one thing, Mr. President, I would like to say to you, because I believe I must say it to you. Those people over there are like little old ladies in tennis shoes and they’ve got some of the most vicious vendettas going on and their gossip mill is—

NIXON: You mean in the administration?

GRAY: In the FBI.

NIXON: In the FBI.

GRAY: Sure, it’s the damnedest—

NIXON: [unclear] hating everybody else.

GRAY: That’s right.

NIXON: I have been hearing—what about this fellow Sullivan? Good, bad, or indifferent? Would you bring him back? Would that [unclear]?

GRAY: I wouldn’t bring him back at all. I wouldn’t touch him at all.

NIXON: Why not?

GRAY: His first words when he came back to Washington, in response to questions from some of the people in the Domestic Intelligence Division as to why he was here—in two words, “For revenge.” Bill Sullivan was a very disappointed man when Hoover put Deke DeLoach in the position as assistant to the director.

NIXON: He fired him—I mean—yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Hoover didn’t like him.

GRAY: Didn’t like him and he began attacking Hoover. The guy is too nervous. He’s not articulate at all.

NIXON: Fine. Well, coming back though to Felt. It would be very, very difficult to have Felt in that position without having that charge cleared up.

GRAY: I—

NIXON: And, incidentally, let me say this—this is also a directive. He’s to take a lie detector test on it.

GRAY: [unclear]

NIXON: Put it right to him now.

GRAY: Do you want him to do—?

NIXON: You’re willing for him to take a lie detector test, aren’t you?

GRAY: Sure. Why shouldn’t he? I’ve taken—hell, I’ve—

NIXON: All right, has he ever taken one?

GRAY: I don’t know.

NIXON: Have him take one. Now, that charge has been made. John, you prepare the questions—you know, that have been made. Has he talked to Time magazine? This and that and the other thing. And he’s to do it or he isn’t going to get the job. That’s the way it has to be. You see, the thing is that there’s a lack of discipline over there at the present time. And we’ve—that’s part of the problem—the morale. That’s part of the problem with leaks.

GRAY: In the FBI, Mr. President?

NIXON: This is absurd. This stuff didn’t leak when Hoover was there. I’ve never known of a leak when Hoover was there. I could talk to him in this office about everything. And the reason is that—it wasn’t because they loved him, but they feared him. And they’ve got to fear the man at the top and that’s why I’d get it again—and Hoover would lie-detect those guys. I know that he even did it to Lou Nichols once because of charges made he leaked. You’ve got to play it exactly that way. You’ve got to be brutal, tough, and respected, because the—we can’t have any kind of a relationship with the bureau—which is necessary, you know, here. We can’t have any kind of a relationship unless we can trust it and I’ve—

GRAY: That’s right.

NIXON: I used to have, and I would expect with the director in the future to have a relationship—with Hoover, he’d come in about every month. He’d be there at breakfast or he’d come in here. He’d come in alone, not with the attorney general. I’d talk about things. I used to have him—my contact with him, it wasn’t, you know—he’d always said that he didn’t want me to designate one person he called on things and raising hell about Helms and the agency—CIA, and the State Department, and so forth. Much of it was extremely valuable, but—and it never leaked out of here. You know that he was giving me the stuff that he had. And he talked—Ehrlichman was my contact. Ehrlichman will be in the future. You’ve got to have one man—

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —that will not talk.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: I wouldn’t think of having it to go to anybody else. I could use Dean but he’s too busy on other things so I’d rather it be with John. The point is—I digress—the reason, Pat, that the relationship of the director—to the director and the president—is like the relationship between the president and the commander—and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

GRAY: Right. I understand.

NIXON: I—as you know, Mel Laird was very tough on that, but he didn’t—he always wanted to be in with the Chiefs. And just yesterday, two days ago, I brought Moorer over, didn’t let anybody from the NSC staff come in, didn’t let them know. There wasn’t a hell of a lot we wanted to talk about that they couldn’t have heard, but I didn’t tell them. The reason was that I found this summer, for example, at a time when right after we had the May 8 bombing, that I had put out several directives to continually step up the bombing because I knew that this—that was the time to put the pressure on to bring about the negotiation. And Moorer told me that he sent over at least twelve recommendations that never reached my desk because Laird didn’t want to go forward on it. Now, goddamn it, this is not going to happen. Now, with the bureau, it’s the president’s director, not that you have the attorney general’s director. Now having said that, though, we can’t do it—we cannot do it unless there’s total communication and total discipline in that bureau. And, hell, I think if we pick up Time magazine and see that something’s leaked out, either out of the bureau—I understand leaking out of the CIA, those goddamn cookie pushers—but if it leaks out of the bureau, then the whole damn place ought to be fired. Really it should, until—just move them all out to the field. I think you’ve got to do it like they did in the war. You say—whenever, you know—you remember in World War II. The Germans, if they went through these towns and then one of their soldiers, a sniper, hit one of them, they’d line up the whole goddamn town and say, “Until you talk you’re all getting shot.” I really think that’s what has to be done. I mean I don’t think you can be Mr. Nice Guy over there.

GRAY: I haven’t been. I think, Mr. President—

NIXON: The leaks are occurring—from someplace.

GRAY: That’s right, from someplace. But as to discipline, I have done things with regard to discipline that Mr. Hoover didn’t dare to do. I took on [unclear] and I met him face-to-face, and I threw him right out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

NIXON: Good.

GRAY: These guys know they can’t lie—

NIXON: [unclear]—

GRAY: —to me like they used to lie to Hoover.

NIXON: —[unclear]. I’m not really referring to that kind of stuff.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Frankly, I am referring to discipline of the highest sensitivity involving what may be political matters.

GRAY: Oh, I know.

NIXON: Partisan political matters. But I’ve got to know, for example, what’s going on that—even now, on occasion, let’s suppose something on the Pentagon Papers leaks out. Let us suppose there’s a leak to a certain member of the press. I’ve got to have a relationship here where you go out and do something and deny on a stack of Bibles.

GRAY: Right.

NIXON: Okay.

GRAY: Right. Well, I understand.

NIXON: You’ve got to get that because I don’t have anybody else. I can’t hire some asshole from the outside.

GRAY: No. No.

EHRLICHMAN: The relationship is a self-starting one in a sense—

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

EHRLICHMAN: —and Hoover used to call—

NIXON: Assert—

EHRLICHMAN: —and say, “We’ve picked up something here.”

…

NIXON: Hoover, of course, was a great cops-and-armed-robbers guy in through the whole area. He was overly suspicious, actually. But that helped a bit, because as a result, he got us information, which is extremely helpful. Because you see, these past four years have not been an easy—we’ve had almost the entire bureaucracy, including many in Defense, who were opposed to what we were doing in Vietnam, opposed to Cambodia, opposed to Laos, opposed to [the] May 8 [bombing of Hanoi and mining of Haiphong harbor]. It worked, and of course went up the wall when I ordered the December bombing. We—and incidentally, most of the White House staff was against it. They didn’t go out and yap about it but they were against it. I understand that. My point is that with the media against you, with the bureaucracy against you, with the professors, with the church people and the rest—let alone the Congress—it’s a hard damn fight. Now, at the present time we’ve come through with that big issue—come through rather well. And we have some allies from dif—unexpected sources driving the goddamn media right up the wall. These POWs turned out so well.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Let me tell you, there were times—and Lyndon Johnson told me this same thing—when I felt that the only person in this goddamn government who was standing with me was Edgar Hoover. He was the only one.

GRAY: Well, I was sure standing there with you all the way through it.

NIXON: But I was sure of it. I was sure of it. Now what did I mean? I don’t mean just coming in and saying, “Now look, Mr. President, you’re doing great.”

GRAY: No. No.

NIXON: He would often do that. But the point was that he would break his ass if he saw something that was wrong being done—if somebody was pissing on us—I mean leaks.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: That sort of thing—not interfering with the rights of the press—not interfering with the, you know, all that crap.

GRAY: Right. Sure.

NIXON: The thing is that in your case—you see, the difficulty with having someone who is basically—as you are—a Nixon loyalist, and a friend—first of all they’re going to raise hell because you’re that.

GRAY: Sure—oh, I know it.

NIXON: Second, a Nixon loyalist and a friend feels generally, and I’ve found this to be true of half the cabinet—he’s got to go or bend over backwards to prove that he’s neutral.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: We can’t have that. Publicly you must do that. Publicly. But privately what you’ve got to do is to do like Hoover. Now, the reason Hoover’s relationship with me was so close, even closer than with Johnson, even though he saw Johnson more often, was that we started working on the Hiss case. He knew that he could trust me. I knew I could trust him. And as a result, he told me things that—like this wiretap he told me about. He didn’t know there was any. Understand? My purpose in checking this wiretap business is not to put it out. I don’t intend to put it out. But I damn well want to know who did it. See what I mean? I want to know who the bureau used and I want it known, should we—see, then you may find that whoever is the guilty one will put out the story—

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —and that he did that—and that will be useful. We’ve got to know such things. That’s the whole point.

EHRLICHMAN: Knowledge—

NIXON: Of course, Johnson should not have done that.

GRAY: No question about it.

NIXON: Johnson should not have wiretapped or—either the plane or the phones. The phones were done for sure. We—even DeLoach has admitted that. But the planes he denies now. Hoover told me the plane—the cabin on my plane for the last two weeks of the campaign—they put it on the basis of Madame Chennault or some goddamn thing—were tapped. What the hell do you think happened then? Every damn thing we had—we didn’t have any discussions about—we didn’t have political discussions—went to Johnson and you know what the hell he did with them? Gave them to Humphrey.

GRAY: Humphrey. Sure.

NIXON: That kind of a game is a hell of a game.

GRAY: We could get positive evidence of that. We could nail Deke on that because I’m sure, from what checking I’ve done on this other thing, that it came through Deke.

NIXON: I just want to be sure that I know who did it. Well, let me say this, the main thing—the main point is that, as I said, the—I think it’s going to be a bloody confirmation.

GRAY: Oh, I do, too.

NIXON: I think—all right, I think we just wanted you to know that if you do go through it, you’ve got to be prepared to take the heat and get bloodied up. But if you do go through a bloody one—you do go through a bloody confirmation—let’s remember that you’re probably going to be in probably for just four years.

GRAY: That’s right.

NIXON: And they’re going to throw you out and then let’s do some good for the country. As you know, I would never ask the director of the bureau to do anything wrong. I mean—but I am certainly going to have to ask the director of the bureau at times to do things that are going to protect the security of this country—

GRAY: No problem.

NIXON: —this country—this bureaucracy. Pat, you know this [U.S. Navy yeoman Charles] Radford one [who leaked classified material to journalist Jack Anderson], too. It’s crawling with, Pat, at best unloyal people and at worst treasonable people.

GRAY: Treasonable people.

NIXON: We have got to get them—break them.

GRAY: Right. I know that. I agree.

NIXON: The way to get them is through you. See?

GRAY: I agree. I have no problems with that.

NIXON: We have to pick up people—some people. That’s the price of it.

GRAY: I would like to. I wish the one [federal charge for removing records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs] on [Washington Post journalist Les] Whitten would have stuck—the informant.

NIXON: Whitten—oh, Christ. That—I’m not concerned.

GRAY: Small potatoes.

NIXON: It isn’t the press that bothers me. It’s the people within the bureaucracy that bother me. Those are the ones that there’s no excuse for leaks, right? So, we—I think, under the circumstances, that it seems to me just—I’ve asked these questions only to be the devil’s advocate for a moment. I think that you’ve got to make the decision—if you’ve got the health—if you’ve got the desire, and also if you can—if you feel that you can have a—the kind of a relationship that we had with Hoover—which, of course, we can’t—we shouldn’t have had up to this point.

GRAY: No.

NIXON: And you can’t have it before your conf—well, there we’ve said it. From the moment you’re nominated, I think you’ve got to start cracking the whip, having in mind the fact that always—that you don’t want to crack any whips that are going to force some bastard to go out and testify against your nomination.

GRAY: That’s right. That’s the thing.

NIXON: So you’ve got to be careful. But the moment you’re confirmed then I think we’ve got to have the kind of relationship we had with Hoover. We had—I, on the other hand—we had—we knew everything because I knew everybody and they were supporting me. But then I think we’ve got to do that. You’ve got to watch everything around the world in your own shop. Watch the papers and see [unclear] and if you think something’s not right, for example—for Christ’s sake, you can tail people, you know, from time to time.

GRAY: Sure. Sure.

NIXON: Suppose we’ve got some jackass in the State Department, some assistant to the secretary as we know is a little off—so you tail him.

…

NIXON: That’s the way Hoover did it.

GRAY: Sure, and those things can be done easily and—can be done perfectly on the record, just like this thing was done here on—

NIXON: Well, we think of—I think I’ve talked—we’ve had the court keep this very closely held. We think you’re the best man for the job. We know that the bloody—I—one of the reasons I’d say, as far as the Watergate, I’d rather put it all out there and not be defensive. The other side of the coin if we don’t quite do this thing—they’re going to call you in on it.

GRAY: That’s right. Sure.

NIXON: It’s personal—hotter and hotter temperature—the Ervin Committee will call you in.

GRAY: Sure.

NIXON: So that’s the feeling we have. Now the question is to, I guess, you and John will work that out as far as how the announcement should be made.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: How are your relations with Eastland?

GRAY: Very good. And was—

NIXON: Is he for you?

GRAY: Very good. Yes, I’m positive of that.

NIXON: Yeah. That’s very important. Should—who else should be informed? Hruska, at least? Hruska?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, we’ve haven’t told the attorney general yet. [laughs]

NIXON: Well, hell, the attorney general will support that.

EHRLICHMAN: There’s no question about that. Yes.

NIXON: Well, let us talk to him.

EHRLICHMAN: We—I think we can get most of the clearances. I don’t know where Eastland is at the moment.

NIXON: Do you want me to tell him, Pat? Do you want me to tell the attorney general?

EHRLICHMAN: I think that’d be good.

NIXON: I’ll tell him today.

GRAY: All right.

NIXON: So then what—when will we announce though? I want to get it done—what do you mean clearances?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, just this idea of contacting Eastland and Hruska—and I don’t know who else gets, well I imagine they’d be the only two.

GRAY: That’d be [unclear].

EHRLICHMAN: [unclear] the Appropriations Subcommittee—

GRAY: Probably John Rooney’s people on the Senate side, too.

NIXON: Well, why don’t you—Kleindienst will be coming to the cabinet meeting. Could you and Pat meet now and work out that thing?

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: Because I want—time is of the essence. I’d like to get this done like by today. All right. Yeah. We’ve got to move. It’ll leak—this damn Gray’s a leaker! [laughs]

GRAY: Yes, I am, Mr. President.

NIXON: [laughs] [unclear]

GRAY: A Nixon loyalist. I tell you you’re goddamn right I am!

 

Using aid to support peace in the two Vietnams

February 20, 1973, 7:30 P.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

On the same day that Kissinger returned from his Asian trip, Nixon was flying back to Washington from a vacation in Florida. On landing, the president was described as “smiling and in obvious good spirits.” Though the two men arrived at Andrews Air Force Base within twenty minutes of one another, they traveled separately to the White House for an evening meeting. Kissinger immediately expressed suspicion that the North Vietnamese would be difficult, if not impossible, to control within the commitments of the Peace Accords. Nixon was even more suspicious of those involved in the peace movement in the United States, and as the two men warmed to the topic, they agreed that in the first stage of peace, it was the liberals in the United States who were the enemy. ^*

…

NIXON: The way I would get at it is to, frankly, take them on, one by one, and say, “Now, damn it, let us—let’s be cold turkey with you.” You can’t say this, but we’ve got to have some leverage. If these clowns start something, we can cut it off. That’s really what it gets down to.

KISSINGER: Exactly.

NIXON: I mean, suppose, for example, that they do not withdraw their forces from—as—you know, like my wire to you when you were over there; if they do not withdraw their forces from Cambodia and Laos, they get no aid. Right?

KISSINGER: Exactly.

NIXON: What other—what other leverage have we got? The purpose of this is the leverage to get them the hell out. I think that’s a very strong point to make to them on a confidential basis. Don’t you think so?

KISSINGER: Well, I think that—I think—I’m not so worried about selling the right-wingers, but the—the conservatives—ah, the liberals are, of course, totally—

NIXON: [laughs]

KISSINGER: —corrupt, morally.

NIXON: I know, but what are you going to say to them? Are—

KISSINGER: I’ll put it on human—I’ll say—I’ll put it on human—humanitarian grounds to them. I mean, I’ll just—I don’t say that’s our reason, but I’ll tell them that—

NIXON: Well, it’s also a—I think with them, too, I’d be a little more pragmatic. I think we’d say, “Look, this is the only way that we can have any leverage to keep the peace in the area.” That’s what they want. They should. Or, may—then, maybe, they’ll vote against it, huh?

KISSINGER: Well—

NIXON: [laughs]

KISSINGER: —that’s one of the problems with these people.

NIXON: [laughs] They don’t want the peace, do they? They don’t want it to keep; they just want it to fail. Is that—is that the thing?

KISSINGER: They, basically, want it to fail. That’s my reluctant conclusion—

NIXON: Well—

KISSINGER: But think we can put it on a basis, to be honest—

NIXON: But, on the other hand, I think—

KISSINGER: —and not humanitarian, necessarily. We could say—

NIXON: If you say “humanitarian,” it’ll look like reparations, and that sort of thing—

KISSINGER: No, I mean, what we could say is, “We have to find something to work with the North Vietnamese on to—”

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: —[unclear]—

NIXON: Give ’em a stake in the peace. I’d just simply—that what we’re looking—what we want to do is to give the Viet—Viet—the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese a stake in the peace.

KISSINGER: And we can’t do that.

NIXON: We can’t do that if we have no communication and no participation.

KISSINGER: Exactly.

NIXON: I think that’s the thing.

 

David K. E. Bruce: Mr. Ambassador

February 21, 1973, 11:33 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

OVAL OFFICE

As Nixon and Kissinger continued their analysis of Kissinger’s Asian tour, they addressed the crucial—and very exciting—prospect of filling newly created diplomatic posts in Beijing. Both hit on the same person for the preeminent position of emissary. David K. E. Bruce, Maryland-born, was a man of savoir faire and cunning intelligence. Starting after World War II, he served presidents of both parties and was sent as ambassador to France, West Germany, and Great Britain, in succession, with other posts in between, including a stint as assistant secretary of state. Bruce had so much irresistible charm that Nixon, who wholly distrusted the State Department, stubbornly refused to regard him as a department employee—or “career man.” ^*

…

NIXON: Let me ask you one other thing about the China position. I like the two names you suggest, but here is something if you well realize, where we have Bruce—

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: I wonder if we couldn’t offer it to Bruce.

KISSINGER: I’ll have to check it with the Chinese whether they want someone quite that visible. But I—

NIXON: See my point?

KISSINGER: But our minds have really been working very similarly.

…

KISSINGER: Our minds have been working on exactly the same wavelength. I was thinking after I left China why not let in Bruce, and—

NIXON: Well, I think we do want to [unclear]. And maybe they may not like that.

KISSINGER: And we could still have Holdridge—

NIXON: Holdridge—look, Holdridge [unclear] it will work, but Bruce has such class. And he would know, and he has such judgment. And it would be a hell of a bipartisan stroke.

KISSINGER: And, of course, they love old men.

NIXON: Well, listen. You understand another thing, it’s a bipartisan stroke; he’s a Democrat. You know? He’s the only establishment Democrat I know that supported us. Do you know any other?

KISSINGER: No. And we could have the two others. If we had Bruce, [Al] Jenkins, and Holdridge we would have one powerhouse team.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: I’d like Holdridge because I’d like to get rid of him. That’s no reflection on him. He’d be good there but I need a somewhat more intellectual type here now.

NIXON: But you see, we want to keep it—Bruce will play our game; he’ll keep it out of the State Department channels. Everybody of course would want to go. But we must not let this go to a career man. We must not.

