Watergate, page 42
Chapter 28 “What Meat Do They Eat?”
There was a delicate moment, Senator Lowell Weicker would later recall, in the spring of 1973 when it wasn’t clear how serious or thorough the Ervin Committee would actually be—or how close it would get to the truth. The committee was an odd mix of personalities, not all obviously interested or seemingly up to the historic task ahead. Joseph Montoya, for one, never seemed that engaged—committee investigator Terry Lenzner peeked at Montoya’s desk after watching him write intensely during a briefing only to discover that the New Mexico senator had been practicing his signature. Ervin, long set in his rhythms as a committee chair, struggled to adjust to his new colleague Daniel Inouye, a Japanese-American who had lost his right arm to a grenade in Italy during World War II; Ervin routinely polled the committee by asking them to raise their right hands, only to quickly stammer, “Except you, Danny.”
The committee’s two rank-and-file Republicans, serving with ranking member Howard Baker, each played their own distinct and—to Ervin—infuriating roles. Whereas Gurney clearly wanted to be Nixon’s chief defender, Weicker was interested because the investigation appealed to his good-government instincts, and he conducted his own parallel investigation with his own aides and interviews, which was ripe with a constant stream of friendly press leaks.I
At the staff level, there first appeared to be a vast gulf between the two lead counsels in experience and public profile. With nearly twenty years of age between them, Thompson had actually used Dash’s classic book The Eavesdroppers as a resource for his own law school dissertation, but the two men were more evenly matched than initially expected. Though Thompson had worked in politics, Dash was avowedly nonpartisan, and what the Republican lacked in his profile in the legal community, the folksy six-foot, five-inch lawyer more than made up for with his personality, energy, and oversized presence in meetings. Leaving one heated committee session where Thompson had clashed with Dash’s staffers, Howard Baker started to laugh: “I don’t think he’s afraid you’ll overpower him with your intellect as much as he’s afraid you just might beat the hell out of him.”
The Ervin Committee staff inherited the files from Patman’s House committee, as well as the those dug up by the investigators from Ted Kennedy’s Administrative Practices Subcommittee.II
Before long, they made an incredible discovery: The Nixon reelection campaign, in its hubris, had carefully assembled and turned over its files the previous November to the National Archives, thinking they would be a valuable resource for future academics or politicians. Now, as the Senate probe was underway, investigators realized no one appeared to have swept or sanitized the 1,100 boxes and 32,000 pages preserved for history, which included all the White House political memos cc’ed to Jeb Magruder. “The Nixon White House probably put down on paper more of its ideas and activities, lawful and unlawful, than any other administration in the country’s history,” Dash later recalled. For the first time in a congressional inquiry, the staff used a computer to track the materials; the computer tapes and microfilm made cross-referencing testimony or inquiring about the events of a given day simple. Investigators were wowed.
In early April, Ervin called a rare press conference to address the president’s arguments about executive privilege.III Standing in the large Senate Caucus Room, with reporters all but crammed to the rafters—one photographer literally was shooting film atop a twenty-foot ladder—the senator held forth for more than thirty minutes about the history of executive privilege, a speech more law school lecture than sound bite, and decried the administration’s resistance to open testimony.
“What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?” Ervin asked as he railed against Nixon’s haughtiness. Presidential aides weren’t royalty or nobility—they and their boss answered to the American people who paid their salaries, he declared. The president was trying to stretch executive privilege “way out past the stratosphere,” brandishing Supreme Court opinions that undermined the president’s argument. The position, he said, wasn’t executive privilege—“It’s executive poppycock. It’s akin to the divine right of kings, which passed out of existence in America in the Revolution.”
The fiery, homespun conference began Ervin’s transformation into the president’s star inquisitor. “The jowls jiggled. The eyebrows rolled up and down in waves. The forehead seemed sieged by spasms,” TIME magazine described in its cover story on “Senator Sam” that followed his performance. “Yet the lips continuously courted a smile, suggesting an inner bemusement. The words tumbled out disarmingly, softened by the gentle Southern tones and the folksy idiom. But they conveyed a sense of moral outrage.”
* * *
It was common practice in journalism to routinely monitor the early editions of major competitors, and on the evening of Monday, April 16, word came into the Post newsroom that the front page of the next day’s Los Angeles Times would contain a startling announcement: “The White House will make a dramatic admission within several days that one or more high level officials bear some responsibility for Watergate-type political espionage.”
Woodward, contacted with the news at home by the Post’s night editor, rushed to the Madison Hotel, following the protocol he’d earlier established with Felt in the event of a need to contact the source in an emergency. From the hotel, he called Felt’s home, said nothing when the FBI leader answered the phone, and hung up after ten seconds. Felt knew the signal meant to call Woodward back at a predetermined Madison phone booth. “You don’t have to tell me why you called,” he told the reporter when they connected. “You’d better hang on for this—Dean and Haldeman are out, for sure. They’ll resign. There’s no way the president can avoid it. Several are talking—go find out.”
