Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (39 page)

*E [Ehrlichman]

*JWD [Dean]

LaRue

*Mardian?

*O’Brien

*Parkinson?

*Colson?

*Bittman?

*Kalmbach/Tony [Ulasewicz]/Sources
[for Kalmbach’s money]

Stans?

We talked strategy, and then Charlie left to get on his horse and hunt foxes. I sat there and fretted about Ehrlichman. I could visualize Mitchell walking into his office looking as if he’d been struck with a month’s heartburn. Mitchell would figure Ehrlichman was trying to get an admission on tape, I thought, since taping had been on everyone’s mind recently. There would probably be a lot more stonewalling, but I guessed Mitchell would make sure to get in some subtle remarks about Ehrlichman’s own criminal problems. That would ruin any tape Ehrlichman might be making.

Mo interrupted my thoughts when she brought some out-of-town guests to the White House for lunch. I took them to the executive mess. While they marveled at the royal service I drifted back to worried musings on what was transpiring in Ehrlichman’s office. I excused myself early.

Ehrlichman called. He wanted me right away. I hung up and stared out the window. Then I sighed, picked up my indictment list and started for the door. I stopped. I fidgeted with the list, moving it from an inside jacket pocket to an outside one and then back inside. I wanted to have the quickest and most casual access to it. I felt like a gunslinger practicing his draw. Finally I headed over to the West Wing.

“Well, your old friend John Mitchell didn’t have much to say,” Ehrlichman reported. He was leaning back in his swivel chair with his feet on the desk, like the President. Haldeman was there, too, seated sideways on an easy chair.

“That’s not too surprising,” I replied as I sat down. “What do you think of my suggestion that the President march down to the grand jury?” I laughed.

“I don’t think too much of it,” Ehrlichman said.

“That’s not surprising either.”

Ehrlichman began ticking off the major points from his notes on the Mitchell meeting. The telephone rang. “Yes, sir,” said Ehrlichman. The President, I thought. Ehrlichman listened briefly and then seemed to break in. “Uh, he’s right here. Yes, sir.” He hung up.

The President is in on whatever they had planned for me, I thought. Ehrlichman seemed momentarily distracted by the interruption. I reached for my list.

“John, this is—what I did this, uh,” I began unsuccessfully. “My lawyer was over here this morning, and we went through everybody’s involvement. And based on, uh,
his
conversations with the prosecutors,
his
knowledge of the criminal law—and he’s a damn good criminal lawyer—we drew up a list of everybody who could be potentially indicted. Uh, both for the pre-June seventeenth and the post-.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Ehrlichman remarked dourly.

“And here’s what we came up with.” I held up the list as if to hand it to him, but he showed no interest. “It’s a disaster,” I said, and I began to read off the names. I went through all fifteen, slowly at first, then faster, as I wanted to have it over with. Then I read the offenses with which they could be charged.

Ehrlichman sat bolt upright, his feet dropping to the floor. “John, I wonder if someone might be slipping something putrid into your diet. I don’t believe that damn list. I just don’t agree with your lawyer’s analysis.”

I drew another long breath. “Well, John, write down these citations, because I think you ought to pull the statutes yourself if you have any doubt.” I looked down at the notes on my list. “They’re both Title 18. You ought to look under Section 371, which is a conspiracy statute. It carries five years and ten thousand dollars maximum. And Section 1503, which is an obstruction statute. It carries five years and five thousand dollars maximum. They’re pretty serious offenses.” I made another motion to hand over the list, but there were no takers. Ehrlichman was jotting down the citations. Haldeman was gazing off.

Then Ehrlichman turned back to me. “Well, I notice almost all the people on your little party list are for the post period. Why’s that?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, let me tell you something else. You’ve got to know it. Based on my conversations with Shaffer, who’s been down there with the prosecutors, they’re looking at post too. They’re very interested in that. And you’re a target of the grand jury on that. I’m a target. Bob’s a target. All these guys are.”

Ehrlichman protested. His eyebrows, which normally rise vertically, scrunched together laterally over his nose in a frown. “No, sir,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “That’s not what the grand jury is doing.”

“What do you mean? My lawyer’s just been down there talking to the prosecutors.”

“Well,
I’ve
just been talking with Kleindienst. And I’ve told Kleindienst to keep me informed about what is going on down there. And Kleindienst hasn’t said a
word
about anything like that. He says the grand jury’s going after the people who might have known about the break-in beforehand. So I think your lawyer’s misinformed.”