KISSINGER: Mr. President, if you send a career man there, you might as well—you’re better off not having it.

NIXON: But they won’t understand the game.

…

NIXON: I think the program of working with the Chinese can have great possibilities.

KISSINGER: But that really has to be done by you and me.

NIXON: Alone!

KISSINGER: Alone.

NIXON: Alone. Alone.

KISSINGER: This is too dangerous.

NIXON: You know I was thinking that—

KISSINGER: But you know, it’s amazing, I thought exactly the same thing about David Bruce as you did.

 

“He’s on our side. No question about that.”

February 23, 1973, 9:35 A.M.

Richard Nixon and John Ehrlichman

OVAL OFFICE

On February 22, Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) appeared at the White House for what he termed a “secret” meeting with the president. Baker was co-chair of the recently launched Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Watergate Committee. A longtime friend of Nixon, he felt some obligation to hear him out in advance of the investigative work of the committee. Through Baker, Nixon tried unsuccessfully to arrange for the committee to interrogate Haldeman and Ehrlichman in private. He also did his best to leave the impression that former attorney general John Mitchell was responsible for all of the illegal activities associated with Watergate. The following day, Nixon discussed Baker’s visit and the developing situation with Ehrlichman. Since their strategy at that juncture was to pin the ultimate blame on Mitchell, their focus was on Richard Kleindienst, the attorney general. That discussion led to an assertion that a “cover-up is worse than whatever comes out,” followed immediately by a survey of whom they could trust to keep their secrets. ^*

…

NIXON: Now on Kleindienst, I want to talk with you later perhaps. I might decide myself [unclear] at this meeting tomorrow. But—see what I mean? [unclear] Baker’s line is about what you’d expect. His—I went through all the [unclear]. He says that he would like to have his contact be Kleindienst. That he and Ervin met with Kleindienst. Kleindienst has great stroke with Ervin [unclear]. I, of course, threw Dean at him [unclear] on that he didn’t say anything against him. But he did say that he [unclear] then, of course, Wally Johnson and—the other point that he made is that—

EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —which leads me to believe—and I just want to be sure that I get Kleindienst on our line—our tug. And then let him be the settler. Now does that bother you or not?

EHRLICHMAN: Doesn’t bother me if he’ll do it. He—and here’s the way to get him to do it, I think.

NIXON: It’s going to be goddamn tough. Or don’t you agree?

EHRLICHMAN: Kleindienst has a kind of a metaphysical attachment to John Mitchell.

NIXON: I don’t want to scare him to death. I said, incidentally—I scared him. I put it very hard. I put it very hard. And I’ll talk to you a little about this tomorrow because I put it very hard to Baker about Mitchell.

EHRLICHMAN: Good.

NIXON: Because Baker’s, you know, hinting about the White House staff and all that. And I said, well, I checked them all over and I said unless somebody’s lying, I said my main concern, however—he said, “What do you [unclear] someone of these seven or somebody that’s around there at a lower level [unclear] guy who’s not even going to get a pension [unclear] maybe I should talk to him.” I said, “Yeah, you should have a private talk.” So I’ve got to get Mitchell in by this coming Monday. Now, that may be, frankly, not quite true. I mean, you come down to it, as we know—the Magruder thing and the thing I’m concerned about the Magruder thing is that there’s Bob [Haldeman].

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: And that Magruder is just awfully close to Bob. And I don’t think Magruder would say something. But he might.

EHRLICHMAN: If he did, he would implicate Mitchell. He would protect Bob, I suspect. I think that’s the way now.

NIXON: Now, all right—now, on the other one, no problem with you, as I see it. The other one, of course, is Colson.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Now, the one that could do him in is Hunt.

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: And the likelihood of that, I think, is not so great.

EHRLICHMAN: And Magruder.

NIXON: And Magruder? How does—did Magruder work with Colson?

EHRLICHMAN: Magruder claims to Dean—and Magruder’s playing a game—he’s telling different people different things apparently and I’ve not talked to him. But the impression I have is that Magruder’s peddling the line that Colson is the guy who put the unmitigated pressure on him.

NIXON: To change the bug.

EHRLICHMAN: To do this.

NIXON: To bug?

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: Well, you see, Colson denies that completely. Thank God.

EHRLICHMAN: I know it. I know it.

NIXON: I’ve asked both Bob and Colson.

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: Well, I don’t know. I can’t, you see—one thing that we’ll talk about tomorrow—I have really got to know whether or not, because—mainly because I’ve got to go—then I’ll deny that I ever heard it.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: I’ve got to know if Bob knew about it. I’ve got to know whether Colson knew about it.

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: If they both—if they did, then they’re going to play our games—

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —because this is how we’re going to—that’s where executive privilege comes in. Now executive privilege I got very—hardly anyplace on this idea [unclear]. Here’s his plan which would be a very good one if we did do it. It’s not bad. But he’s on our side. No question about that. He has—he isn’t going to go on the business of what the Democrats did to us, however, unless he says, “Now let’s play it this way.” He says what he’d like to do is go to it with the Watergate, which is—

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: And I said to him—and I gave him a good lecture about how the Hiss case was handled, a successful investigation [unclear]. We ruled out hearsay. We ruled out guilt by association and innuendo and so forth. I said you ought to really insist on that. I’m going to keep hitting that line all the time—

EHRLICHMAN: Good. That’s good.

NIXON: He wanted me to make—issue a statement to the effect that we would cooperate with the committee. I said, “Well, I’m going to have a press conference one of these days,” and I’ll also say I’ve always stated that, I mean, I’m not going to put out any written statement to the effect. Somebody’s going to ask me and I’ll say that it’s—Justice Department. Now, he then says, however, that the way he feels the way the thing will work bad, and I think he’s correct in his strategy here, would be to call a lot of pipsqueak witnesses—little shitasses—over periods of weeks to build it up. And then build up the pressure to call—now you’ve got to call Colson—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: —you’ve got to call Haldeman—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: —you’ve got to call Ehrlichman and Chapin—whoever the hell. Sorry, they’ll have Chapin anyway. He says that he believes—his strategy is this: he thinks they’re—they should conduct their own private investigation now and then he’s going to confront Ervin. “Look, there’s seven guys over here”—the big fish. “What’s all this shuffling about?” The question is whether or not it goes higher. And so let’s—what he believes that they should try to call the big men right away. Prick the boil and then from then on everybody’s going to be bored to death. Now that is good strategy provided you can call. I said, well, now we can’t do this because of executive privilege. I said you can’t deny this.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: He said, well, what he’s talking about—he’s—he has sounded Ervin and limits it to—total limitation as to the subjects and Ervin will rule out all other questions and so forth. He said this could have one hell of a dramatic impact. I said yeah and I said you’re going to have these people dragged up. Now the real question, John, and you’ve got to address yourself to it and I think you’re better to address yourself to it than either Bob or Colson. Who, really, are we afraid of to come out there on executive privilege? It’s really Bob—Colson’s another. I don’t think you have a problem.

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t have the problem.

NIXON: You didn’t work with Hunt.

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t have the problem.

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: But—

NIXON: The point is that I don’t want to get Bob or Colson, frankly, in the position of being up in the public domain and going for perjury.

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: Of course, written interrogatories involve perjury, too.

EHRLICHMAN: All right, you’ve got three. You, really—well, including Stans you’ve got four big fish.

NIXON: Yeah. Oh, incidentally, that was Ervin’s thing. Evidently he didn’t say that he thought that—he said that he thought that Stans was the one that probably put them on it and I said, “That is utterly ridiculous” because I can tell that of all the people involved here Stans doesn’t know a goddamn thing. He’s outraged. He’s meticulous and the rest. So you see people are getting to him about stuff.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, yeah.

NIXON: It’s wrong. So I—

EHRLICHMAN: The money end of this is a troublesome end.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Mitchell and Stans are involved in that.

NIXON: Yeah, Mitchell and Stans and Kalmbach.

EHRLICHMAN: And Kalmbach, right.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: Right.

NIXON: None of whom we can keep out of testifying.

EHRLICHMAN: And those chips are going to have to pretty much fall where they may, as I see it.

NIXON: What are they going to say?

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: They raised the money?

EHRLICHMAN: There’s a hell of a lot of money and it floated around and there weren’t receipts and there was funny bookkeeping and there was a lot of hanky-panky and money went to Mexico and back and there were just a hell of a lot of odds and ends of stuff over there. Now, Stans says he’s clean and I suspect he is. I think he can tell a damn good story.

NIXON: Knowing Stans, yes.

EHRLICHMAN: So Mitchell was going to end up being the fall guy in that.

NIXON: What’ll Mitchell say?

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t know what he’ll say. I just don’t know what he’ll say. He’s been puffing his pipe and looking at the ceiling and saying, “You guys got a problem” and—we’re beginning to get to him a little bit. Dean’s been hammering away on him to impress on him that he’s got a problem here.

NIXON: Well, what does he—the money—I don’t know what can he say except to say, “Well, I just frankly didn’t keep as close enough control—”

EHRLICHMAN: Well, I think that’s the best—

NIXON: “—over the disbursement of this money.”

EHRLICHMAN: —that’s his best defense.

NIXON: “I didn’t control it.”

EHRLICHMAN: That’s his best defense.

NIXON: It’s his only defense. And it may be correct.

EHRLICHMAN: “I was at the Justice Department” and so on and so forth. Well—

NIXON: It may be correct. And it may not be correct.

EHRLICHMAN: I doubt it. I doubt it.

NIXON: You think he knew?

EHRLICHMAN: I think he knew and I think LaRue was sort of his agent, and kept him posted, per—

NIXON: LaRue?

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, yeah. LaRue’s in this thing up to his ass.

NIXON: Has he been called?

EHRLICHMAN: LaRue’s a mysterious shadowy figure that hasn’t been called and he—

NIXON: But he was into it?

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, Bob had what we call constructive knowledge.

NIXON: How could that be?

EHRLICHMAN: Through a fellow named Gordon Strachan.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Gordon Strachan’s job here was Bob’s liaison with the campaign.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: Gordon Strachan kept the most meticulous attention to the details.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: But very little of it was actually imparted to Bob. What Strachan was, was a sort of a data bank so that if Bob needed to know something he’d pick up the phone and say, “Gordon, what about this or that?” And he knew.

NIXON: My point is—did Bob know that information was coming from tapped sources?

EHRLICHMAN: No, but I suspect Strachan did. And it was a situation where Bob—

NIXON: Strachan just mixes it.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, Strachan probably never comes into it—probably never does. Because Strachan’s job was not to direct anybody to do anything. He was just to keep informed.

NIXON: Information changer.

EHRLICHMAN: Right.

NIXON: Okay.

EHRLICHMAN: Now, on Colson, you have two diametrically opposite stories.

NIXON: You have his—

EHRLICHMAN: You have his and you have Dean’s conclusions born of a lot of odds and ends of circumstantial evidence that he’s putting together. Dean tells me privately that he thinks that Colson was in fact in meetings and that Colson probably was the efficient cause of Magruder doing this tap work. Now that’s John’s—that’s his conclusion based on circumstantial evidence.

NIXON: I don’t believe it. I don’t think Colson—I believe Colson’s totally capable of it. But I would doubt if Colson would be that unintelligent, that’s all.

EHRLICHMAN: I just—I—

NIXON: A lot of people would love it.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, let me tell you—

NIXON: But I don’t—

EHRLICHMAN: —the Hunt trip to Dita Beard was a bonehead play.

NIXON: Oh, it was. Silliest thing I ever heard of.

EHRLICHMAN: And that was a Colson operation—

NIXON: I know.

EHRLICHMAN: —from beginning to end. So I have to assume that Hunt was kind of intrigued with—

NIXON: Well, maybe Colson was very possibly behind this whole thing—

EHRLICHMAN: I think he was. I think he was because Hunt’s a cops-and-robber type. Now, I’m not going to tell you with any degree of assurance that Chuck’s involved—

NIXON: I know.

EHRLICHMAN: —but what’s important to know about this is that there are circumstances which—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —diligent counsel could put together—

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah. Fine.

EHRLICHMAN: —in the same way as John did.

NIXON: Now, the point is then we come to the executive privilege thing—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: This is going to be the first thing that we’ve got to decide.

EHRLICHMAN: Right.

NIXON: And Kleindienst, what—I’m going to tell Kleindienst today about executive privilege, that he should—if he insists on written interrogatories, then he can negotiate—

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: —from that. I think—or should they say, all right, go see what they’ll work out with regard to a—limited questions, knowing in advance what they’re going to be, period?

EHRLICHMAN: Here’s—

NIXON: You understand, John, I’m for the written interrogatories.

EHRLICHMAN: Sure.

NIXON: And I’m for nothing. And I [unclear] written interrogatories, but if you go beyond that then if—we’ve got to realize that if the committee is eventually going to come down unanimous—or are you going to talk?

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, yeah.

NIXON: —and I say no, I can’t let them talk. We’re then in a bind that is impossible.

EHRLICHMAN: I understand.

NIXON: I’m not—

EHRLICHMAN: I understand.

NIXON: —complaining about the heat. To the last, take the heat.

EHRLICHMAN: All right, here’s another way. Ziegler’s point is that—we were talking about this yesterday—that the damage that you take is as a result of somebody like me or Bob or somebody walking up the Capitol steps through the gauntlet of television cameras—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —regardless of what’s said inside.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: All right. Supposing you were to say to Ervin and Baker, “Look, you and your two counsel—”

NIXON: I told him that and he wouldn’t buy it.

EHRLICHMAN: “—come on down here and talk to—”

NIXON: Uh—

EHRLICHMAN: “—anybody you want”?

NIXON: I went through that with them. I tried that on them. I said, “You can come down. You can examine—you and Ervin and so forth.” Now it may be that I should put that then to—I should put that to them—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: —as our concession, that we’ll—that we can—that he—the two counsel—he, Ervin, and the two counsel—and they can come down and have a deposition.

EHRLICHMAN: Kleindienst could carry this.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: He could say we’re afraid of this becoming a circus.

NIXON: Yeah, yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, is there some way of protecting the—?

NIXON: Now, the point is, though—did you realize that does not protect us—Colson? That’s not going to protect him from—they can go right into Colson and get the same thing.

EHRLICHMAN: Colson will handle himself beautifully.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: He’s righteously indignant. He’s been on the Elizabeth Drew show.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: He’s taken the Today show questions and he says, “Hell, I haven’t anything to hide and I’m fine. I’m clean” and all the rest of it.

NIXON: Right, right, right. Except he’ll perjure himself.

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t know. I can’t tell you that’s perjury. All I can tell you—

NIXON: The only point about perjury is this—having proved it in the Hiss case—we had the son of a bitch in the first hearing. And I did not, with regard to—

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: —the other side of it—whether it’s against Mitchell or Colson, it’s a hell of a hard rap to prove.

EHRLICHMAN: Oh, sure. And—

NIXON: Don’t you agree? As a trial lawyer?

EHRLICHMAN: That’s right. And this would be a circumstantial case.

NIXON: [unclear] and if I—I would need to prove perjury. I don’t believe you can convict a person on circumstantial evidence on perjury. I don’t believe it can be done.

EHRLICHMAN: Well—

NIXON: You can under the law.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: But with Hiss—

EHRLICHMAN: PR.

NIXON: You know how we did it? Oh, you mean PR-wise?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, that’s what I say. It’s very hard to do PR-wise.

NIXON: I guess. But I just, frankly, want to keep out—

EHRLICHMAN: You have—you had confrontation. You had one man. You had the dramatic—

NIXON: I’m not thinking—and also we got the typewriter.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Sure.

NIXON: We proved it out there. That’s hard evidence.

EHRLICHMAN: Yep.

NIXON: But the confrontation proved it in the public mind. And in this thing, the public mind, they’re probably going to be convinced. They’re going to believe the worst. They’re going to believe the worst probably of me, about Bob, and maybe about Colson.

EHRLICHMAN: I—

NIXON: It’s too bad.

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Ron argues that you’re convicted the minute you walk up the Capitol steps.

NIXON: I see.

EHRLICHMAN: And that just being dragged out of the White House—dragged across town—dragged up those steps—

NIXON: I would guess, of course—I didn’t tell you, but—and as I—I don’t mean that Baker won’t carry the load for us—he said, “If you decide it we’ll do it.”

EHRLICHMAN: Is that so?

NIXON: You know, if you decide, he said.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: But he says, “This is what I want you to know—”

EHRLICHMAN: Let’s take the other—

NIXON: [unclear]

EHRLICHMAN: Let’s take the other case now. Let’s suppose we said as a matter of long-standing policy back seven generations, the president’s immediate staff does not testify, regardless of what the matter is.

NIXON: Right.

EHRLICHMAN: And so in effect we take the Fifth Amendment and we sit here and we just sit it out. Is that worse?

NIXON: Yeah, it’s a cover-up. It’s a cover-up. I think that’s worse than what’ll come out, in my opinion.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, I think so, too.

NIXON: I’m afraid, John, I’ve—I’d like to do that—

EHRLICHMAN: I think so, too.

NIXON: —from a personal standpoint. But believe me, I’ve been through this. The cover-up is worse than whatever comes out. It really is.

EHRLICHMAN: Uh—

NIXON: Unless somebody is going to go to jail. I’m not going to let anybody go to jail. That I promise you. That is the worst.

EHRLICHMAN: The—all right.

NIXON: Cover-up is worse, believe me, than all the walking up the Capitol steps. It’s worse than walking up those Capitol steps.

EHRLICHMAN: Let’s suppose Kleindienst negotiated quietly with Ervin to try and get depositions or informal interrogations, or whatever—

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: —you want to call it here, and comes back and says, “I can’t get them.” Then it seems to me the strong position for you to take is totally openhanded. Let it all hang out. Let—you know, let the breath of freedom blow.

NIXON: Right. And everybody go up.

EHRLICHMAN: And everybody goes up and we saturate them.

NIXON: Right. Right at the outset.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Well—that’s the Baker intent?

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Well, let me say that I’ll start with written interrogatories from the beginning. I mean—with Kleindienst. And then I’ll tell him the backup position. But you can go to the business of their—of a—depositions by the two chairmen and so forth but not under television.

EHRLICHMAN: Now that would be the other possibility to go to the committee chambers not in a televised proceeding.

NIXON: But [unclear]. Well—no, if you go to the committee chambers you’re still going to have the still pictures and television up there.

EHRLICHMAN: In and out, the sketches and all that. Yeah.

NIXON: Yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Well, I think the written interrogatories are a good thing. The written’s the best. But I mean—I really think the compromise position, which is an honest and decent compromise is Ervin, the two senior men, plus the two counsel coming down.

EHRLICHMAN: Uh—

NIXON: Or we can say that the four could come down.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, or then you can leave it this way, that if you fellows really turn up something in the course of this and I’m confident you won’t.

NIXON: We’ll look again.

EHRLICHMAN: Then come on in and talk to me about it.

NIXON: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

EHRLICHMAN: And I’m not [unclear]—

NIXON: Okay. Now, what do I need to know about these with regard to how he feels about [unclear]? Obviously, it’s—Baker, incidentally does—he wasn’t there [unclear] smooth over this or that but Baker said it was a great mistake when Korologos called and it was. I didn’t know that anybody had Korologos call him and suggest that [George] Webster [director of Attorneys for Nixon in 1972] be the counsel. You see, I mean—that’s what blew that.

EHRLICHMAN: That’s silly.

NIXON: Who did that? Who suggested that?

EHRLICHMAN: I don’t know.

NIXON: You see, we were working on Timmons. Timmons isn’t the most clever fellow at times. Harlow would not have made such a mistake. But Korologos telephoned him and he says he likes Tom and the rest. But when I had mentioned this idea of Webster’s name, it may be that Bob in cases like this is a little bit too direct.

EHRLICHMAN: That’s too bad.

NIXON: You know, that’s—

EHRLICHMAN: We had better channels on Howard than that.