That next day, the Los Angeles Times prediction was confirmed when Nixon announced in the White House briefing room that there had been “major developments” in Watergate—words that, if anything, actually were an understatement. “On March 21, as a result of serious charges which came to my attention, some of which were publicly reported, I began intensive new inquiries into this whole matter,” Nixon said, reading from a five-minute prepared statement that he’d worked on frantically that afternoon with Ehrlichman and Haldeman. He then recounted—in general terms—his meetings with Kleindienst and Petersen, stating, “I can report today that there have been major developments in the case concerning which it would be improper to be more specific now, except to say that real progress has been made in finding the truth.”
The president continued on to explain that he, Ervin, and Baker had reached an agreement on ground rules for White House participation in the Senate investigation that, in his mind, preserved the separation of powers and executive privilege. Finally, he promised that if any member of his administration was indicted, the person would be suspended immediately, and that he hoped no past or present member of the administration would be given immunity. Nixon, who had devoted dozens of hours over the preceding week to the cover-up, concluded with a strong statement: “I condemn any attempts to cover up in this case, no matter who is involved.”
On Capitol Hill, Dash immediately wondered whether Nixon’s seemingly noble desire to prosecute his administration to the fullest extent contained more sinister and self-protective reasoning: If conspirators were cut off from negotiating for immunity, that would likely serve to insulate Nixon himself.IV Dean, listening in his White House office, had the same thought: The immunity line was directed at him. The president was circling the wagons, and Dean wasn’t inside. He gathered up a boxful of Watergate papers and went home, leaving the White House perhaps for the last time. Shortly after, he issued a statement of his own: “Some may hope or think that I will become a scapegoat in the Watergate case. Anyone who believes this does not know me, know the true facts, nor understand our system of justice.”
The president’s announcement changed the entire tenor of the scandal, the White House’s posture, and the press corps’s interest. As a starting point, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler announced that all previous statements about the bugging incident were “inoperative.”
Around midnight that night, Nixon wondered aloud on the phone to Kissinger whether he would need to step down. “Goddamn, I think of these good men,” he said. “It’s going to splash on a lot of them.”
“The major thing now, Mr. President, if I may say so, is to protect the Presidency and your authority,” Kissinger replied.V
“If we can we will, and if we don’t, what the hell,” Nixon said. “Maybe we’ll even consider the possibility of, frankly, just throwing myself upon the sword—”
“No!” Kissinger interrupted.
“—and letting Agnew take it,” Nixon continued. “What the hell!”
“That is out of the question, with all due respect, Mr. President. That cannot be considered,” Kissinger declared. “It is impermissible to touch the President. That cannot be permitted, at any price.”
As they finished talking, Kissinger said encouragingly, “You have saved this country, Mr. President. The history books will show that, when no one knows what Watergate means.”
Off the phone, Kissinger had a darker thought. As he recalled, “We had all become passengers in a vehicle careening out of control in a fog.”
* * *
As the Nixon aides turned on one another, Dash and the Ervin Committee worried that if the prosecutors started bringing new indictments it would derail their own hearings. “How can you possibly expect the defendants to get a fair trial if we put out all the evidence against them on live TV?” investigator Dave Dorsen asked.
“That’s the damnedest cave-in talk I’ve heard!” Terry Lenzner shot back. “I thought that’s why the Ervin committee was created—because Congress didn’t want to trust the Watergate investigation to the Justice Department.”
In the days ahead, Dash and Thompson met with Silbert and his two deputies to ask for guidance on how to proceed: Would public hearings interfere with the government’s prosecution? But the truth was the Justice Department had just as little understanding of how to proceed as the Senate committee—and, unlike the Senate, the Justice Department leaders were scared for themselves and their jobs. After one meeting with the prosecutors, Thompson chuckled to Dash: “Sam, didn’t they look like three scared possums? Hell, they could have given us some hints. They just don’t want to cooperate.” The hearings, Ervin decided, would go on as planned.
As April unfolded, the Senate investigators were piecing together all manner of evidence about the bugging plan, the existence of Liddy’s GEMSTONE plans, and Magruder’s involvement. Hugh Sloan, for his part, appeared before the Senate investigators in Room G-334, their offices in the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and laid out the payments given to Liddy, his concerns when after the burglary Magruder tried to get him to commit to a fake cover story for the payment, and how he’d resigned from CREEP.
Few details astounded the Senate team as much as the ones provided by Liddy’s secretary, Sally Harmony. She confirmed there had been actual printed GEMSTONE stationery; the investigators tracked down the printer, who provided a sample sheet, complete with a blue “Gemstone” logo, along with the outrageously conspicuous brown envelope Liddy had also commissioned—modeled on the government’s own envelopes for classified materials, right down to the red hash marks around the four sides. The front included one-inch-tall red capital letters saying “SENSITIVE MATERIAL,” as well as instructions to “Handle as Code Word Material” and “Exdis” and “No Disem,” spy shorthand for “Executive Distribution” and “No Dissemination.” It hardly seemed the low profile one would normally want to keep while carrying out a criminal conspiracy. “The only thing Liddy appeared to have omitted in this childish effort to proclaim his master spying were neon lights,” Dash observed.