NIXON: Well, I thought so. But I want you to check that out.

EHRLICHMAN: I sure will.

NIXON: You better check that out.

EHRLICHMAN: I sure will.

NIXON: To rule out such a boo-boo. I think some of our relations with the Congress are complicated by the fact that we departmentalize everything. Bob will tell Higby to go tell to Timmons, and Timmons will say, “Korologos, get to see Webster.”

EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, yeah. That’s too bad.

NIXON: That blew that. That’s what blew it.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, okay—

NIXON: He was nice about it, but I could see he was very bugged. He just thought it was stupid.

EHRLICHMAN: That—well, I do, too. Dean would be the ideal contact, but Dean—

NIXON: Suspect?

EHRLICHMAN: Well, he’s really not.

NIXON: Who likes him? No, no, no. Not on this case. But how is he with Kleindienst?

EHRLICHMAN: Fine. Should be fine with Kleindienst.

NIXON: Right, good.

 

The loyalty of Kleindienst

February 23, 1973, 10:08 A.M.

Richard Nixon and Richard Kleindienst

OVAL OFFICE

Minutes after speaking with Ehrlichman about the importance of positioning Kleindienst as a buttress against Senate investigators, Nixon spoke to him personally and very forcefully. Kleindienst, an Arizonan who had been educated at Harvard and its law school, was a staunch Republican, especially tough on crime. He joined the Nixon administration at its outset as deputy attorney general and then stepped up to the main post after Mitchell resigned in June 1972 to manage the president’s reelection campaign. Kleindienst, however, resented the way that interlopers from Nixon’s inner circle at the White House made personnel decisions at Justice. He was never close to Nixon or that inner circle, and so it was that when Nixon approached him about using the implied power of executive privilege to hold the Senate Watergate Committee at bay, Kleindienst couldn’t give the president the easy answer that he wanted. He would leave the administration within months, but even before Kleindienst made his plans known to the White House, Nixon helped him to make the decision to leave sooner rather than later. ^*

…

NIXON: Hello, Dick. How are you?

KLEINDIENST: How are you feeling?

NIXON: Good to see you.

KLEINDIENST: Nice seeing you.

NIXON: Fine, how are you?

KLEINDIENST: I feel fine. Mm-hmm. Well, if I may—

NIXON: Don’t let Connally go. No, my only suggestion to be sure you’re [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: It’s a shame to have to have you do something—

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: I’m ashamed to have to have you comment on them.

NIXON: Let’s see if I have to sign this appointment. I always—I have these things to sign. There you go. I had a talk with Connally yesterday morning. Personal thing out of the way. I want you to know there was [unclear]. He told me about his talks with you and was also talking about Diggs—or I don’t know what other—but in terms of the law relationship we’re to go that route. [unclear] three routes.

KLEINDIENST: Where’s that?

NIXON: First, you should not go with Mitchell. You must not do that. I’ve told Kevin that. Second, you should not go with [George] Smathers because it’s [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: You’ll make a lot of money with Smathers, but you’d have to deal with a lot of Jews and other people. Smathers is in with some bad people. Third, Connally’s a decent man and I’ve had business with his firm. Since he’d make you one of the managers of the firm—it’s a big firm—you’d have your voice in things. And since he would not be pushing you to get in business—you see, you wouldn’t have to sell your soul. Very few get business. Well, you’d be tremendously valuable to him. You like Connally and he likes you. Now, he’s the guy that’s going to run that firm. You’d make a hell of a lot of money. You’d live in Washington, and if you want to go the law way, that’s infinitely better than New York firms. New York firms are selfish, horrible bastards. Texas would be selfish, too, but they’re at least decent about it, and Connally would be good. Connally also is going to be in on a lot of good international stuff and you could have a lot of fun with that. You can join him around the world and so forth. You’d be a very good asset to him, which I told him, and you could add—and, you have something to bring to him that you can’t bring to Mitchell, and you don’t want to bring to Smathers. The other possibility you have in law is to go in for yourself. The difficulty with that is that, then everybody’s going to be coming to you, frankly, for influence peddling. See, the Connally firm is big, established. They’ve got clients already and they wouldn’t say, well, they came because of that—the main thing I found when I went into a firm in New York—they were very nice about it—but they did kind of—I felt an obligation to get out and try to hustle some business for them. And, of course, people did come to us, sometimes for the wrong reason. It was embarrassing. You should never be out feeling that you’ve got a rod in your back to get out and, you know, to hustle business. You’ll do that. You’ll do it anyway, but you must always be in a position, Dick, to be able to turn down something that doesn’t smell good. There it is. How does it sound? Now, you just think about it.

KLEINDIENST: That’s why I came out to see him. My goodness.

NIXON: Connally is so decent about it and [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Well, I had a good talk with him and I think it may have helped to start your [unclear] because he already compiled [unclear] ideal. Your age is right. See, you’re under fifty. And you see, most senior partners—you’d have to be sixty or old—five or sixty-five. Most of them are senile. So you are at the right age. You might want to consider even—you might even go to Houston, at some point. You know, you might go to—it’s a hell of a firm. It’s one of the big firms.

KLEINDIENST: It’s actually bigger than any firm in New York now. It’s two hundred lawyers.

NIXON: Two hundred lawyers. Christ, it’s bigger than Mitchell’s. Mitchell’s is one hundred thirty or forty, I think.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]—

NIXON: But the bigness is not—

KLEINDIENST: —[unclear] of the law that dictates that I can’t negotiate about something like that.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —while I’m in the department, I think.

NIXON: Right. You shouldn’t.

KLEINDIENST: I’m not having any further conversations—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —about the job.

NIXON: Right.

KLEINDIENST: I think you and I—

NIXON: Right, right.

KLEINDIENST: —had a general attitude about—

NIXON: I think what you should do is to tell them you can’t negotiate. You shouldn’t—matter of fact, you should never get out that you’re talking to them. But my own view is that if you were to—of course some other thing you could do would be to take over as the head of a corporation, but—

KLEINDIENST: I don’t want to do that.

NIXON: Pain in the ass. My view is—

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]—

NIXON: —it would be better to have—you’re a lawyer. You like to be—you like the law, and if I were you—if I were to advise you I’d sort of, gee, tell John about people now. I told John that if you were to go [unclear] here, which he, of course, appreciates. He’s got to [unclear], too. But, he doesn’t have to [unclear]. Now the other thing I wanted to get into, obviously, is Watergate, and—want to talk to you candidly about it. And this affects your plans. You were talking about staying on through July or August or something like that. I had thought—

KLEINDIENST: I’ll stay on as long as you want.

NIXON: —as—I would like for you to stay—I’d like to ask you to stay and I want you to tell Connally this—through—until their reports. I never assumed that you should be here. I think it’s another reason for that. From your own standpoint, if you could really come to think about it, I mean—because you know, I felt you should stay at least through the [congressional] session, but my view is that if you’d should stay through the year—if you leave earlier, you have a new attorney general in there who’s got to go through all this. You’ve really got to be the guy who’s in there leading the department. I think, also, either the department—you’ve got to say you have no plans to leave. You—at this point and you can say you want to stay through the year. And I think that’s what you should do and I think—and I know this is—it is going to cost you half a year. You will lose a hundred thousand dollars. Let’s face it. But if you would stay through the year, I would appreciate it.

KLEINDIENST: I want to stay there as long as you want me, Mr. President.

NIXON: Yeah. Now, understand, when I say through the year, I mean their damn report’s supposed to come out in February. And I mean, you ought to be there so you can control it. And then I’d get out if I were you. Before we get into the election year, so as—another thing I told Connally, I mean—you should—this is just [unclear] I don’t know what his political plans are. We’re trying, of course, to have him not leave. [unclear]—

KLEINDIENST: He’ll never tell you about politics even [unclear] switch.

NIXON: But, I said—you know, I—John, as far as your options are concerned, if you should decide to move on their side I said you couldn’t have a better moment than [unclear]. Incidentally, there [unclear] delegate [unclear] and—which I—and I think you’re—but I think you ought to stay here. I think, too, if you were to move out earlier, at this point—I didn’t realize Watergate wouldn’t be over, you know, in six months. But they’re going to—Christ, they’re going to take years to screw around with the goddamn thing and I think that—you had nothing to do with Watergate, as you know, not a goddamn thing. Mitchell did, and so consequently if you were to go to talk to [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: Another reason why I was thinking about it earlier—when I went up to Camp David, in my initial conversation with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, they both indicated to me that they knew that I was [unclear].

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: Well, they were thinking at that time that that would be over—you see, at that time, that that would be over. But now it isn’t. And if you’d stay through the year, a year’s a good time anyway.

KLEINDIENST: I suppose the problem is kids in school.

NIXON: Oh, you’re going to stay then?

KLEINDIENST: I am going to stay here.

NIXON: Great.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: All right. Now let me come to the point.

KLEINDIENST: Well, Mr. President, I want to stay there. [unclear] as my wife.

NIXON: How’s [Deputy Attorney General Joseph] Sneed doing, my old friend?

KLEINDIENST: He’s doing all right. He’s coming into an entirely different—you know.

NIXON: It’s hard for him to learn. He’s a fine man.

KLEINDIENST: Sure. He’s a very fine man.

NIXON: Loyal—

KLEINDIENST: Sure. He’s got—

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: He’s a fine man. He’s just got a little training course to go through, and he and I get along great.

NIXON: Finally, there’s the other thing—is a type—this is very closely held because [unclear] deny any—Howard Baker dropped down. I had a reception for a couple of senators, congressmen, and so forth [unclear]. So Howard dropped down a little bit earlier and chatted with me. So, just—greatest confidence about this thing, because I naturally haven’t talked to anybody about this thing. I wanted, frankly—I didn’t want to know about any of our people. I didn’t want to know about whether they’re interested in Mitchell—the critical question—

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Yeah. Now, I have through Dean—I’ve gotten the—I mean, what I think is—

KLEINDIENST: Through who?

NIXON: Dean.

KLEINDIENST: Dean.

NIXON: John Dean.

KLEINDIENST: Oh, John Dean.

NIXON: John Dean who’s in charge of the hearings. He’s got all the [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: Very bright young fellow.

NIXON: Yeah. You have confidence in him, now, don’t you? What I would like on that, if you would—I would like for you to use him exclusively on Watergate. Now, I don’t want you to talk to anybody else. I don’t want you to talk to Ehrlichman. I don’t want you to talk to Haldeman. I don’t want you to talk to Colson, or anybody else—just Dean. Fair enough?

KLEINDIENST: Sure. That’s what I would—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: I’d do it anyway.

NIXON: Now, Howard came down for the purpose of telling me what are his plans for the hearings, briefly speaking. [unclear] what he’s planning to do—what he’s going to do is to—that to—try to make the hearings—make it appear the Republicans are cooperating. The hearings are honest and the administration’s cooperating. So I assure you we’re [unclear] small ones.

KLEINDIENST: That was the strategy we’ve had, I think.

NIXON: Huh?

KLEINDIENST: I think that’s—what are the strategies—

NIXON: If—I said, provided this didn’t become a circus [unclear]. But, secondly, I said his treatment—he would like, he said, to meet Ervin, and I said I strongly would like to use—to have you—they want to talk to you. And I said fine. He said Ervin likes you and that you have his confidence and that—and of course Baker—of course wants you. I said fine. I said, as far as I’m concerned, everything’s through Kleindienst. I suggested that Dean could be available for things, too. He’s concerned about that. He didn’t say so, but I could sense it. So my view is—

KLEINDIENST: Howard shouldn’t have ever talked to John Dean.

NIXON: Yeah, yeah. My feeling is that I want you to be the man. But in being the man I want you to be basically our man on it all the way—that you would naturally be.

KLEINDIENST: That’s what I’m there for.

NIXON: I want to tell you, before I think of all—another thing is that we get into other tactics. Howard said, well, he felt that the—he sort of had the impression that Haldeman did [unclear] what happens with Stans. It’s a bad trip. Stans—you know Maury. He is so straight-laced and all that sort of thing. Well, unsophisticated and naive—that if he ever helped such a caper he’d resign that day. He had no knowledge whatever of a [unclear]. And I know this is true. He’s totally outraged about it now. Now, however, it is getting to the point whether that will come out. There was this—there were funds which were raised [unclear] raised a couple hundred thousand dollars cash. And that sort of thing and so forth, which were used by the security group for their earliest activities.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: Therefore, Maury, as the finance chairman, is ostensibly responsible for that because he started it. Now that brings us, however, to the fellow that I really think the greatest possibility, and that’s—is Mitchell. Now on Mitchell—Mitchell has laid the line, you know—anyway, something about—I forget. I’ve forgotten, so let me tell you what I understand. I remember in the Hiss case—perjury, the hardest rap to prove. We convicted Hiss [unclear] line through the confrontation of [unclear]. However, it took two years to convict him in the courts, and then we had go to [unclear] comprehend. Look—now, John, I don’t know this, but I can’t help but believe—assume that John must have known about these activities.

KLEINDIENST: I think he must have found out about them.

NIXON: Yeah. And he must have had someone other than—

KLEINDIENST: I think, if I recall—

NIXON: The point is that John has denied it categorically and so what I’m concerned about is the perjury.

KLEINDIENST: So am I.

NIXON: But, now, with that in mind, I told—and I’ve—and Baker loves Mitchell.

KLEINDIENST: So do I.

NIXON: I said to him—I said now Howard—nothing wrong with that—and I told Baker why. I said, now John, the way I put it to him, I did not let up on John. [unclear] I said John has a horrible domestic problem. I said Martha, you know, is very sick. And John wasn’t paying any attention and these kids ran away with it. Now that’s the line I’ve taken and that’s the one I want you to take. John Mitchell is a pure, bright guy who would never have done such a thing. The kids ran away with it. And if John did lie, it was simply because he’d forgotten. Now whether that will wash or not I don’t know, but if that’s—that I just want you to know that I consider the Mitchell problem the main one. I don’t want John—I don’t think John will care if there’s [unclear]. He’ll sort of grin and say that’s okay, and he’ll survive. But I don’t want John—I can’t have John run the possibility of a charge of perjury. You know what I mean? Period.

KLEINDIENST: I couldn’t have said it any better. That should get him out of it.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Because it’s the same viewpoint—

NIXON: Yeah. All right. Now, to come to the White House staff, I think you should know about it. Dean is conducting an investigation. I figure—and Gray is conducting an investigation and so forth. And I think putting Gray’s name up—one of the reasons I didn’t was simply to say well, goddamn it, we had a hell of an investigation here. If you want to ask about Watergate, he can say with righteous indignation he conducted a hell of an investigation. The guys are guilty.

KLEINDIENST: That’s the positive side of the coin.

NIXON: That’s what he’s doing. Now—

KLEINDIENST: And he’ll do it quite good.

NIXON: Now the other thing is you come to White House staff. Ehrlichman didn’t know a goddamn thing, that’s for sure. He had—you know what I mean, he was working in other fields. However, that—see, Hunt worked with him on drugs, on the—

KLEINDIENST: The Pentagon Papers. I think that was with respect to [unclear].

NIXON: What?

KLEINDIENST: I said there could—

NIXON: [unclear] No question. He’ll have to be called. Now, Colson is the other possibility—Colson’s close friendship. See, they served in the Marine Corps together. With Hunt the fact that Colson has worked with Hunt on the ITT, which he did, would lead certainly to strong innuendo that Colson was in this. Colson totally denies it. He may be lying.

KLEINDIENST: He can take care of himself.

NIXON: Yeah. But I don’t know. Now the other is Haldeman. The problem with Haldeman’s case, frankly, is Magruder. Magruder did work for Haldeman. Magruder was over there. Magruder—

KLEINDIENST: Magruder’s got the same problem Mitchell has to [unclear]—

NIXON: I got—don’t you think—?

KLEINDIENST: Huh?

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: I don’t know.

NIXON: Well, I—

KLEINDIENST: It’s possible that he and Mitchell both might have known.

NIXON: I think we—well, that’s what people assume. Now with Magruder, you’ve got the problem that if you go to him, he’s not a very strong personality. And Magruder, I don’t know.

KLEINDIENST: I think he—

NIXON: Magruder will probably turn on Mitchell rather than Haldeman. That’s my guess. He’s Haldeman’s man.

KLEINDIENST: I don’t think he’ll turn on anybody.

NIXON: You don’t?

KLEINDIENST: No, I think he’s got [unclear].

NIXON: [unclear], huh?

KLEINDIENST: I really do.

NIXON: Now we come down to this.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear] jeopardize, if he does.

NIXON: I don’t know. I hope so. I mean—look, let’s face it. You take a guy like Jeb and Chapin. All these guys—for Christ’s sakes, I mean, you and I know that this is a very silly operation, and so forth and so on. See? But it’s a campaign and that—and also you are aware of the fact that, you know the—that Hoover told Mitchell separately and me separately that the FBI bugged our plane in 1968 for the last three weeks.

KLEINDIENST: Oh, yeah, that.

NIXON: You were aware of that?

KLEINDIENST: Yes.

NIXON: It was a fact. You know what I mean? And that fellow [Deke DeLoach] who works for Coca-Cola—Pepsi-Cola—now sort of backs off a little. He says we [the FBI] only bugged the telephones.

KLEINDIENST: It’s pretty bad, too. Wasn’t it? [unclear] alone.

NIXON: Huh? See my point? But the FBI [unclear] bugging the candidates—distinguished from the goddamn committee. And the FBI and the government doing it. What the Christ do you think of that? Ervin said no they’re certain [unclear]. He won’t, of course. That’s the reason that they fought not to have it extended to other campaigns. But now—let’s come back—

KLEINDIENST: Well, Mr. President, let me comment on that right here. I don’t know tact—

NIXON: I don’t want to smear Johnson.

KLEINDIENST: I don’t know tactically right now, in my own mind, whether [unclear] is to have that now. It might be the thing that’ll save us.

NIXON: I don’t want to hurt Johnson. I don’t want to get into smearing a dead man.

KLEINDIENST: Well—

NIXON: And it looks like, you see, say they’re [unclear] did that to me. And that’s why we did it, because they bugged us. What do you—?

KLEINDIENST: No, I—and I’ve thought a great deal about this before I had [unclear]. It all depends on the course that this investigation takes. If it turns itself into a wild charge—

NIXON: Charge. Right.

KLEINDIENST: —then maybe you want to consider that. If Ervin could be made aware of this fact, it might be a restraining—it’d be—influence, you know, because if they could be made aware of the fact that [unclear]—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —campaign. You know?

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Beginning of the next campaign.

NIXON: That’s right.

KLEINDIENST: Then we’re going to really turn it into something. You know, they might not want to do that because what Johnson did—what the FBI did—goes so far beyond this implication [unclear] the Watergate thing. They just don’t compare. In fact, that really is what we—

NIXON: But we got—this didn’t accomplish anything for us. Our [unclear]—

KLEINDIENST: The thing is that everything is so stupid. Ludicrous. Segretti, Watergate, and everything.

NIXON: What the Christ worked?

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: Theirs worked. Shit, they busted up the windows of the headquarters in Phoenix and burned the goddamn thing. They destroyed—did twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of property in San Francisco.

KLEINDIENST: Right.

NIXON: They ran a riot in Los Angeles right out of McGovern headquarters.

KLEINDIENST: Right.

NIXON: Now, when Ervin and [unclear] all come down and see you, the key point is executive privilege. Now here, I’ve got to ask you to take a very hard line. Now here’s what I—here’s Baker’s point. Baker’s point and Ervin’s line—see, Ervin is hung up on executive privilege. He isn’t hung up just for this. He wants to break it down totally. He wants Kissinger—everybody else, because he’s wrong about this. He’s wrong about this. You know, executive privilege can be broken down to its [unclear]. Now, so I—what his point is—what he’s got a good one in one sense. His view is that after their—when they start the hear—[unclear]. Bring out all the big guys right away. Get it over with.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: And let those assholes go on there and people will be tired. I think that’s rather smart. In other words, rather than having them build up—drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. Call Haldeman, call Mitchell, call the rest—good strategy, don’t you think? You talk about strategy. That’s Hiss.

KLEINDIENST: Howard and I are good friends and I’ll have no difficulty [unclear] with him.

NIXON: Now, but the strategy is his problem and yours. The second point, however, is that Ervin and he will want to talk to you about your cooperation. Now, one is FBI files. Now I—and I want you to tell Ervin this. That you examined the record of this and you found that the only other hearing that was really like this was the Hiss case. Just like this. That at that time, the then Congressman Nixon [unclear] in effect that Hiss was [unclear]. I had a couple friends hear that Truman categorically refused to allow the FBI to cooperate with the committee. They gave us absolutely not a goddamn thing. In fact, they thought that [unclear]. Okay.

KLEINDIENST: In 1948?

NIXON: Sure.

KLEINDIENST: Is that a fact?

NIXON: [unclear] because there they were trying to protect themselves politically. Just bugging—the point is the FBI did not cooperate with the committee. Now what Ervin or Baker are going to ask for this is—they’re going to ask for the raw data to be given to him and the two counsel and so forth. You’ve got to determine that—my own view is that it probably goes too far. But, I don’t know whether you give them FBI raw data and allow them to investigate.

KLEINDIENST: Well, here’s what I had suggested. We had conversations about it, you know, with the strategy that we’d do. Number one, I could, not on the grounds of any executive privilege, but just policy, say I’m not going to turn over, you know, FBI files to anybody. It’s our policy. We don’t do that. But anyway, that, I think will probably get to the bottom of it. But I think it might do more harm than good because of the political situation.

NIXON: So what would you do?

KLEINDIENST: My recommendation would be this: several people have been thinking about this with me and I think are inclined to agree that we will give them a summary of the information of witnesses in the FBI files and we’ll summarize.

NIXON: I wonder, Dick, on that. Let’s—why don’t you, so that I get into that sort of thing. Why don’t you talk to—tell Dean to discuss this?

KLEINDIENST: I’ve discussed this with him and he agrees with me.

NIXON: [unclear] all right.

KLEINDIENST: Let me add a footnote on that—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —Mr. President. I would say to them, “Okay, we’re not going to let you see these raw files, just to protect innocent people, et cetera. We’ll summarize them for you.” In the event the full committee feels that our summaries have been inaccurate we will devise a procedure that an officer of the FBI be present where the minority and majority counsel can come down and look at them, at action—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —investigative reports just to satisfy themselves that we were—

NIXON: Whatever you do, the more important point—the FBI files concern raw data and so forth—and because you well know, if you ever read an FBI file [unclear]. Now, the other point though is more firm. Now, the executive privilege—what I want to avoid, Dick, is not their testifying [unclear] but what I want to avoid is hauling the Haldemans and the Ehrlichmans, for example, up there, television lights and so forth and being grilled by a Senate committee—the president’s two assistants. That I don’t want. Now, how do you get around it? Baker’s position is he and Ervin will develop a very narrow line of inquiry and limit it to that. That isn’t the problem. It isn’t the narrow line of inquiry. It isn’t the questions—how they would answer. It’s putting it on television—putting it on their circus, which is what they want. The damage is done by that. The damage is not done by what they say. I’m not concerned about what they will testify to, and I’m not concerned about the questions, and I’m not concerned about it being under oath. I am concerned about them being called up there, because then it’ll mean they’ll haul Kissinger up and say, “What now did the president really do when he decided to mine—bomb Hanoi.” Now goddamn it, we’re just not going to have that. That’s my point. Now, the other angle, which I’ve already approached, would be to have written interrogatories. Written interrogatories they wouldn’t buy. Now, there’s a middle ground. That’s what should be your starting position. [unclear] people. The other ground, which I think could be a very good compromise—satisfactory to me—would be that for anybody in an—to an executive privilege sign—that rather than appearing before the committee, that they will agree to—and then the senior member, Ervin on the Democratic side, Baker on the Republican side, and the two counsel can interrogate them under oath, like a deposition and cover all questions, but that it be on that basis.

KLEINDIENST: In a nonpublic—

NIXON: A nonpublic forum.

KLEINDIENST: —executive—

NIXON: That’s right.

KLEINDIENST: How about another—?

NIXON: And it would be down here.

KLEINDIENST: How about another fallback position? I think that would be a good proposal, but how about as a final fallback position in that you produce Haldeman and Ehrlichman in the Senate? It would be in an executive session—a closed session of the full committee.

NIXON: That’s bullshit.

KLEINDIENST: It would, I think, produce the same results, and the same information.

NIXON: Except they haul them up there. You see, I suppose, going up to the Capitol and coming out, committee members coming out and saying, and so forth. Well, it’s better. It’s—

KLEINDIENST: It’d be better to take—it’d be better if we can get by them.

NIXON: Huh?

KLEINDIENST: If you could get by that.

NIXON: But, let me say, I think to start with written interrogatories, you know, in which they will—and then my view, Dick, very strongly, is that I think—is that the best thing to do is, from our standpoint, thinking of Kissinger in the future in particular, he’s the one I’m really most concerned about here—the best thing, really, would be the business of the minority and the majority counsel. Now, what the hell? That really covers it. What the hell is the content involved—other members of the committee won’t get to harangue them?

KLEINDIENST: Well, it also provides for them the basic information they’re seeking.

NIXON: But they want information. Then the question is do they want information or publicity?

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: That’s the point. If they want information, they’ll take—they can do it.

KLEINDIENST: I think they want both of them.

NIXON: Yeah. Oh, sure.

KLEINDIENST: Well, you know Sam Ervin’s got quite a posture—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —traditionally in the government as being very jealous.

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: Individual rights, you know?

NIXON: Oh, yes. Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Actually, we couldn’t get a better fellow. He’s a very righteously—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —indignant man, but he’s also a very good man.

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: He’s not a bad man.

NIXON: Yeah. We could say this, that we—the president said this has never been done, but I wanted you to point out that the Hiss case thing—the president went through this, and they refused, and I broke the goddamn case by—and doing it with my own investigators. The FBI did not cooperate. The Justice Department tried to drop the case and this and that—even, and I—and therefore I want cooperation. You could point this out. You can say this: that I’ve often talked to you about this in another vein. You could say, when planning the thing came up—you could say I had a talk about this [unclear] and when you say when we talked about the planning at that time and that’s the president’s view. We want to cooperate as best we can, but I do not want—I cannot break down executive privilege to that point. I’m not—let me make this—I’m not going to make this kind of a thing. I want you to be very hard-lined on that.

KLEINDIENST: Who can you think of now that has your recollection and knowledge of what happened in the Hiss case, so that I could talk to him, just so I don’t have to trouble you about it? Who was involved in it with you?

NIXON: [unclear] All the committee members aren’t—

KLEINDIENST: To the extent that it’s convenient for you, I want you to think about that. Maybe you can think of some person who might still be alive.

NIXON: Well, [unclear] to say [unclear] but I hit Howard Baker on it. I said the reason—I said the Un-American Activities Committee was basically a cataclysmic failure—had a bad reputation except on that case, which I personally handled. And the reason that case even got grudging respect from those who were totally on Hiss’s side was its conduct. And I went after this. I said I conducted it like a court. I said there was no hearsay. There was no innuendo. There was no guilt by association. And I said there was no hearsay present. But the point is I want you to hammer that hard to Ervin, the impression is this—there should be no hearsay except this damn judge has allowed hearsay and everything else down here in this other case. Hearsay, innuendo, et cetera, et cetera. Don’t you think so?

KLEINDIENST: Yes, I do. We can’t keep it profession [unclear]. Ninety days I spent around last year when I was in the hospital.

NIXON: Right.

KLEINDIENST: Those—

NIXON: Read the Six—read the first chapter of Six Crises. That tells the story of the Hiss case.

KLEINDIENST: Does it?

NIXON: Yeah. Do you have the book?

KLEINDIENST: Yes, sir, I do and I haven’t read it for a long time, but—

NIXON: Read the first chapter of Six Crises. It tells the story of what we’re trying to do. And that’ll give you a good feeling. It doesn’t say that the FBI—well, pretty well implied—that the FBI utterly refused. Hoover was on my side, but he utterly refused to get it. I’ll tell you what I did do. I’m sure you know, Dick, that somewhere in the FBI there was a priest by the name of Father Cullen around then who knew one of the Catholic FBI agents and he really stuck up for the FBI, too. That’s all [unclear] about it. Nothing else.

KLEINDIENST: Why do you think Hoover permitted himself to be used by Johnson in the ’68 campaign?

NIXON: Deke DeLoach did it. He was ordered to.

KLEINDIENST: Hoover didn’t know about it?

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: Somehow I thought he knew about it.

NIXON: Supposed to. No, he didn’t know. Well, Deke DeLoach put it on—Johnson put it on the basis that they were invest—they were negotiating the Vietnam peace. The South Vietnamese ambassador [Bui Diem] was very adamant that the Dragon Lady [Anna Chennault] was very close to President Nixon or somebody, or Agnew or somebody, under the circumstances that he had to find what she was saying to them. You know he was a paranoid—he bugged everyone!

KLEINDIENST: I know.

NIXON: And Bobby Kennedy bugged him.

KLEINDIENST: I know.

NIXON: So what the hell? I think a little of this ought to get out, too. Let me—there is this one side note that I am supposed to tell you that I must get to right away. I want you to be sure when you go back to your office today, [convicted labor leader] Jimmy Hoffa announced he was going to run for the Detroit Local. I want you to call Hoffa’s lawyer, or somebody to call his lawyer and tell him that if he does that that I will—that you’re going to revoke his parole. And also I want you to make a public statement to that effect that I shouldn’t [unclear]. I want it—

KLEINDIENST: Today, in talking about that, that John Connally was [unclear]—

NIXON: His parole is to be revoked. It was on the basis he did not engage in any activities and I’d like for you to get out a strong public statement.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Do you think—will you do that?

KLEINDIENST: Yeah. Just take him to the [unclear] to the attorney general without any reference to you.

NIXON: That’s right.

KLEINDIENST: If he does it—

NIXON: That’s right.

KLEINDIENST: —[unclear].

NIXON: You should let him know that he must revoke that and if not—then his parole will be revoked and he’s going to go back to jail. Goddamn it! I’m not going to allow that.

KLEINDIENST: It would be a good line.

NIXON: If you would get that out today, I’d appreciate it. Call Ziegler and say [unclear] Ziegler gets this question.

KLEINDIENST: I think that—let me ask you this: suppose I talk to Hoffa’s lawyer and tell him what I’m going to do and then he calls me back and says, “Okay, Hoffa isn’t going to do it.” I don’t know whether I ought to make it public.

NIXON: Oh, no. You say, all right, he’s to say that publicly or his lawyer has got to publicly get off of this.

KLEINDIENST: And if he does then Hoffa will publicly state that—

NIXON: Get off of this. Yeah, that’s all. We’re not going to revoke his parole if he doesn’t move in it.

KLEINDIENST: Right, but—

NIXON: Hoffa must publicly get out of this damn thing.

KLEINDIENST: But suppose—

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: —Hoffa then says, “I’m not going to run.” I don’t think then it would help anything if we just say if he does, I’m going to put him back in jail.

NIXON: No, not at all. Not at all. But he must publicly say it or you make a public statement.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: If he tells you that, then you make a statement to the effect that you have called the lawyer, and you have been assured that he is not going to run.

KLEINDIENST: Right.

NIXON: Then you go on to say that—of course, that would be a violation of parole. Period. But I want to take a very hard line on it. [unclear] with the politics in that union, and also that we are not going to get the impression around here that we’re soft on Hoffa, because we’re not. [unclear] son of a bitch [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Coming back to this thing—written interrogatories [unclear]. They’re not going up there under any circumstances. I really think so. I really think the position should be one, they examine them and that—and then Ervin made a major breakthrough on this. We’ll allow this communication in the future, that sort of thing. Under ground rules that are laid down. But we will not—but that I will not [unclear] in public hearings. Public hearings with all the—that sort of [unclear]. We will cooperate with the Congress, but under circumstances of there has to be [unclear]. Both sides, we state—in an intransigent position, we’re going to have a constitutional scream-out. On the other hand, as far as the public hearings are concerned, that’s something that can’t go on. [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: I don’t know. [unclear] possibly be in [unclear] got an awfully hardheaded line here.

NIXON: Don’t go to the executive session—you know—at this point, under any circumstances. Don’t even suggest that. The backup position is the, you know, the—

KLEINDIENST: No, I don’t care anymore about that. I wouldn’t want us to get that backup position. That would be the last bargaining position we have [unclear] final blow—face-saving, bargaining position [unclear] executive.

NIXON: But that is the final. I’m not going to allow any televised hearing. Do you agree with that?

KLEINDIENST: I think I do. Yeah, I do.

NIXON: That’s my view on this. Go just so far and we’ll fight the Congress on it. Go to hell with it. There are other—there are worse things than that. We say we’ve offered this. We’ve made statements and when we put that record out it’s going to look a bit—then he’s going to be looking awfully damn unreasonable, too.

KLEINDIENST: That’s why—

NIXON: They never did that. You should point out that they didn’t do that in the Hiss case.

KLEINDIENST: You know—

NIXON: You study the records in the Hiss case in the Department of Justice. Why don’t you just give that a look? I think—and I know exactly what I’m talking about. I did. They didn’t. They refused to let anybody come up.

KLEINDIENST: But you covered this. I don’t recollect—of course, I read that book several years ago, at least sections of it. But you covered it pretty carefully in that book.

NIXON: [unclear]

KLEINDIENST: I think the public posture that we ought to have right now is we’ll wait and see what happens. You know, (a) we have nothing to hide, (b) we’re going to cooperate with them, and (c) let’s get the damn thing done so that we can go back and do something else.

NIXON: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

KLEINDIENST: Uh—

NIXON: Don’t make this a political circus and harassment and partisan and the rest. But on the other hand, I want you to hit Baker a little harder on this. Say, “Now, Howard, don’t be so damn timid with regard to what they have done. They’ve done a hell of a lot of things. If, for example, they expand this hearing into this crappy Segretti business—” [to unknown assistant] I’ll let you know when I’m ready.

UNKNOWN: Fine, sir.

NIXON: If they have the Segretti business—all right, fine. Then we’re going to do all their activities of that sort. I think that’s got to be made very clear. I think this hearing should be, frankly, on Watergate. That’s very much more—the rest is just shit. It’s not—you know what I mean? But if they do go, Howard has got to open the other side up. Don’t you agree?

KLEINDIENST: Yeah, I think also a final judgment has to be made soon with respect to this 1968 stuff by Johnson.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Knowing that Deke DeLoach was involved in it. He’s working for PepsiCo. Don Kendall’s a very—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —close friend—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —of yours and supporter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Because once we get into that, what you’re really getting into is criminal conduct, you know? That could lend itself to a criminal prosecution.

NIXON: What—DeLoach? Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Goddamn [unclear] have done that.

NIXON: That’s why DeLoach has gone back on it.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: I told Gray—I directed him—he was here. I said, “Now you’re to call him immediately for a [unclear]. Give him a lie detector test on this.” Not because of what I said. The Star had the story, see? The Washington Star and they went to Johnson and Johnson was—it was about two, three months ago. Just went up his wall and so forth and so on.

KLEINDIENST: The Star had this?

NIXON: And we killed it. A reporter at the Star. We killed the story from here.

KLEINDIENST: Is that right?

NIXON: Sure. I don’t know how it leaked. Somebody got it. We didn’t know about it then.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: No, it had never been printed. Johnson was just beside himself about that. [unclear] let it out. [unclear] I called Haldeman.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Listen, more than meets the eye here. [unclear] Bobby and all the rest.

KLEINDIENST: But it’s also, I think, a different situation now that Johnson is dead.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Oh, Christ. You mean [unclear]?

KLEINDIENST: Yeah. Seems to me that we, in consideration of the office of the presidency—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —is a little bit different in terms of this—

NIXON: You mean, you should do more for these dead men? Maybe. Well, I’m a dead man. Okay.

KLEINDIENST: Now, as far as [unclear]—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: —[unclear] and some of those people [unclear] there’s a possibility they might not want to—so wrapped up in all of this.

NIXON: Yeah. Let me ask you to do—ask you then to be [unclear] you’ll stay on as long as we want you to—

KLEINDIENST: Yes, sir.

NIXON: —here. Second, you’ll do the Hoffa thing for us. Right away. Today. That call needs to be made as soon as you get back to the office.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Third, you’ll talk to Baker as to [unclear] and he will talk to Dean. And I’ll tell Dean that he’s to talk to you. He’s your contact. Nobody else. I don’t want you to talk to anybody else over here but Dean. Nobody. Fourth, I think sometime you’ve got to talk to Mitchell.

KLEINDIENST: I’ve got to talk to Mitchell? You mean about the Watergate business?

NIXON: Well, either that or you talk to Baker, and Baker’s got to talk to him, but—

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: —but—

KLEINDIENST: I don’t think I’d want to talk to him.

NIXON: All right.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: All right, fine. [unclear]—

KLEINDIENST: I don’t want to be on the—

NIXON: —Baker. Goddamn it, remember your major problem is Baker and your other major problem is to protect—in my view, is to protect the—which is not, we’re not going to protect any wrongdoing. Anybody wrong here and I’m going to kick their ass out of here. As far as the White House staff, I am not concerned, unless they’re all double-faced liars, about any of them being involved. On the other hand, I am concerned about the circus. Three of the president’s chief assistants up there like criminals. That’s what I’m not going to allow and that’s just, that’s final. Okay?

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: Call—you will—I agree. Call my friend—call Ziegler. Give him some—you say something on this so that he’s posted for the [unclear] thing. Fine.

KLEINDIENST: I’ll call back over here.

NIXON: Yeah—their stuff. I mean just so that—he may not be asked about it, but you know there’s a press conference in the afternoon. But I want you to be the guy—

KLEINDIENST: Do you believe Hoffa intends to make a statement like that?

NIXON: He’s already made a statement.

KLEINDIENST: Oh, he has?

NIXON: Already has. He indicated—already issued a statement that he’s going to—somebody has issued a statement on his behalf that he’s going to run for the president of the Detroit Local. That is a violation of that parole. He should be called. We’ve heard about it and want to know what the score is. He’s either going to have to give an assurance he’s not going to run, which you then publicly will say or—

KLEINDIENST: He might want to be testing the constitutionality of that limitation in court.

NIXON: All right, fine. Fine.

KLEINDIENST: [unclear]

NIXON: All right, fine. Then we’ll withdraw going into the thing. Fair enough?

KLEINDIENST: Yes, sir. Fine.

NIXON: Good, good. Well, you know one thing, Dick, we sure got our peacenik friends a little calmed down.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: And haven’t those POWs been great?

KLEINDIENST: Yes, they have.

NIXON: It’s shaking the country.

KLEINDIENST: It’s shaking the country.

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: It really is.

NIXON: People are proud again.

KLEINDIENST: Yeah.

NIXON: Yeah, they’re proud. They’re carrying their heads high.

KLEINDIENST: You just can’t—

NIXON: Yeah.

KLEINDIENST: Know that people told me [unclear] when those fellows came back.

NIXON: Yeah. Good luck. Thank you.

KLEINDIENST: Thank you, sir.

NIXON: You’re welcome. You’re not a significant drawback [unclear].

KLEINDIENST: [laughs]

 

The latest closest advisor: John Dean

February 27, 1973, 3:55 P.M.