Then too came revelations uncovered during a late April meeting with Lenzner in Herbert Kalmbach’s Los Angeles law office. Kalmbach outlined how John Dean had recruited him after the break-in to raise money and deliver payments for the burglars to support their families and cover legal expenses, the lawyer thus removing any remaining ambiguity about this being some sort of rogue operation—he had checked Dean’s payment request directly with Ehrlichman, he told the Senate investigators, and the White House aide told him to proceed. Dash rushed Kalmbach to D.C. for further testimony. He recalled, “Kalmbach’s tale sounded like a combination of comic opera and the sinister activities of La Cosa Nostra.”
The lawyer further explained how, with Dean’s help, he’d recruited Tony Ulasewicz to be the actual bagman; they’d worked out code names for the various defendants and communicated among a set network of telephone booths. As Kalmbach grew wary of the task, he had gone directly to Ehrlichman to ask if he needed to continue. He recounted pleading to Ehrlichman whether the work was needed and aboveboard: “John, I’m looking right into your eyes. I know Jeanne and your family, you know Barbara and my family. You know that my family and my reputation mean everything to me.” Ehrlichman, Kalmbach said, confirmed the payoffs were important and necessary.
As Dash came to know the president’s onetime personal lawyer, he found himself almost pitying the fallen aide. “Kalmbach was a sorry figure, stripped of the power and influence gained from his association with Nixon,” Dash noted. “Despite his activities in the cover-up, I could not help feeling sympathy for him.”
* * *
Across Washington, people were wrestling with the implications that the White House itself might have been involved in the scandal. On Meet the Press, Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke said he thought it was “inconceivable” that Nixon himself didn’t know about the bugging at the Watergate, and the network reported a Gallup poll showed 41 percent of the nation felt the same. One night that week, Fred Thompson wrote in his journal, “The focus is on the president now. The word ‘impeachment’ is beginning to creep into Capitol Hill conversation.… Many believe the entire White House staff will go. The key issue is now crystallized: When did the president first know? Presumably after the break-in.” He began to wonder what was to him the unthinkable: Did the president participate in the break-in or the cover-up himself?
Indeed, despite his seemingly strong statement about getting to the bottom of Watergate, Nixon continued the rush to control the damage, which was fast spreading. As part of that, he tried to wave the Justice Department off any inquiry into the Plumbers and their anti-Ellsberg efforts; when Petersen telephoned to say prosecutors had learned from Dean of the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Nixon told him crisply, “That is a national security matter,” and that Petersen should “stay out of [it].” Across the spectrum, risks seemed to be growing, not lessening.
On April 22, at 8:24 a.m., John Dean awoke to a ringing phone; he’d worked until about 4 a.m., outlining the events of Watergate and organizing his notes and memories for the prosecutors. It was the president, calling from Florida. All week, Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman had been rushing to understand what Dean was doing—“Don’t know what the son of a bitch is going to say,” Nixon said one night. “He’s obviously very upset. He’s just lashing out. Goddammit… I’m at a loss… that goddam Dean”—but that morning, on the phone, Nixon pretended everything was fine.
“Good morning, John,” Nixon said, “I’m just calling to wish you and your wife a happy Easter.” They spoke for fifteen minutes, a bizarre and through-the-looking-glass conversation where both parties danced around the final rupture both knew was coming. Nixon tried to reassure Dean he was still a part of the team. They spoke about the looming scandal, the immunity challenge, and Dean counseled the president to be careful about obstruction himself. “You should talk to Henry Petersen,” he said. Nixon agreed.
“Well have a nice day, John,” the president said.
Dean replied, “Thank you, Mr. President. I hope you have a nice day, also.”
The two men would never speak again.
I. Grudgingly, though, Baker came to view his fellow Republican’s efforts as correct.
II. It would forever be a sore point to Speaker Carl Albert that the Senate got the glory of the Watergate investigation and left the House to play catch-up. “[We] had more jurisdiction than the Senate did,” Albert said later in an oral history. “We were going to do it if they didn’t, you know, but [Ervin] had run out and got it.”
III. His aides said at the time it was only the third of his career; he wrote in his memoir it was just his second.
IV. Indeed, when the tapes of that afternoon’s Oval Office conversation came out, that was exactly what Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman had intended. “We’re cognizant Dean’s going to make a case against this Administration,” Nixon had said. “God damn if he’ll get immunity!” The president called Kissinger too, and said he wanted to put “the fear of God into any little boys [who sought immunity].”
V. The national security advisor had a certain amount of sympathy for what he saw as the simple naïveté of Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and the others caught up in the scandal. “They had not thought of their conduct as a ‘cover-up’ but as a means to protect an elected Administration that still had much left to accomplish from opponents working against the national interest as they perceived it.”
Chapter 29 “Voice of Doom”
In late April, Earl Silbert stealthily cornered Paul Friedman, the administrative assistant U.S. attorney, in the cafeteria of the D.C. courthouse and asked if the lawyer could start looking into the question of whether the Justice Department could investigate and prosecute the president of the United States. The case had simply gotten too big and too complex, and its targets too powerful. The mission, Silbert stressed, would require the utmost level of secrecy.