Richard Nixon and John Dean

OVAL OFFICE

After speaking with Kleindienst, Nixon grew adamant to control the uncontrollable: who was talking to whom in Washington and the halls of the White House. Speaking with a new level of urgency to White House counsel John Dean, Nixon tried to clamp down. He hadn’t spoken with Dean in more than four months, even though he continually made reference to him in discussions of Watergate strategies. A native Ohioan, Dean was not an ideological conservative but an ambitious Washington-based lawyer who was named White House counsel in 1970, when he was thirty-one. Speaking with Dean in late February the next year, Nixon reiterated his argument in favor of utilizing executive privilege to protect his aides and especially his communications from investigators. He found Dean far more amenable than Kleindienst on that point. Nixon also discussed in depth the very real problems that he had with various members of the FBI, who he believed were the source of myriad leaks.

…

NIXON: Good afternoon, John. How are you?

DEAN: Pretty good.

NIXON: I—this cardinal’s [Cardinal-Designate Luigi Raimondi, Vatican delegate to the United States] not going to interrupt us but I might have [unclear] this afternoon. Did you get your talk with Kleindienst yet?

DEAN: I just had a good talk with him.

NIXON: Yeah, fine. Have you got him positioned properly—the—?

DEAN: I think he is.

NIXON: [unclear] properly. Has he talked yet to Baker?

DEAN: No, he hasn’t. He called Sam Ervin and offered to come visit with both he and Baker. And that was done last week.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: But he thought that timing would be bad to call Baker prior to the joint meeting. So he says, “After I have that joint meeting, I’ll start working my relationship with Baker.”

NIXON: Well, Baker left with me that he was going to set up a joint meeting. Well, anyway, to try to see what [unclear]. I see. So Kleindienst has talked to—he has talked to Ervin and Ervin said yes [unclear].

DEAN: Ervin has left it dangling and said, “I’ll be back in touch with you.” I think what disturbs me a little bit about Baker was his move to put his own man in as minority counsel so quickly, without any consultation as he had promised consultation. And I’m told this man [Fred Thompson] may be a disaster himself, the minority counsel.

NIXON: He is? What do you mean to—is he—?

DEAN: Well he’s a—well, I can’t knock age. He’s thirty years of age. He doesn’t know a thing about Washington.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: So, we’ll have to—

NIXON: Baker says that he puts the blame on the White House. He says—whatchamacallits his name—Korologos called him and suggested somebody else. That was a great mistake, which I didn’t know anything about, but apparently—

DEAN: Well, Baker apparently is quite open in his soliciting: “I want to counsel with you all, and I don’t want to move until I’ve told you what I’m going to do,” and then he did just the reverse. So it was curious. One, that he wanted a meeting with you. Secondly, that he suggested Kleindienst as a conduit—

NIXON: That’s correct.

DEAN: —and there is hope, I think, that he may try to keep an eye on this thing and not let it get into a total circus up there.

NIXON: Who?

DEAN: Baker. Baker might.

NIXON: Well, that’s what he indicated. He indicated, of course, with regard to his situation—his position, though, and with regard to Kleindienst’s position, I shook Kleindienst up a bit and I need to know who really is the fellow who’s going to get hurt most out of this [unclear] is Mitchell. I said others are going to get hurt, too. But Mitchell is—the real problem is whether or not Mitchell—will get him on perjury.

DEAN: Hmm.

NIXON: I said, now look, perjury’s a very damn hard thing to prove too, fortunately. But, if you just keep from popping off. I said, well, I talked to him. I said, “Did you ever talk to Mitchell about this?” Never has.

DEAN: No.

NIXON: He says he has never talked to him. Did you go into the Mexican part of it with Kleindienst or did you get—

DEAN: Well, I—

NIXON: —into any substance at all?

DEAN: I’ve always braced Kleindienst in the past about, you know, the potential implications of what this whole investigation the bureau conducted—what the U.S. attorney’s office was doing—

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: —what the trial meant—

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: I think this could come to haunt—

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: If it gets out of hand, I don’t want to get into a lot of specifics.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: I—at this last meeting, I just sat with him and said, “Dick,” I said, “I don’t think I ought to brief you on everything I know. I don’t think—”

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: “—that’s the way to proceed. But if I see you going down the wrong track, I’m going to have to tell you why.”

NIXON: Mm-hmm. Good, good. What did he say?

DEAN: He said, “I agree. That’s the way it should stand.”

NIXON: On the executive privilege one, I worked with—talked to John Ehrlichman a little and decided that the last paragraph, which should be modified so that it covers what I might have to say if I were asked at a press conference, he’ll indicate what it—but in a nutshell, rather than simply—flatly say that I think that what we should say is that members of the president’s staff will not appear before a formal session of the commission—committee. However, under proper, appropriate circumstances that informal discussions or so forth can be conducted to obtain information and so forth and so on—“appropriate.” I want—I’ll tell you what we’re up against. What here is—Kleindienst has indicated to me—I don’t know whether he did to you—that he felt that the backup position here should be an executive session of the committee. And I said, “Well, that’s a hell of a difficult thing for the men.” I said, “I think that the position should be one of a—that our position should be one of a solution. That you can’t get written interrogatories which is unlikely. Of the two committee—the ranking committee members and the counsel, questioning any member of the White House staff, you know, under proper—you know, restrictions—”

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —and so forth and so on. I put that to Baker as well, and Baker probably wants to get—for the same reason that Ervin does, because of the publicity and so forth—wants to haul down the White House staff and—

DEAN: Hmm.

NIXON: —put them in the glare of those lights.

DEAN: Sure.

NIXON: That we cannot have. That we cannot have. On the other hand, we cannot have a stonewall, so that it appears that we’re not letting them. And so I think we’ve got to be in a position to—did you discuss this with Kleindienst, as to what the position would be on that point? That, I think, John, is the important thing that Kleindienst has got to stand goddamn firm on—

DEAN: I did. I talked to Dick about that. I said that, one, there’s a statement forthcoming. I don’t know the timing on it.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: The president will issue it. I said that it’s fortunate the context it’s coming out in, because Clark Mollenhoff solicited the statement in a press inquiry that’s coming out in unrelated context and not related to Watergate per se.

NIXON: Right, right.

DEAN: And so that’ll be out soon and that will define what the outer perimeters are. It also gives—

NIXON: Have Kleindienst say that nobody from the White House staff will testify before a committee.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Of course. That doesn’t help much at all.

DEAN: Well, under normal circumstances, if they’re—

NIXON: If they were normal.

DEAN: That’s the—there’s little slide in there. And then what in a practical matter I told them would probably happen would be much like the Flanigan situation where there’s an exchange and the issues become very narrow as to the information that’s sought.

NIXON: Well, you work with—have you talked to John Ehrlichman? You work at revising that last paragraph.

DEAN: We’ve done that.

NIXON: Oh, you’ve already worked with him on that?

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: And, well, after I see this Cardinal Raimondi, take me about—I think five—we ought to get rid of him in about fifteen or twenty minutes. You mind bringing it down—you’ve got it written already?

DEAN: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Then let me take a look at it again.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: And we’ll approve the statement. I don’t want to put it out right now because I [unclear]. When I decide to do, I’ll do it on the press thing.

DEAN: It’d probably be easier not to have those questions in your press conference per se.

NIXON: I would prefer—that’s what I want to do—is to have this statement come after the press conference, to say—if they ask anything about it that “I’ve covered that in a statement that will be issued tomorrow on executive privilege.” It’s very complicated. So, that’s what I had in mind. I’d rather not be questioned on the statement.

DEAN: Mollenhoff himself will debate you right there on the subject.

NIXON: Right. So I’ll say I’m covering it.

DEAN: And I did talk to Mollenhoff yesterday, at Rogers’s request.

NIXON: —[unclear] want to look in the case.

DEAN: Tell him I want to look in the case and I had an extended discussion with him on the executive privilege question. Of course, he differs somewhat from where we’re coming out, but he agrees that certainly the president has the legal authority to do that and he agrees also that it’s—

NIXON: Well, in his case, I mean what is he talking about?

DEAN: Well, he says, he thinks that all White House staff should be ready to run up to the Hill and testify and he asked—

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: —as to what they’re doing and it’s a rare exception when the president invokes the privilege. I said, “Clark, that’s got to be the other way around. The staff can’t operate if they’re going to be queried on every bit of communication they had with the president.”

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: Mansfield, himself, Mr. President, has recognized that communications between you and your staff are protected. He said this in a policy statement before they issued this resolution up there on having confirmable individuals agree they’d testify before they are confirmed.

NIXON: Well—

DEAN: I’m—

NIXON: —as for confirmable individuals are concerned, they’re all available for testimony though.

DEAN: That’s right. It’s no problem there.

NIXON: It’s no problem there.

DEAN: There’s not a giveaway by any means on that.

NIXON: They, of course, will—they—I guess we would not normally claim executive privilege for cabinet officers, would we?

DEAN: No, sir. Only if in, say, the rare instances where we have already, where they’re going for information which should be protected. Investigative files, classified material, or say aid programs or something, when we did it in the last—IRS files. Those are the instances in which we’ve done it.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: And they’re quite traditional, and should be expected by the Congress when they go after information like that.

NIXON: I think—went over to Kleindienst, I said just to show you how the worm turns here—what we went through in the Hiss case. There we were, investigating, not espionage by a political—what one political organization against another, but a charge of espionage against the United States of America, which was a hell of a lot more serious. And in that case, the Department of Justice, the White House, the FBI totally stonewalled the committee. The FBI would not furnish any information and here the FBI, I understand, is going to furnish information to this committee.

DEAN: That’s—

NIXON: That’s according to Gray, right?

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: All right. The Department of Justice refused to give us any information at all and of course the White House used executive privilege and the press was all on their side. You see that was—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —that was a—that’s—shoot, whose ox is being gored? Now here you got so-called espionage involving a political organization and so now they want to—

DEAN: Well, you know I’ve been—

NIXON: —break it down.

DEAN: —in doing some checking—

NIXON: I told Dick this, I said it’s just [unclear]. That’s what our Democratic friends did when we were trying to get information.

DEAN: Lyndon Johnson was probably the greatest abuser of the FBI, I’m told by people, some of the old hands over there.

NIXON: He used it for everything.

DEAN: He used it as his personal—

NIXON: But didn’t he use it against the press?

DEAN: He—

NIXON: That’s—

DEAN: —used it against the press. He used it against his own party back in ’64 when the Walter Jenkins thing [homosexuality scandal] broke. He had high officials of the FBI out trying to strong-arm a doctor to say that this man had a brain tumor—Walter Jenkins. He also then turned his—the FBI loose on the Goldwater [1964 presidential campaign] staff. This sort of thing is starting to seep—

NIXON: Who knows?

DEAN: —out now.

NIXON: Is it getting out?

DEAN: I’m [unclear].

NIXON: But you, of course, know the incident of his—the famous incident of the bugging of our plane—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —which maybe—they really know is true. And you know, the instances that they talk about the—about our bugging—the FBI stuff, believe me, I know exactly what those were.

…

NIXON: And then, of course, the other things involved leaks out of the NSC, where we—they bugged Haig, Lake, or Halperin, I mean. But that was all.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: We were as limited as hell. I mean Hoover, good God! We could have used him for everything. He’s—but Johnson had just apparently—just used them all the time for this sort of thing.

DEAN: That’s what I’m learning. There’s more and more of this—

NIXON: Who’s—who from the FBI is trying to put out this stuff on us?

DEAN: God, I thought—I wish I knew, Mr. President.

NIXON: You don’t believe it’s a—

DEAN: I’ve heard there are several names that are bantered around. I tried, for example, to track the leak.

NIXON: You don’t think it’s Sullivan?

DEAN: No. I confronted Sullivan, as a matter of fact, right after this. I said, “Bill,” I said—I called him into my office. I said, “I want to tell you what Time magazine said they have.” His reaction was not that of a man who has leaked something.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: And then he helped.

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: He told me—he said, “If this ever comes down to the very short strokes,” he said, “as far as I’m concerned this was Hoover and Sullivan. No one else. And I’m ready to stand forward and take it at that.” I said, “Well, I don’t think it’s ever going to be that because—”

NIXON: Well, what—why would it be Hoover and Sullivan? Did Hoover order him to do it?

DEAN: Hoover ordered him to do it.

NIXON: In order to—

DEAN: They did this so he could say, “I could cite examples chapter and verse of Hoover telling me to do things like this.”

NIXON: Now Sullivan knows that their—it was terribly limited. It was limited.

DEAN: That’s right.

…

NIXON: And that I must say, I think we did request, though—did we say find out the leaks, and so Hoover goes and bugs people?

DEAN: Well, I think—

NIXON: That’s the way to do it.

DEAN: —the way it’s postured now, we can stonewall it. Gray can go up there in his confirmation hearings and he’s not going to have to bother with it because they’d accused him in the article of being—sitting on top of the bugs—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: It was there once he came in, which is not factual.

NIXON: Well, there weren’t any.

DEAN: There were none there when he came in.

NIXON: Well, three years ago that this happened—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —and there hasn’t been a goddamn thing since.

DEAN: That’s correct.

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: That’s correct.

NIXON: Another thing you can say, too, John, is the fact that all this had to do with the war—

DEAN: I know.

NIXON: —and now the war is over.

DEAN: Now—

NIXON: Now Johnson, on the other hand, went bugging his political opponents, and every son of a—everything you can imagine. We’ve been—that’s the problem—we’re getting a real bum rap, aren’t we?

DEAN: We cert—we are getting a terrible rap—

NIXON: You stop to think of—we got rid of the army bugs. We got, you know, that whole army espionage business—intelligence business, we got. You remember that?

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: We’ve limited the FBI things to national security bugs, to very, very certain few—probably too few.

DEAN: We’re now [unclear].

NIXON: But somebody’s going to get shot one day, and they’ll wonder why we didn’t bug them, huh?

DEAN: That’s right. We are getting a bad rap.

NIXON: Well, for example—

DEAN: The fact is—

NIXON: —as you know, Hoover did bug Martin Luther King.

DEAN: That’s right. I was aware of that also.

NIXON: Well, Christ yes. Hoover used to tell us about what his—what a morally depraved son of a bitch he was. And Johnson probably ordered him to do it. Now let’s face it.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: So, I don’t—well, you can’t blame Hoover. I’m sure he didn’t do it unless Johnson asked him to. But Johnson was that kind of a man. He used the FBI as his own private intelligence. But God, we’ve been as careful—I’ve talked to Hoover any number of times, but we’ve never ordered anything like that. But he’ll come in with his little things.

…

DEAN: Johnson—

NIXON: Huh?

DEAN: Johnson used the FBI to cover the New Jersey convention before he dropped out officially. He had all the delegates—

NIXON: He did?

DEAN: That’s right, which is kind of fantastic.

NIXON: Sullivan knows this?

DEAN: Mm-hmm. Sullivan is a wealth of knowledge and the more I—you know, sort of generally chat with him about these problems, the more it comes out he’s the man that can also document—

NIXON: Why did Hoover have a fight with him? It’s a hell of a mistake for Hoover to do that. Sullivan knows too much.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Why didn’t Sullivan squawk?

DEAN: I think Sullivan probably is loyal to the—

NIXON: Institution.

DEAN: —the institution and doesn’t want—

NIXON: Somebody over there is not—can he help you find out who the hell is not? Isn’t it a possibility—?

DEAN: He advised—

NIXON: —the guy that—Time magazine’s lawyer, you don’t think it’s him?

DEAN: He speculates, and the speculation is generally—it’s either Sullivan himself, Mark Felt, who is—

NIXON: I know, the lawyer says that.

DEAN: That’s right. And the other one is a fellow Tom Bishop who is now departed, who was in charge of their public information and where—

NIXON: Does he know about these things? Hoover didn’t tell people like that about these things—

DEAN: No.

NIXON: —did he?

DEAN: For example, the ’68 thing. I was trying to determine who might know about that.

NIXON: Yeah—

DEAN: Hoover, apparently—

NIXON: I guess.

DEAN: Hoover apparently told Pat Coyne—Patrick Coyne, who used to be on the NSC staff.

NIXON: I know. I believe—is he still living?

DEAN: I don’t know the man.

NIXON: He told Pat Coyne?

DEAN: He told Pat Coyne. Coyne told Rockefeller. Rockefeller relayed this to Kissinger. This was one channel that might have it in a public domain. The other is when Sullivan took the records, or all the documents in connection with this, out of his office, and out of the bureau. He also instructed the Washington field office to destroy all their records, which they did. Hoover, incensed at this—that he couldn’t reconstruct—that he didn’t have the records and couldn’t get them from Sullivan—tried to have the Washington field office reconstruct them, which they couldn’t. As a result of that movement and flailing around by Hoover, a lot of people in the agency were aware of what had happened and it was on the grapevine.

NIXON: Oh, that’s when it happened then. When Sullivan left, he took the records with him—

DEAN: He took the records with him—

NIXON: And that’s the only records there were?

DEAN: —and that’s the only records there are.

NIXON: He did it out of—I mean, pissed off at Hoover.

DEAN: No, he was doing it to—

NIXON: Protect—

DEAN: —protect—

NIXON: —the bureau.

DEAN: No, he was doing it to protect the White House and the people over here.

NIXON: Oh, but for Christ’s sakes. Hoover, you mean—

DEAN: Hoover never got his hands on the records is what happened. Sullivan had his pissing match with Hoover and then he took them with him at that time.

NIXON: I see.

DEAN: And then he turned them over to Mardian ultimately.

NIXON: I see.

DEAN: And—

NIXON: And so we got them.

DEAN: And then—

NIXON: Where’s Sullivan now?

DEAN: Sullivan is back at Justice in the Drug Intelligence [unclear].

NIXON: We owe him something.

DEAN: We do. He wants to go back to the bureau and work on domestic—

NIXON: Why is it that Gray doesn’t want him?

DEAN: I think Mark Felt has poisoned Gray on this issue and I think once Gray is—

NIXON: Well, who in the hell—somebody is doing Mark Felt in. You know what, do you believe the Time magazine lawyer? Is Felt up to—is he capable of this sort of thing?

DEAN: Well, let me tell you where I—where else I heard that from, was Sandy Smith. I had told—not the lawyer but somebody else told Felt was his source—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and this came to Henry Petersen. Henry Petersen’s an old hand over there, as you know. And, bless his soul, he’s a valuable man to us.

NIXON: Yeah. What did he say?

DEAN: He said that he wouldn’t put it past Felt, but the other thing I was talking to Kleindienst about this when I was over there, he said if Felt is the source—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and if we get Felt way out of joint we are in serious trouble.

NIXON: Because he knows so much?

DEAN: He knows so much.

NIXON: What’s he know?

DEAN: I don’t know. I didn’t ask for specifics with—he said—one thing he said he could knock—

NIXON: Does he know about the Sullivan stuff?

DEAN: Yes, he knows about that. I called Felt—asked him what he knew about it and he was, for example, very cool when I said, “There’s a Time magazine story running, Mark, that in ’68—”

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: “—or ’69 and ’70—”

NIXON: Yes.

DEAN: —and so on and so forth. He said, I—“true or false?” And he said, “True.” I said, “How do you know that?” And I said, “I’ve never heard of that before.” He said, “Well, if you talk to Bill Sullivan, he’ll tell you all about it.” And then he gave me sort of a general—painted a general picture about it. But just cool as a cucumber about it.

NIXON: And what does he say about Time? How—is he going to stand up for the denial?

DEAN: He says, “John,” he said—I said, “Well, first of all, I don’t believe this could happen.” I was protecting us, as far as—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —doubting what he had said. He said, “Well, John, as far as I’m concerned, our phone call is totally off the record. We never had it.” So that’s a good one to watch, just right there.

NIXON: In other words, you can’t blow the whistle on Felt, just like you can’t blow the whistle on the son of a bitch out there, the yeoman [Charles Radford]—in the Jack Anderson [Moorer-Radford national security leaks] case, right?

DEAN: That’s right, but there will become—there will come a day when Gray’s comfortably in there, when other things come to pass, that—

NIXON: Like what?

DEAN: I think that Gray called at some point when, if this sort of thing continues, once he gets through his confirmation, I don’t know why he couldn’t himself say, “I’m going to take a lie detector test and I’m going to ask everybody in my immediate shop to take one and then we’re going to go out and ask some of the other agents to take them.”

NIXON: As to leakage.

DEAN: As to leakage, because this only hurts this whole institution.

NIXON: Where do you stand on the—with regard to the—how will we leave it with Kleindienst here? Is there—let me put it this way: you take the responsibility for Kleindienst. I’m going to keep Ehrlichman and Haldeman out of it—out of their—any relationship with Kleindienst. You should have it only. But you’ve got to watch him and brace him. And on the executive privilege thing, did you tell him what the line is?

DEAN: I have—

NIXON: And where he’s to stand?

DEAN: I have told him and I’ve—I said, “It’s going to be important.”

NIXON: Didn’t he raise the idea of their hurrying the executive session refusal?

DEAN: No, he did not.

NIXON: All right. Be sure he knows what the backup position is, which is two—right? As I understand it, if we would, under proper restrictions, allow two committee members to come down. Is that what you would do?

DEAN: I think we ought to draw the line at written interrogatories. I think the position should be that you are holding nothing back information-wise.

NIXON: That would be sworn.

DEAN: That’s right. That would be sworn—you can’t be in a position of protecting anybody around here.

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: The information has to be available. But to go up there and make a circus out of the appearance of people—

NIXON: Right. Good. Well, let me say about Felt, it sounds as if he knows—it sounds as if maybe he’s—

DEAN: Kind of watch it like a hawk, Mr. President—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and I just got to watch him. He’s too close to Pat Gray right now—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —for our interests.

NIXON: I know it is for mine.

…

NIXON: We’ve just been awful careful. Joe Kraft, of course, should have been bugged. I would think the son of a bitch is practically an agent to the Communists.

DEAN: Well, what you said about Bob and John, too—I think, as before the election, I tried to only bother them or consume any of their time when it was just absolutely essential.

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: And I think that’s the way it’s been.

[UNKNOWN aide enters.]

NIXON: That’s right. That’s right.

DEAN: He—

UNKNOWN: [unclear] is here.

NIXON: Fine, fine.

UNKNOWN: Did you buzz?

NIXON: I buzzed twice, that means—for them to come in.

HALDEMAN: Apparently the phones aren’t working properly.

NIXON: Oh, fine, sure. Sure, have them come right in.

UNKNOWN: Fine.

DEAN: Well, sir, I’ll get that statement on executive privilege.

[UNKNOWN aide leaves.]

NIXON: If you could do your best to—if you could keep me posted on [unclear] that way you need, but particularly with relation to Kleindienst. Okay?

 

“Put this thing in the funny pages of the history books.”

February 28, 1973, 9:12 A.M.

Richard Nixon and John Dean

OVAL OFFICE

By the end of February, Nixon and Dean were speaking on a daily basis to adjust the White House response to the Watergate crisis. On the twenty-eighth, they were candid about the cover-up, naming specific participants, including E. Howard Hunt and, as the president, put it, “the financing transaction.” That referred to the funds that Hunt used as hush money for the five men arrested at Democratic headquarters. Nixon, adopting a bunker mentality with Dean, distanced himself even from recent favorites such as Colson. Dean offered no argument with the president’s meandering plots and contingencies, agreeing with everything his boss said. Apparently, though, he began to step back from the situation at some point during Nixon’s lengthy analysis of the scandal. As Nixon wrapped up the conversation, Dean suggested that even though he was “a little fish,” he might be targeted by the Senate committee. Nixon tried to reassure him that he was safe. He wasn’t. At almost the same time on that very day, Pat Gray was telling Senator Sam Ervin at his confirmation hearing that Dean had given him an envelope of Watergate-related materials (which he said he later destroyed). He also said that Dean had made requests that amounted to orders for the FBI’s investigative files on Watergate. The little fish became a very big name on the last day of February. ^*

…

DEAN: Good morning, sir.

NIXON: Oh, hi. Great. Oh, I wanted to speak with you about what kind of a line to test. Now, I want Kleindienst—this is not a question of trust. You have it clearly understood that you will call him and give him directions and that he will call you—and so forth and so on. I just don’t want Dick to go—

DEAN: No. I think—

NIXON: —go off, you see, for example, on executive privilege. I don’t want him to go off and get the damn thing—get us—

DEAN: Make any deals on this thing—

NIXON: Well, to make a deal—that’s the point.

DEAN: Yeah.

NIXON: That Baker, as I said, was [unclear] you know, this and that and the other thing. And you’ve got to be very firm with these guys or you may not end up with anything. Now, as I said, the only backup position I can possibly see is one of a—is Kleindienst wants to back already [unclear]—but suggested we ought to back them heavily—have them up there in executive session. Well, now you haul them up there in executive session and we still got the problem of a—well, like [unclear] in particular—I’m thinking of Henry [Kissinger] because it’s building to him without any question—

DEAN: Sure.

NIXON: —at that point, and that’s going to be far more significant. This crap bothers us at the moment, but that’s far more significant. And they’ll haul him up there and bullyrag him around the damn place and it’ll raise holy hell within our—or his relations with Rogers and all the other people. [to unknown assistant] Yeah. Oh, I’ve sent some notes out—I guess there’s a couple of yellow pages—something that I was—from that file on the teachers’ thing that I’m not doing today.

UNKNOWN: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Get the yellow pages [unclear]. Might save money for the government.

UNKNOWN: All right, sir.

NIXON: Just send it back to me, please. [to Dean] So you see, I think you better have a good, hard face-to-face talk with him and say, “Look, we’ve thought this thing over,” and you raise the point with him. See, it cannot be executive session because, you know, he’s likely to float it out there and they’ll grab him.

DEAN: That’s right. And as I mentioned yesterday, he is meeting with Sam Ervin and Baker in this joint session and that probably is one of the first things that—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —that Ervin—

NIXON: The only thing they’ll be there to discuss.

DEAN: It’ll be—

NIXON: The main thing that will be discussed.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Not only—you see my—the main thing Ervin’s going to be, “Now what about executive privilege?” Now, he hasn’t had that meeting set yet, though, has he?

DEAN: No, it’s not. So there’s ample time to have Dick go up—

NIXON: Well, you have a talk with him and say we talked about this and this is where we stand and this is where he is. Now your position—I mean, of course—I know our position is written interrogatories, which they will never—probably accept—but it may give us a position that would be reasonable in the public mind.

DEAN: Correct.

NIXON: If that’s what you have in mind.

DEAN: Correct.

NIXON: Now, the other possibility is the one that Ehrlichman, I think, had suggested. You could have—agree that the ranking—the chairman and the ranking member could question under basically the same—under very restricted—a limited area is what we would provide.

DEAN: You mean, coming down here, say?

NIXON: Basically—

DEAN: That’s a—

NIXON: —that is the thinking.

DEAN: I think that’s a sort of—if we couldn’t get written interrogatories. That’s still a serious precedent to deal with, though, if they come down here and—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —start questioning people. I think the issues would have to be so narrowed for even that situation.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: And that’s what’ll evolve with the—

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: —narrowing of the issues to where what information, say a, a Haldeman might have or an Ehrlichman might have—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —that the committee needs to be complete in its report or its investigation.

NIXON: Yeah. We will say that you will then—you will [unclear] to written interrogatories under oath—that answer questions.

DEAN: That’s—publicly you’re not withholding any information and you’re not using the shield of the presidency.

NIXON: So, as I say, when you talk to Kleindienst—because I have raised this in previous things with him on the Hiss case—he got—he’d forgotten, and I said, “Well, go back and read the first chapter of Six Crises. Tells all about it.” But I know very—as I said, I mean, that was espionage against the nation, not against the party. FBI, Hoover himself, who was a friend of mine—

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: —even then, said, “I’m sorry. I have been ordered not to cooperate.” And they didn’t give us one goddamn thing. I conducted that investigation with two stupid little committee investigators. They weren’t that stupid. They were tenacious. One had been fired by the FBI. He was a good, decent fellow, but he was a drunk.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: And we got it done. But we broke that thing—

DEAN: Against a wall—

NIXON: —without any help. The FBI then got the evidence which eventually—see, we got Piper [and Marbury, Alger Hiss’s law firm], who—we got the Pumpkin Papers, for instance. We got all of that ourselves.

DEAN: Well, you know, I—

NIXON: The FBI did not cooperate. The Justice Department did not cooperate. The administration would not answer questions except, of course, for cabinet officers. I mean, like, [Covington and] Burling [law firm] came down and some of the others [unclear].

DEAN: Funny when the shoe is on the other foot how they look at things, isn’t it?

NIXON: They did. Well, and as I said, the New York Times, the [Washington] Post, and all the rest said the administration has an absolute right. They didn’t put it in terms of executive privilege. They were just against the investigation. So the real question there is that—now you could say that I, having been through that—we have talked it over and that I feel that I think that was—I have always felt very miffed about that—felt that was wrong. It was espionage against the nation. Now this is another matter. But I think that we ought to cooperate and I’m trying to find an area of cooperation. Here it is: written interrogatories. All right, you see, the Baker theory is that he wants to have a big slam-bang thing for a week and then he thinks interest in the whole thing’ll fall off. And he’s right about that. And he even—but his point of having the big slam-bang thing for a week is to bring all the big shots up right away. But the big shots you could bring up—you could bring up Stans. They’ve got to put him on, and they’ve got to put Mitchell on. But he’d like to get, of course, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Colson.

DEAN: I understand that Bob and you have talked about running Stans out as sort of a stalking horse on another post.

NIXON: Well, it’s not my idea. It’s—I guess [Richard] Moore or somebody mentioned it.

DEAN: I think it was my idea—

NIXON: Oh, you [unclear].

DEAN: —as a matter of fact, and I think it could defuse—could be one defusing factor in the hearings. Stans would like to get his side of the story out. He is not in any serious problem ultimately. It could be rough-and-tumble, but Maury is ready to take it, and it would be a mini-hearing, no doubt about it. But this further detracts from the other committee.

NIXON: It would be a mini-hearing, it’s true. Except knowing the press—I’m trying to think out loud a minute—knowing that they, you know, they have—like they have taken—they sold several of these stories on Colson and Haldeman about four times.

DEAN: Oh, I know that.

NIXON: Now, that they can—I just wonder if that doesn’t do that? I don’t know. Take Stans. They’ll get him up [unclear]—somebody’s after him about Vesco. [unclear] As I read the—first read the story briefly in the Post. And I read, naturally, the first page and I turned to the Times—read it. The Times had in the second paragraph that the money had been returned.

DEAN: That is correct.

NIXON: The Post didn’t have it until after you continued to the next section.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: The goddamnedest thing I ever saw.

DEAN: Typical.

NIXON: My guess is that as far as that transaction’s concerned that it was after—that he got the money after [April] the tenth [1972, after a new, stricter campaign finance law went into effect], but I don’t think they pointed out that [Vesco assistant Harry] Sears got it before.

DEAN: Well, it was con—well, for all purposes, the donor—

NIXON: Because I’m sure—

DEAN: Vesco—

NIXON: I’m sure that Stans would never do a thing like that.

DEAN: No—

NIXON: Never. Never. Never.

DEAN: I think we have a good strong case that the donor had relinquished control over the money, and constructive possession of the money was in the hands of the—

NIXON: Harry Sears.

DEAN: —finance committee, and Sears and the like. So that there is no—

NIXON: How did they get my brother in it? Eddie?

DEAN: I’ll tell you. You talk of the—that was sheer sandbagging of your brother. Here is what they did. They called him down here in Washington.

NIXON: Who did?

DEAN: It’s—let’s see—

NIXON: Sears?

DEAN: It was Vesco. It was Vesco and Sears. And said that we want to talk to you about the nature of this transaction because we’ve had some earlier conversations with—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —Stans. He really wasn’t privy to it—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and didn’t know much about it. Said, “Sure, I’ll come up.” And what the long and short of it was they were asking him to find out from Stans whether they wanted cash or check. Stans just responded to your brother and said, “I don’t really care. Whatever they want to do,” and that’s what he relayed back and it’s—he wasn’t—he didn’t even understand why he was there.

NIXON: Sure. [unclear]

DEAN: So—and he’s clean as a whistle. There’s just no—

NIXON: Oh, I know that. I know that.

DEAN: —just no problem at all.

NIXON: He doesn’t know anything about the money side. So you’d sort of lean to having Stans go stalking out there.

DEAN: I think it’d have—I think it would take a lot of the teeth out of the—you know, the stardom of the people they’ll try to build up to. If Stans has already gone through a hearing in another committee, obviously they’ll use everything they have at that time and it won’t be a hell of a lot. It confuses the public. The public is bored with this thing already.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: One of the things I think we did succeed in before the election—

NIXON: Stans is very clean. What I mean is, let’s face it on this thing—the way I analyze it, and I have stayed deliberately away from it, but I think I can sense what it is. The way I analyze the thing, Stans would have been horrified at any such thing. And what had happened was that he honestly is outraged. He thinks that what happened is that these pipsqueaks down the line took in some of his hard-earned cash and got into silly business with it.

DEAN: That’s right. He—

NIXON: Isn’t that what he really thinks?

DEAN: He does, and he is a victim of circumstances, of innuendo, of false charges. He has a darn good chance of winning that libel suit he’s got against Larry O’Brien.

NIXON: Has he?

DEAN: He’s—that’s right.

NIXON: Good. That’s why Larry filed a countersuit.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: I see Ziegler was disturbed at the news that they subpoenaed newsmen. Did it disturb you?

DEAN: It didn’t disturb me at all. No, sir. I talked to Ron at some length about it the other night and I said—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: “—Ron, if it—first of all you can be rest assured that the White House was not—”

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: “—involved in that decision.” It’s not a criminal case. No, it’s a civil deposition.

NIXON: It doesn’t involve prosecution.

DEAN: No, it’s a civil deposition, and—it’s not if we haven’t reached the newsman’s privilege issue yet, and that’s way down the road, if for some reason they refuse to testify on some given evidence, what they’re trying to establish is the fact that Edward Bennett Williams’s law firm passed out an amended complaint that libeled Stans before it was into the court process, so it was not privileged. And the newsmen are the people who can answer that question. Also, they’re trying to find out how Larry O’Brien and Edward Bennett Williams made statements to the effect that this lawsuit was not really to—the first lawsuit they had brought against the committee was not really to establish any invasion of privacy, but rather they were harassing the committee.

NIXON: They’ve made the [unclear]?

DEAN: They made this off the record to several newsmen and we know they did this—that this was a drummed-up lawsuit.

NIXON: So therefore that proves also malice, doesn’t it?

DEAN: It makes the abuse of process case that we have against them on a countersuit. And the lawyers made a very conscious and good decision that to proceed with the suit they were going to have to have this information and it doesn’t bother me that they subpoenaed nine or ten—

NIXON: Well, it wasn’t a hell of a lot of people that are going to give one goddamn about this issue of suppression of the press and so forth. We know that we aren’t trying to do it when they all squeal about it. It’s amusing to me when they say, when somebody says, “I watched the networks and they weren’t—and I thought they were restrained.” What the Christ do they want them to do? To go through the ’68 syndrome, when they were eight to one against us? They were only three to one this time on the—according to the average. You know, it’s really, really, really sickening, you know, to see—

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: —these guys that always—they always figured, “Well, we have the press on our side.” Then when we receive a modest amount of support—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Colson, sure, making them move it around, saying [unclear] we don’t like this or that, but it didn’t affect them.

DEAN: Well, you know Colson’s threat of a lawsuit that was printed in [Rowland] Evans and [Robert] Novak[’s nationally syndicated column] had a very sobering effect on several of the national magazines. They are now checking before they print a lot of this Watergate junk they print, with the press office trying to get a confirmation, denial, comment, or calling the individual that’s involved. And they have said as much as they are doing it because they are afraid someone is going to bring a libel suit on them. So it did have a sobering effect. It will keep them, maybe, honest if we can remind them that they can’t print anything. I mean—

NIXON: Well, you of course know that I said at the time of the Hill’s case [Time, Inc. v. Hill]. Well, it is goddamn near impossible for a public figure to win a libel—

DEAN: Yes, sir. It is.

NIXON: —case anymore.

DEAN: To establish, one, malice, or reckless disregard of—no, they’re both very difficult.

NIXON: Yeah. Well, malice is impossible—virtually. This guy up there, “Who, me?” Reckless disregard you can, maybe.

DEAN: Tough. That’s a bad decision, Mr. President. It really is. It was a bad decision.

NIXON: [unclear] What the hell happened? What’s the name of that—I don’t remember the case, but it was a horrible decision.

DEAN: New York Times versus Sullivan.

NIXON: And that Sullivan case.

DEAN: [unclear] and it came out of the South on a civil rights—

NIXON: Selma. It was talking about some guy that was—yeah, he was a police chief or something. Anyway, I remember reading it at the time when—that’s when we were suing Life, you know, for the Hills. When Life was guilty as hell. Did they win it? Supreme Court—four to three. There were a couple of people who couldn’t—no, five to four—five to three and a half. Basically, the—well, this goes back to executive privilege clearly understood. We must go forward on that. Just so you understand, I think you’d better go over and get in touch with Dick, and say, “You keep it at your level. Don’t say the president told you to say so.” Well, I guess it’s going to be me in the end, but I’d say, “This is the position, Dick, that you need to take.” Period. Let’s let him get out there and take it. But I don’t want them to think they can appeal to me. You can tell him that I took that position with Baker. Baker’s a smooth, impressive—“Oh, the president didn’t say this or that,” he said. “We don’t think he’ll tell them this.” Then he’d say, “All right, they have studied it. They have recommended it and the president has approved it.” Right?

DEAN: Now how about—?

NIXON: Is that what you want to say?

DEAN: Yes, sir. I think that’s absolutely on all fours. And how about our dealings with Baker? Under normal congressional relations, vis-à-vis Timmons and Baker, should we have Timmons making—dealing with one of the—?

NIXON: Well, he objected to—I mean, something—now that’s a curious thing on that. It’s hard to know whether this would be a very big gaffe by calling him, urging and trying to influence who would be on his staff. But Jesus Christ! I don’t know why he did that if he did. But if he did, I don’t know why Baker would resent it. But, nevertheless, he—I don’t know how to deal with him, frankly, such as my decision—I gathered the impression that Baker didn’t want to talk to anybody but Kleindienst.

DEAN: Okay, I think that’s one we’ll just have to monitor and that’s one we’ll have—

NIXON: Fine.

DEAN: —to know an awful lot about if something comes down the road.

NIXON: Well, let’s just let Timmons tell Baker that if he wants to talk to—if he wants to get anybody at the White House that I don’t want him to talk to Timmons. Of course, Timmons is a party of interest here, too. I don’t want him to—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —talk to Haldeman. I don’t want him to talk to Ehrlichman—that you’re the man and that you’re available. But leave it that way, that you’re available to talk to him about—for everything. But nobody else. How does that sound to you?

DEAN: I think that sounds good.

NIXON: You tell Timmons that he sees him privately and says that’s it. We are not pressing him. We don’t care—we’re not—because Baker—the woods are full of weak men.

DEAN: I would suspect if we’re going to get any insight into what that special committee is going to do, it’s going to be through the Gurneys. I don’t know about Weicker, where he’s—

NIXON: Weicker’s a—

DEAN: —going to fall out on this thing.

NIXON: Well, he’ll be—

DEAN: Whatever’s up—

NIXON: I think Weicker—the line to Weicker is Gray. Now, Gray has got to shape up here and handle himself well, too. Do you think he will?

DEAN: I do. I think Pat is—think Pat is tough. He goes up this morning, as you know. He is ready. He’s very comfortable in all of the decisions he has made, and I think he’ll be good.

NIXON: But he’s close to Weicker. That’s what I meant.

DEAN: Yeah, he is.

NIXON: And, so Gray—

DEAN: [unclear] as a [unclear], yes.

NIXON: One rather amusing thing about the Gray thing is that I—and I knew this would come—they constantly say that Gray is a political crony of—and a personal crony of the president’s. Did you know that I have never seen him socially?

DEAN: Is that correct? No, I didn’t.

NIXON: He’s—I think he’s been to a couple of White House events, but I have never seen Pat Gray socially.

DEAN: Well, the press has got him meeting you at a social function. And going on from there.

NIXON: When?

DEAN: Back in ’47, I think, is something I have read.

NIXON: Maybe Radford had a party or something.

DEAN: Something like that.

NIXON: Something like that. But that’s all. Well, that’s—I don’t know. Gray is somebody that I know only as a—he was Radford’s assistant—used to attend NSC meetings.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: So I’ve met him. He’s never been social. Edgar Hoover, on the other hand, I have seen socially at least a hundred times. He and I were very close friends.

DEAN: That’s curious, the way the press just—

NIXON: But John—and that’s the point. Hoover was my crony and friend. He was as close or closer to me than Johnson, actually, although Johnson used him more. But as for Pat Gray, Christ, I never saw him.

DEAN: While it might have been a lot of blue chips to the late director, I think we would have been a lot better off during this whole Watergate thing if he’d been alive, because he knew how to handle that bureau—

NIXON: Oh—

DEAN: Knew how to keep them in bounds—was a tough cookie.

NIXON: Well, if Hoover ever fought—he would have fought, that’s the point. He’d have fired a few people, or he’d have scared them to death. He’s got files on everybody, goddamn it.

DEAN: That’s right! [laughs]

NIXON: But now, at the present time, the bureau is leaking like a sieve. And Baker and Gray denies it. Just says it’s not coming from the bureau. Just who in the hell is it coming from? How in the hell could it be coming from anybody else? It isn’t coming from Henry Petersen, is it?

DEAN: No. I just would not—

NIXON: It isn’t coming from the depositions, is it?

DEAN: No. It’s that, well, they’re getting raw data. They’re getting the raw, what they call 302 forms.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: Those are the summaries of the interviews.

NIXON: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you could do—handle it that way, I think that’s the best thing to do. Do you ever wonder, really, if Colson, who’s got the brass—the balls of a brass monkey, shouldn’t bring a suit? Now then understand that I know that Colson—Colson’s got a lot of vulnerabilities. You know, in terms of people that he knew, and so forth and so on. It’s certainly an issue. But I mean on a narrow issue—

DEAN: Well, Chuck and I talked about this.

NIXON: He could win it.

DEAN: He could possibly win the suit but lose the war for this reason—

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: A counterdiscovery in a libel action has no bounds.

NIXON: I get it. Okay.

DEAN: The subject is wide open.

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: That’s the problem there.

NIXON: That’s the district code in the federal court?

DEAN: That’s right. They could just come in and depose him on everything he’s done at any point in time and that does it.

NIXON: Keep him out of it. Keep him out of it.

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: Why doesn’t Stans be the suer? He is the suer, anyway.

DEAN: He’s got a good one, and he may well prevail. Way—it may well be the device to force a settlement of all these other suits we’ve got out there. You know, we’ve got fourteen million dollars’ worth of suits against us, and we’ve got seven or ten against them.

NIXON: Christ, they all ought to get together and drop them.

DEAN: That’s what we’re trying to get accomplished.

NIXON: Hell, yes.

DEAN: They’re just costing—they’re causing everybody problems, and—

NIXON: That’s right. That’s right. And they’ve got problems, and we’ve got them. Now you see this Vesco thing coming on burns my tail, because I raised hell with Haldeman on this and he didn’t do anything about it. Well, I guess he couldn’t. What in the name of God ever became of our investigation of their financial activities? Jesus Christ, they borrowed, they canceled debts, they borrowed money. What the hell is that?

DEAN: It’s still going on, Mr. President. They’re look—McGovern’s stuff is in such bad shape. That’s another unfortunate thing. The GAO comes in to audit us.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: They find all the documents, so they are able to make—

NIXON: That might [unclear] GAO say that.

DEAN: They—well, they have now. But it, you know, gets about that much—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —coverage in the paper. They can’t even figure out what McGovern’s done, the books are in such a mess. But you haven’t seen them say anything yet. And that’s one of those things that, hopefully, we’ll—

NIXON: Bring out in the hearings.

DEAN: —bring out as to what a mess this was, and—

NIXON: How are you going to bring it out? You can’t bring it out in these hearings.

DEAN: Well, I think—

NIXON: Ervin’ll rule it out.

DEAN: I think an independent sort of media type will bring it out. Chuck is going to be of aid when he is out there not connected with the White House.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: Little bits of tidbits can be dropped to Chuck, because Chuck’ll still have his channels to—

NIXON: Sure.

DEAN: —push things out.

NIXON: Sure.

DEAN: And also—

NIXON: That’s what—in my view, I have use—of course it’s hard for him to leave because he loves the action and the rest. But apart from the financial part of it, at his age, and so forth—which everybody has to think of—Colson can be more valuable out than in because, basically, in he just reached the point where he was too visible.

DEAN: He’s a lightning rod.

NIXON: And outside, I mean, he can start this and that and tell them, “I’m a private citizen and I’m saying what I goddamn please.” Right?

DEAN: That’s right. That’s absolutely right. I think Chuck can be of great aid in this thing, and I think he’ll do it.

NIXON: Now, on the other thing, that is to recap: you will talk to Timmons about the Baker thing. Get that—get him tied down to the extent he can. I doubt if much could be done there. You must talk to Kleindienst, fast, so that Kleindienst knows that it’s been decided, and that’s it. And he’ll say, “Well, they won’t take it.” [unclear] That’s all right. That’s what it is, you know? Go on to the written interrogatory thing. We shall see. Your view would be not to give any further ground on that?

DEAN: I’d say hold—you know, you initially hold the line as far as you go—if it becomes apparent that it’s necessary for informational purposes.

NIXON: When the main thing is not to—

DEAN: I mean, the president’s not going to hide any information. He’s—

NIXON: Huh?

DEAN: You’re not going to hide any information.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: Then this can be given in a sworn statement—through an interrogatory. Send your questions down. They’ll be answered. We won’t hide the information. We won’t change the nature of the ability of the president to make decisions, to operate internally and the like—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —because you have a political circus going.

NIXON: Okay. I understand you—that Mollenhoff still thinks everybody should go up and testify.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: But at least you had a talk with him. I do want you to look into the case, though.

DEAN: Yes, sir. I am.

NIXON: If the guy’s got a bad rap, his man—goddamn it, we’ll get him out.

DEAN: I am doing that. I talked to Clark—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —yesterday. I talked to him last night again.

NIXON: Yeah. Okay.

DEAN: And I—he’s on this as hot and heavy as can be and—

NIXON: Well, does he think he’s got a bad rap?

DEAN: He does. He thinks he’s got a bad rap. And I, you know—

NIXON: Maybe he has.

DEAN: It’s very funny—

NIXON: I know Rule doesn’t have a bad rap. That much—which by—when Rule—because when a bureaucrat takes it upon himself to go out and go way beyond the pale in terms of attacking an administration like he did, that can’t be tolerated. That—he—you’ve got to—

DEAN: It’s a different—

NIXON: Suppose a congressman or a senator or one of his administrative assistants went out and attacked one of his contributors. What the hell would he do? Fire him. That’s right.

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: Now I noticed several of our congressmen and brave Republican senators called upon us to reinstate Rule. Congress is, of course, on its—it can—I guess they are so enormously frustrated that they’re irrelevant. Isn’t that the point? That’s their problem.

DEAN: I think there’s a lot of that.

NIXON: It’s too bad we—can’t take no comfort—we can take very little comfort from this. We have to work. But they become irrelevant because they’re so damn irresponsible. Much as we would like that it would be otherwise. Pretty sad lot, isn’t it?

DEAN: It is. Yes, sir. I spent some years on the Hill myself and one of the things I always noticed was the inability of the Congress to deal effectively with the Executive Branch because, one, they don’t—they’ve never supplied themselves with adequate staffs, in other words, had adequate information available—

NIXON: Well, now they’ve got huge staffs, though, compared to what we had, you see.

DEAN: Well, they’ve got huge staffs—true, as opposed to what they had years ago.

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: But they are still—

NIXON: Inadequate.

DEAN: —inadequate to deal effectively—

NIXON: God, don’t get into that. Please don’t try [unclear].

DEAN: [laughs] No, no, I’m not suggesting it. I keep—I reserve my—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —my observations for myself. Well, I think this—these hearings are going to be hot, and I think they are going to be tough. I think they are going to be gory in some regards, but I’m also convinced that if everyone pulls their own oar in this thing, in all those we’ve got with various concerns, that we can make it through these, and minimal people will be hurt. And they may even paint themselves as being such partisans and off base, that they’re really damaging the institutions of government themselves, and—

NIXON: I frankly would say that I perhaps rather that they be partisan—that they get to be partisan.

DEAN: I—we’re going to hope they—

NIXON: I’d rather have that rather than for them to have the façade of fairness and all the rest, and then come out—because Ervin, in spite of all this business about his being a great constitutional lawyer—Christ, he’s got Baker totally buffaloed on that. I mean, Ervin is as partisan as most of our southern gentlemen are. They are great politicians. They’re just more clever than our minority. Just more clever.

DEAN: Well, I’m convinced it may be shown that he is merely a puppet for Kennedy in this whole thing.

NIXON: Kennedy?

DEAN: For Kennedy. The fine hand of the Kennedys is behind this whole hearing that’s going on—or that is forthcoming. There is no doubt about it. When they considered the resolutions on the floor of the Senate I got the record out to read it. Who asked special permission to have their staff man on the floor? Kennedy—

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: —brings this man [James] Flug out on the floor when they’re debating a resolution. He is the only one that did this. It’s been Kennedy’s push, quietly, his constant investigation, his committee using their subpoenas to get at Kalmbach and all these people—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: —that’s kept the quiet and constant pressure on the thing. I think this fellow Sam Dash, who has been selected counsel, is a Kennedy choice. I think it’s also something we’ll be able to quietly and slowly document. People will print it in the press, and—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: —the partisan cast of this will become much more apparent.

NIXON: Yeah, I guess the Kennedy crowd is just laying in the bushes waiting to make their move. Boy, it’s a shocking thing. You know, we talk about Johnson using the FBI. Did your friends tell you whether—what Bobby [Kennedy] did, or whether he knew what they [unclear]?

DEAN: I haven’t heard but I wouldn’t—

NIXON: Johnson believes that Bobby bugged him.

DEAN: [laughs] That wouldn’t surprise me—

NIXON: Bobby was a ruthless little bastard. But the FBI does—they tell you that Sullivan told you that—the [use of the FBI during the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City] New Jersey thing? We did use a bug up there just for intelligence work.

DEAN: Intelligence work—just had agents all over [unclear].

NIXON: Frankly, the doctors say that the poor old gent [Walter Jenkins] had a tumor.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: The FBI [unclear].

DEAN: Well, he used Abe Fortas and Deke DeLoach backed up by some other people in the bureau that were standing ready to go out and try to talk this doctor into examining Walter Jenkins to say the man had a brain tumor. He was very ill. That’s why the erratic behavior. And this doctor wouldn’t buy it.

NIXON: The doctor had never examined him before or anything.

DEAN: No.

NIXON: They were trying to set this up though.

DEAN: Oh, yeah. That would’ve—

NIXON: What other kind of activities?

DEAN: Well, I—you know, as I say, I haven’t probed—

NIXON: Sullivan.

DEAN: —Sullivan to the depths on this because he’s one I want to treat at arm’s length, till we make sure—

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: —he is safe.

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: But he has a world of information that may be available.

NIXON: But he says that what happened on the bugging thing is—who told what to whom again? The bugging thing?

DEAN: Oh. On the ’68 thing, I was trying to track down the leaks.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: He said that the only place he could figure it coming from would be one of a couple of sources he was aware of that had been somewhat discussed publicly. He said that Hoover had told Patrick Coyne about the fact that this was being done. Coyne had told Rockefeller.

NIXON: Yeah, [unclear].

DEAN: Now Rockefeller had told Kissinger. Now, I have never run it any step beyond what Mr. Sullivan said there. Now the other thing is that when the records were unavailable for Hoover—all this and the logs—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —Hoover tried to reconstruct them by going to the Washington field office and he made a pretty good stir about what he was doing when he was trying to get the record and reconstruct it. And he said that at that time we probably hit the grapevine in the bureau that this had occurred. But there is no evidence of it. The records show at the Department of Justice and the FBI that there’s—no such surveillance was ever conducted.

NIXON: Shocking [unclear].

DEAN: Now, about White House staff and reporters and the like, and now the only—the other person that knows—is aware of it, is Mark Felt. And we’ve talked about Mark Felt, and I guess—

NIXON: What does it do to him, though? Let’s face it. You know, suppose that Felt comes out and unwraps the whole thing. What does it do to him?

DEAN: He can’t do it. It just—

NIXON: But my point is: who’s going to hire him?

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Let’s face it.

DEAN: He can’t. He’s—

NIXON: If he—the guy that does that can go out and—you mean he’s a—of course, he couldn’t do it unless he had a guarantee from somebody like Time magazine saying, “Look, we’ll give you a job for life.” Then what do they do? They put him in a job for life, and everybody would treat him like a pariah. He’s in a very dangerous situation. These guys you know—the informers, look what it did to [Whittaker] Chambers. Chambers informed because he didn’t give a goddamn.

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: But then one of the most brilliant writers according to Jim [unclear] we’ve ever seen in this country, and I am not referring to the Communist issue. This greatest single guy in the time of twenty-five or thirty years ago, probably the best writer in this century. They finished him.

DEAN: Mm-hmm. Well, I think I—there’s no—

NIXON: Either way, the informer is not wanted in our society. Either way, that’s the one thing people do sort of line up against. They—

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —they say, “Well, that son of a bitch informed. I don’t want him around.” We wouldn’t want him around, would we?

DEAN: I don’t—

NIXON: Hoover to Coyne to N.R. [Nelson Rockefeller] to K [Kissinger]. Right?

DEAN: Right.

NIXON: Good God. Why would Coyne tell Nelson Rockefeller? He was—I’ve known Coyne for years. I’ve—not well, but I—he was a great friend of one of my administrative—Bob King, who was a bureau man.

DEAN: Now this is Sullivan’s story. I have no—

NIXON: Fine. That’s all right.

DEAN: I don’t know if it’s true, but I don’t have any reason to doubt that—

NIXON: Most of this is gospel. Hoover told me, so—and he also told Mitchell, personally, that this had happened. [unclear]

DEAN: Are you talking—I was talking about the ’68 incident that just occurred. Not the—

NIXON: I’m talking about the ’68 bugging of the plane.

DEAN: Yeah. Oh, I wasn’t referring to that now. When this Coyne—

NIXON: Oh, okay.

DEAN: This was the fact that newsmen had been—I, excuse me—I thought he meant the reference to the fact that—

NIXON: Oh.

DEAN: —three years ago the White House had allegedly—the Time story.

NIXON: Oh, this is a—that’s not the—

DEAN: No. On the ’68 incident, all I’ve been able to find out is what you told me that Hoover had told you, what he’d—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —told Mitchell.

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: He—

NIXON: Mitchell corroborates that, doesn’t he?

DEAN: That’s right. Then—

NIXON: Sullivan doesn’t remember that?

DEAN: [Republican strategist] Kevin Phillips called Pat Buchanan the other day with a tidbit that [former special assistant to Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign] Dick Whelan on—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —the NSC staff had seen a memorandum between the NSC and the FBI that the FBI had been instructed to put surveillance on Anna Chennault, the South Vietnamese embassy, and—

NIXON: That is a—

DEAN: —the Agnew plane.

NIXON: Agnew.

DEAN: Agnew plane.

NIXON: They put it on our—well, this isn’t mine—maybe I’m wrong.

DEAN: Now, and it said—and this note also said that Deke DeLoach was the operative FBI officer on this.

NIXON: I think DeLoach’s memory now is very, very hazy in that connection. He doesn’t remember anything.

DEAN: Well, I talked to Mitchell about this and Mitchell says that he’s talked to DeLoach. DeLoach has in his possession, and he has let Mitchell review them, some of the files on this.

NIXON: But not—

DEAN: But they don’t go very far. They don’t go very far. This is DeLoach protecting his own hide. The—

NIXON: They are never going to—it’s just as well, to be candid with you. Just as well. But, so Hoover told Coyne, and who told Rockefeller—

DEAN: That this—

NIXON: —who told Kissinger that newsmen were being bugged—

DEAN: Yeah.

NIXON: —by us?

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: Now why would Hoover do that?

DEAN: I don’t have the foggiest. This was Sullivan’s story as to where the leak might have come from about this current Time magazine story, which we are stonewalling totally—

NIXON: Oh, absolutely.

…

NIXON: Perfectly legal.

DEAN: Absolutely.

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: Well, all these—these are the national security leaks.

NIXON: Sure. And the—and Henry’s staff—he insisted on Lake, you see, after working with McGov—for Muskie.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: Incidentally, didn’t Muskie do anything bad on there? [unclear] Henry [unclear]. At least I know—not because I know that—I know that he asked that it be done, and I assumed that it was. Lake and Halperin. They’re both bad. But the taps were, too. They never helped us. Just gobs and gobs of material—gossip and bullshitting [unclear].

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: The tapping was a very, very unproductive thing. I’ve always known that. At least—I’ve never—it’s never been useful in any operation I’ve ever conducted. Well, it is your view that we should try to get out that ’68 story then?

DEAN: Well, I think the threat—

NIXON: [unclear]

DEAN: —the threat of the ’68 story, when Scott and the others were arguing that the committee up on the Hill broaden its mandate—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —to include other elections—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —they were hinting around that something occurred in ’68 and ’64 that should be looked at.

NIXON: Right. Goldwater thinks he was bugged.

DEAN: That’s right. Now I think that threats—

NIXON: Did you think Gold—oh, you—didn’t you say that Johnson did bug Goldwater’s—?

DEAN: He didn’t—well, I—we don’t know. I don’t know if he bugged him, but—

NIXON: He did intelligence work?

DEAN: —he did intelligence work up one side and down the other—

NIXON: From the FBI?

DEAN: —from the FBI. Just up one side and down the other on Goldwater.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: Now I have not had a chance to talk to the senator, and I’ve known the senator for twenty years. He is the first man in public life I ever met. Barry Jr. and I were roommates in school together, so I can talk to the man.

NIXON: Sure.

DEAN: I am really going to sit down with him one day and say—

NIXON: I think you should.

DEAN: —say, “What—?”

NIXON: Say, “What the hell do you—?”

DEAN: “—what do you—?”

NIXON: “—do you have any hard evidence?”

DEAN: That’s right. Then we can go from there and—

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: —possibly reconstruct some things.

NIXON: Get some stuff written, and so forth. I do think you’ve got to remember that, as you sure do, this is mainly a public relations thing anyway. What is the situation, incidentally, with regard to the sentencing of our—of the people—the seven? When the hell is that going to occur?

DEAN: That’s likely to occur, I would say—could occur as early as late this week. More likely sometime next week.

NIXON: Why has it been delayed so long?

DEAN: Well, they’ve been in the process of preparing the presentence report. The judge sends out probation officers to find out everybody who knew—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —these people, and then he’ll—

NIXON: He’s trying to work on them to break them, is he?

DEAN: Well, there’s some of that. They are using the probation officer for more than a normal probation report. They are trying to—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —do a mini-investigation by the judge himself, which is his only investigative tool here, so they—that they are virtually completed now. They—the U.S. attorney, who handles the assistant U.S. attorney.

NIXON: You know when they talk, though, about a thirty-five-year sentence—now here’s something that does not involve—there were no weapons, right? There were no injuries, right? There was no succe—well, success maybe—I don’t know. The point is the—that sort of thing is just ridiculous. One of these blacks, you know, goes in here and holds up a store with a goddamn gun and they give him two years and then probation after—

DEAN: And they—

NIXON: —six months.

DEAN: —and they let him out on bond during the time that he is considering his case. These fellows cannot get out—

NIXON: Are they out? Have they been in jail?

DEAN: They’re in—well, all but one. Hunt made the bond. Everybody else is in jail. They’ve got a hundred-thousand-dollar surety bond which means they have to put up actual collateral, but—and none of these people have a hundred thousand dollars. The court of appeals has been sitting for two weeks or better now on a review of the bond issue. They’re not even letting these people out to prepare their case for appeal.

…

NIXON: You still think Sullivan is basically reliable?

DEAN: I have nothing to judge—

NIXON: No.

DEAN: —that on other—I watched him for a number of years. I watched him when he was working with Tom Huston on domestic intelligence, and his—in his desire to do the right thing. I tried to, you know, stay in touch with Bill and find out what his moods are. Bill was forced on the outside for a long time. He didn’t become bitter. He sat back and waited until he could come back in. He didn’t try to force or blackmail his way around with knowledge he had. So, I have no signs of anything but a reliable man who thinks a great deal of this administration and of you.

NIXON: You understand the problem we have here is that Gray is going to insist, I am sure, come down hard for Felt as the second man. And that would worry the hell out of me if Felt—I think at the present time it doesn’t.

DEAN: It worries me, frankly.

NIXON: But for the future isn’t it a problem?

DEAN: I think it is for the future, because only—things can only get more complex over there as we move along. There is no doubt about it.

NIXON: Well, as he gets closer to the next election [unclear]. I don’t know Felt, never met him. What’s he look like?

DEAN: Well, they call him the white mouse—or the white rat over there. And he’s—he has kind of a mouse-looking face with white hair.

…

DEAN: Well, I’ve got to say one thing. There has never been a leak out of my office. There never will—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —be a leak out of my office.

NIXON: No.

DEAN: I wouldn’t begin to know how to leak even. I don’t want to learn how you leak.

NIXON: Well, it was a shocking thing. I was reading a book last night on—quite a fascinating little book, not well written, by Malcolm Smith Jr. on Kennedy’s thirteen mistakes [unclear] foreign policy practices. They are great mistakes, and one of them had to do with the Bay of Pigs thing. And what had happened there was [former undersecretary of state] Chester Bowles had learned about it, and he deliberately leaked it. Deliberately, because he wanted the operation to fail.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: And admitted it later.

DEAN: Interesting.

NIXON: Admitted it.

DEAN: Interesting.

NIXON: This happens all the time. Well, you can follow these characters to the—to their Gethsemane. I feel for those poor guys in jail. I mean, I don’t know—particularly for Hunt. Hunt, with his wife dead. It’s a tough thing.

DEAN: Well—

NIXON: We have to do [unclear].

DEAN: —every indication—

NIXON: You will have to do—

DEAN: —that they’re hanging in tough right now.

NIXON: What the hell do they expect, though? Do they expect to get clemency within a reasonable time?

DEAN: I think they do. [unclear]

NIXON: What would you say? What would you advise on that?

DEAN: I think it’s one of those things we’ll have to watch very closely. For example—

NIXON: You couldn’t do it, say, in six months?

DEAN: No.

NIXON: No.

DEAN: No. You couldn’t. This thing may become so political as a result of these—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —hearings that it is more—

NIXON: A vendetta?

DEAN: Yeah, it’s a vendetta. This judge may go off the deep end in sentencing and make it so absurd that it’s clearly an injustice—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —that they have been heavily—

NIXON: Are they going to appeal—is there any—are any appeals left?

DEAN: Right. Liddy—Liddy and McCord, who sat through the trial, will both be on appeal—

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: And there is no telling how long that will last. I think this is one of these things we’ll just have to watch.

NIXON: My view is say nothing about the event on the ground that the matter is still in the courts and on appeal.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: That’s my position. Second, my view is to say nothing about the hearings at this point except that “I trust that they will be conducted in the proper way,” and, “I will not comment on the hearings while they are in process.” Yeah. And then I—of course if they break through—if they get [unclear]—but you see, it’s best not to elevate—and I get Ziegler to do the same—it’s best not to elevate that thing here to the White House. Because I don’t want the White House gabbing around about the goddamn thing. Now there, of course, you’d say, “But you leave it all to them.” [unclear] policy. But the president should not be commenting on this case. Do you agree to that?

DEAN: I agree totally, sir. Absolutely. Now, that doesn’t mean that quietly we’re not going to be working around the [unclear].

NIXON: All over the city!

DEAN: But, you can rest assured that we’re not going to be sitting quietly.

NIXON: I don’t know what we can do. The people that are most disturbed about this [unclear] are now the goddamn Republicans. A lot of these congressmen, financial contributors, and so forth are highly moral. The Democrats are just sort of saying, “Oh, Christ, fun and games. Fun and games.”

DEAN: Well, hopefully we can—

NIXON: Take that Segretti thing. Ha! Jesus Christ. He was sort of a clownish figure. I don’t see how our boys [laughs] could have gone for him. But nevertheless, they did. It was really, shall we say juvenile, the way that was handled. But nevertheless, what the hell did he do? What in the name of God did he do? Shouldn’t we get—be trying to get intelligence? Weren’t they trying to get intelligence from us?

DEAN: Absolutely.

NIXON: Don’t we try to get schedules? Don’t you try to disrupt their meetings? Didn’t they try to disrupt ours? Christ, they threw rocks, ran demonstrations, and shouted, cut the public address system, they had to tear-gas them in Miami. What the hell was that all about?

DEAN: Well—

NIXON: Did we do that?

DEAN: McGovern had Dick Tuck on his payroll, and Dick Tuck was down in Texas when you went down to the Connally ranch, set up to do a prank down there.

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: But it never came off—

NIXON: What did Segretti do that came off? Much? I mean—

DEAN: He did some humorous things. He—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: For example, there’d be a fundraising dinner, and he had hired Wayne the Wizard to fly in from the Virgin Islands to perform a magic show, and of course, he hadn’t been hired. He sent—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —he sent invitations to all these black diplomats and—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and sent limousines out to have them picked up, and they all showed up and they hadn’t been invited. He had four hundred pizzas sent to another—

NIXON: Yeah, sure. Sure.

DEAN: I mean this is—

NIXON: Well, what the hell?

DEAN: —pranks.

NIXON: Tuck do all this sort of thing?

DEAN: And so—

NIXON: They did it to me in ’62—in 1960, and the rest. They want to say, “Well, now, that’s terrible. Now isn’t that terrible?” What the hell?

DEAN: I think we can keep this—the Segretti stuff in perspective because it’s not that bad. Chapin’s involvement is not that deep. He was a catalyst, and that’s about the extent of it.

NIXON: Sure. He knew him and recommended him.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: But he didn’t run him. He was too busy with us.

DEAN: The one I think they’re going to go after with a vengeance, and who I plan to spend a great deal of time with next week, a couple of days as a matter of fact, getting this all in order, is Herb Kalmbach.

NIXON: Yes.

DEAN: Herb has got—they’ve subpoenaed his records, and he’s got records that run all over hell’s acre on things for the last few years. You know Herb has been a man who’s been moving things around for Maury and keeping things in—

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: —in tow and taking care of little polling inferences.

NIXON: What’ll he do about those records? Is he going to give them all to them?

DEAN: Well, he’s—they brought his—they’ve gotten to the banks that had them, and I think what we’ll do is we’ll—there’ll be a logical, natural explanation for every single transaction.

NIXON: Right.

DEAN: It’s just a lot of minutiae we’ve got to go through but we—he’s coming in next week and we—I told him we’d sit down and he is preparing everything, getting all of it available, and we’re going to sit down with his—with [Kalmbach law partner] Frank DeMarco—and see if we can’t get this whole thing—

NIXON: Now, his records—that is, with regards to the campaign. They can’t get his records with regard to his private transactions?

DEAN: No, none of the private transactions. Absolutely. That is privileged material.

NIXON: That’s right.

DEAN: Anything to do with San Clemente and the like. That is just so far out of bounds that—

NIXON: Yeah. Did they ask for that?

DEAN: No, no, no. No indication of that.

NIXON: Good. Oh, well, even if it is, I mean—

DEAN: Well, it’s just none—that’s really none of their business.

NIXON: They can’t get it. Kalmbach is a decent fellow. He’ll make a good witness.

DEAN: I think he will. He’s been—

NIXON: He’s smart.

DEAN: —he’s been tough thus far. He hasn’t—you know, he has been taking it. His skin is thick now. Sure it bothered him, and all this press he was getting. The L.A. Times has been running stories on him all the time and—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —and the like. Local stations have been making him more of a personality, and his partners have been nipping at him but Herb’s tough now. He is ready and he’s going to go through and he’s going to—he is hunkered down and he’s ready to handle it. So I’m not worried—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —about Herb at all.

NIXON: Oh, well, it’ll be hard for him, because it’ll get out about Hunt. It—I suppose the big thing is the financing transaction they’ll go after. How did the money get to the Bank of Mexico and so forth and so on.

DEAN: All that stuff. And then—

NIXON: What’ll he say?

DEAN: It can all be explained.

NIXON: It can?

DEAN: Yes, indeed. Yes, sir. They’re going to be disappointed with a lot of the answers they get—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —when they actually get the facts, because the Times and the Post had such fun with innuendo. When they get the facts, they’re going to be disappointed.

NIXON: The one point that you ought to—you better get to Baker—I tried to get it through his thick skull. I guess it’s—his skull is not thick—but tell Kleindienst—Kleindienst, in talking to Baker and Ervin should emphasize that the way to have a successful hearing and a fair one is to run it like a court. No hearsay. No innuendo. Now you know goddamn well they aren’t going to—

DEAN: But that’s a hell of a good point.

NIXON: —but don’t—no hearsay. Tell them that’s the way Nixon ran the Hiss case. Now, as a matter of fact some innuendo came out but there was goddamn little hearsay. We really—we just got them on the facts and just tore them to pieces.

DEAN: Yeah.

NIXON: Say, “No hearsay, no innuendo.” And that he—Ervin should sit like a court there. Say, “Now that’s hearsay and I don’t like it.” And tell him that the—and let’s have the counsel for our people—he gets up there and says, “I object to that, Mr. Chairman, on the basis that it is hearsay.”

DEAN: That’s an excellent idea, Mr. President, for somebody to write an article because as this thing gets steamed up, “Will Sam Ervin, constitutional man, be a judge? Will he admit hearsay?” We can probably get some think pieces out to get a little pressure on him to perform that way, or to make it look very partisan when he doesn’t, you know? He lets all this in—

NIXON: I’d like to get some articles out that—no hearsay, no innuendo. There’ll be no hearsay, no innuendo. This is going to be, shall we say, a model of a congressional hearing. A model. Now that’ll disappoint the goddamn press. There’s no hearsay, no innuendo, no leaks.

DEAN: Well, there are a lot of precedents. I’ve been involved in two congressional investigations. One was the [Representative] Adam Clayton Powell [D-NY] investigation [into his legal affairs] when I was working over there as the minority counsel of the House Judiciary. We didn’t take hearsay. We made a—we stuck to the facts on that.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

DEAN: We did an investigation of the Oklahoma judges [Alfred Murrah, Stephen Chandler, and Luther Bohanon]. Again, same sort of thing. We went into executive session when necessary to. I bet—we look around, we’ll find respectable investigations that have been conducted up there that could be held up, and some of this should be coming forth to set the—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —the—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —stage for these hearings. Well, I’m planning a number of brain sessions to—with some of these media people to—

NIXON: I know. Well, it’s very important, and it seems like a terrible waste of your time. [unclear] It’s important in the sense that it’s—all this business is a battle and they’re going to wage the battle. And a lot of this is their enormous frustration about losing the elections, the state of their party, and so forth. And their party has its problems. We think we’ve got problems. Look at some of theirs. [Democratic National Committee chairman Robert] Strauss is there to pull them all together. He’s not doing all that well, you know.

DEAN: Well, I was—you know, we’ve gone a long road on this thing now. I had thought it was an impossible task to hold together until after the election until things just—

NIXON: Yeah.

DEAN: —started squirting out, but we’ve made it this far, and I’m convinced we’re going to make it the whole road and put this thing in the funny pages of the history books rather than anything serious. We’ve got to. It’s got to be that way.

NIXON: Would it—it’ll be somewhat serious, but the main thing, of course, is also the, the isolation of the president from this.

DEAN: Absolutely.

NIXON: Because it’s—because that, fortunately, is totally true.

DEAN: I know that, sir.

NIXON: Good God almighty! I mean, of course I’m not dumb, and I will never forget when I heard about this goddamn thing, of course, from Bob. Jesus Christ, what in the hell is this? What’s the matter with these people? Are they crazy? I thought they were nuts. You know? That it was a prank. But it wasn’t. It was really something. I think that our Democratic friends know that’s true, too. They know what the hell—

DEAN: I think they do too.

NIXON: —this was. I mean they know that we then wouldn’t be involved in such—they’d think others were capable of it, however. I think—and they are correct. They think Colson would do anything. [laughs] Well, anyway, have a little fun.

DEAN: All right.

NIXON: And now, I will not talk to you again until you have something to report to me.

DEAN: All right, sir.

NIXON: But I think it’s very important that you have these talks with our good friend Kleindienst.

DEAN: That’ll be done.

NIXON: Give him that [unclear]. We have to work together on this thing. He’s the man. I’d build him up, that he’s the man who can make the difference. Also point out to him that the fish they’re really after—tell him, look, for Christ’s sakes, Colson’s got brass balls and so forth, but—

DEAN: All right.

NIXON: —I’d really, really be [unclear] here is—let’s forget this. Remember, this was not done by the White House. This was done by the Committee to Re-elect, and Mitchell was the chairman, correct?

DEAN: That’s correct. And that means that—

NIXON: So, and Mitchell—and Kleindienst owes Mitchell everything. Mitchell wanted him for attorney general, he wanted him for deputy, and here he is. And goddamn it, Baker’s got to realize this, and that if he allows this thing to get out he’s going to potentially ruin John Mitchell. He won’t. I mean Mitchell won’t allow himself to be ruined. He’s too clever. He’ll put on his big stone face act, but—I hope to Christ he does. The point is that, as you well know, that’s the fish they’re after.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: But the committee is after somebody in the White House. They’d like to get Haldeman or Colson—Ehrlichman. They’ve got—

DEAN: Or possibly Dean. You know, who—you know, who’s—anybody they can. I’m a small fish, but—

NIXON: Anybody at the White House they would. But in your case I think they realize you are the lawyer and they know you didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with the campaign.

DEAN: That’s right.

NIXON: That’s what I think. Well, we’ll see.

DEAN: All right, sir.

NIXON: Good luck.

DEAN: Thank you.

 

Testing the peace

February 28, 1973, 11:28 P.M.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

A month after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, criticisms of its effectiveness—or lack thereof—were rife. Americans particularly resented the failure of the North Vietnamese to release prisoners of war. Kissinger and Nixon looked for ways to force the North Vietnamese to cooperate, employing the hawkish and dour ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, to deliver a strong message. In doing so, they bypassed the secretary of state, William Rogers, a man they had long distrusted—along with most of his department. In the privacy of his conversation, Nixon made clear his determination to make the North Vietnamese comply with the peace treaty, even at the expense of the treaty. “What the hell do we care about the agreement?” he exclaimed. “Nothing!” At that juncture, however, each of the signatories was saying much the same thing.

…

KISSINGER: Mr. President?

NIXON: Oh, hi, Henry.

KISSINGER: Just wanted you to know we’ve won.

NIXON: Oh, really?

KISSINGER: Yeah.

NIXON: That’s great. Tell me about it.

KISSINGER: Well, they—we called Bunker and told him to demand a meeting of the four-party commission.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: They hadn’t scheduled it till Friday. They wanted to have an initialing of the—in Paris they wanted to have an initialing of the treaty tomorrow afternoon, and Rogers called and wept all over us that this would be awful if we didn’t.

NIXON: Oh, bullshit.

KISSINGER: That is what I said, that your orders were explicit. That you had personally issued them—

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: —and that you—

NIXON: Well, does he seriously think we could sign the treaty with having this thing [unclear]? Nobody could do that.

KISSINGER: Well, he is—he was so focused on his conference that he had forgotten the other game.

NIXON: Shit.

KISSINGER: We then called Bunker. Bunker insisted on a meeting. They held the meeting and their spokesman said the way is now clear to continue the releases. We will not demand anything difficult from the United States’ side and it is as good as done.

NIXON: You think that, but he didn’t get the names yet?

KISSINGER: No, but he—well, this was at the beginning of the meeting, and they have—the meeting hasn’t concluded yet. The meeting just started about fifteen minutes ago.

NIXON: Yeah.

KISSINGER: But when they go into the meeting, and said the way is not clear to continue the releases—all is ready to continue the releases, he said.

NIXON: Yeah. Good, great.

KISSINGER: All the news tickers say—

NIXON: Oh, how did this get out? Bunker put it out or—

KISSINGER: No. Saigon, the North Vietnamese fellow entering the meeting—

NIXON: Oh, he said that?

KISSINGER: He said it on the way in.

NIXON: Oh, great. So what are the news tickers saying, Henry?

KISSINGER: They say, “North Vietnam said today that the way is clear now to resume releases of U.S. prisoners of war.” That is the lead on—

NIXON: Yeah. Right.

KISSINGER: —AP. Reuters says the chief delegate, the North Vietnamese spokesman says at last all is ready to continue the releases.

NIXON: [laughs]

KISSINGER: The spokesman was asked whether [North Vietnamese Major] General [Le Quang] Hoa carried into the meeting a list of the next group of one hundred twenty Americans to be freed. We will tell you later today, the colonel said. Well, that’s a sure tipoff. The fact that they agreed to a meeting, and they also told us in Paris they want to have a meeting. They wanted us to have a discussion on the economic commission, and [William H.] Sullivan called in and asked what he should do. I said tell them we are not prepared to discuss it until the POWs are released. So they told him it would be settled by noon tomorrow, Paris time.

NIXON: Good, good.

KISSINGER: So I think it is ninety-nine percent done, and if we had been anything other than—

NIXON: We wouldn’t get it.

KISSINGER: Never. They would have diddled along—

NIXON: Of course, Henry, you can be sure they were going to keep those people hostage. What had they done up to date? That is the thing that Bill and the rest have got to realize. They have been screwing us all the time. Now they are not going to do a thing, and we will continue to drag our feet on those mines, too.

KISSINGER: Mr. President, if we had let them drag—if we had accepted what they said this morning that they would do it within the sixty days but in four stages, they would have had the four stages all in the last three days. Now your statement which forced them—when you said this morning it was within fifteen days—

NIXON: Yeah, well you put that in.

KISSINGER: But that’s—

NIXON: That’s right, that’s right.

KISSINGER: —and you directing Rogers not to return. That’s—

NIXON: That’s the point. But you know really it’s—for us, believe me, we aren’t going to give them one thing if they renege on one part of this deal. Now you know what I mean, this idea of going ahead. What the hell do we care about the agreement? What the Christ do we care? Nothing!

KISSINGER: At the end of March when our prisoners are out—

NIXON: Then—

KISSINGER: —we are in great shape.

NIXON: That’s right.

KISSINGER: And we—they thought they could get a little public outcry started, focus it on Thieu—

NIXON: On Thieu. They were trying to do him in, Henry, that was it.

KISSINGER: —and we just reacted very subtly. We sailed the whole minesweeping fleet away, we didn’t just have it inactive—

NIXON: [laughs]

KISSINGER: —we moved it a hundred miles offshore.

NIXON: That’s a step. Don’t think they didn’t notice that.

KISSINGER: Oh [laughs], they don’t usually cave unless you kick them in the groin.

NIXON: Well, I am delighted. You know it’s a—we just have to, as we sail through all these, keep our balance and all the rest.

KISSINGER: You said it this morning when the outcome wasn’t clear.

NIXON: We know that we just have to do that.