“Well, I think Kleindienst is misinformed,” I replied evenly.

Haldeman finally sat up. “John, we’ll see what we can find out about this. In the meantime, I want you to keep that damn list to yourself.”

“All right,” I said. The meeting broke up with no farewells. I drove home, thinking of Ehrlichman’s meeting with Magruder. If Magruder agreed to plead guilty and testify against Mitchell on the break-in, as I thought he might, Ehrlichman would not worry so much about the cover-up message I had just delivered; its impact would be diluted in hopes that Mitchell’s demise would end Watergate. I felt relieved about rattling the cage with Haldeman and Ehrlichman on the coverup, but also concerned that I might have severed my White House ties so cleanly as to encourage Ehrlichman to try to implicate me in the break-in. At home, I hid from our guests and pulled out the Scotch bottle.

Charlie called late that night. “John, I just got a call from Glanzer!” he shouted. “Everything’s falling apart. Those goddam guys are breaching our agreement!”

I felt a chill. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Magruder went in there and gave them a case against Mitchell, along with your evidence.
3
*
And they’ve got the U.S. attorney, and they’re going to tell Petersen what we’ve been talking about. Tonight!”

“Oh, shit! Are they going to say I was in there meeting with them?”

“Yep.”

“Are they going to tell Petersen about the goddam cover-up?”

“That’s what Glanzer says. Everything. And then a whole pack of them are going to troop over to Kleindienst’s house in the wee hours.”

“Goddammit, Charlie, they promised us!”

“I know. I’ve
reminded
Glanzer of that several times, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“Goddammit, Charlie! They can’t do that! Do they think they have a case on the cover-up yet?”

“Hell, no, they don’t have a case yet! Seymour says they just can’t sit on what they have anymore.”

“Jesus Christ! The President will know all this by morning. And I tell you what’s going to happen. Ehrlichman’s going to go in there, and the President’s going to say, ‘Goddam Dean. He’s a fucking rat!’ And he’ll close ranks with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. And there won’t
be
any cover-up case, except maybe against me!”

“I know,” said Charlie. “You don’t have to tell me. Seymour thinks they may already have a case against you on the break-in.”

“I’ll bet. Listen, Charlie. You’ve got to call Glanzer back and get him to hold off on this thing! Especially my story to them on the cover-up! Tell them to hold off. Tell them they don’t understand what they’re doing. Tell them to wait just forty-eight hours! I’ve got to tell the President about this first. I’ve got to give him a chance to get away from this thing. Otherwise we’ll just have a brand-new cover-up at a higher level, and I’ll be the goddam scapegoat!”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll try. Sit tight.”

I prowled like a cat, and drank, until Charlie called back five minutes later. “It’s no use,” he sighed. “They’ve already started the ball rolling. The best I could do was to arrange another meeting with them tomorrow.”

“Goddammit, Charlie. I don’t want to meet with those bastards.”

“Listen, John, we don’t have any choice,” Charlie said firmly. “The cat’s out of the bag. We’ve got to pump them full of the cover-up now. I’ve got to up the ante with them to have a shot at immunity. That’s your only chance not to be the fall guy.”

I argued with Charlie for a few more minutes, then gave up. When he hung up, I raced through some calculations and then called the White House operator. I asked for Rose Woods. The operator said she would have to call me back. I planned to tell Rose that I had an urgent matter to take up with the President. I couldn’t call the President directly, because the call would automatically be routed through Haldeman. Maybe Woods would be understanding. She had been no fan of Haldeman’s ever since he tried to remove her as the President’s private secretary.

The phone rang and I leaped to answer it. The operator told me Rose Woods could not be reached temporarily, because she was at a funeral in Pittsburgh. I left a message to have her call me, saying it was urgent. There was no other way to reach the President. By three in the morning I had drunk myself to sleep.

I drove to Charlie’s office the next day; adrenalin bathed away my hangover. “I think your strategy of getting immunity is more important than ever now,” I told him. “Ehrlichman and Haldeman are sure as hell going to deny ever talking to me about anything, and I’m going to be out there alone. Now, look. You said we have to up the ante, and I’ve brought something to do it with.” I opened my briefcase, took out a copy of the Huston Plan and handed it to Charlie.

He stared at the marking on the cover—
”Top Secret: Handle via COMINT Channel Only.” “What the hell does that mean?” he asked. “It’s a classification a couple of steps higher than Top Secret. It means you have to have official couriers carry it around in locked briefcases and stuff like that.”

Charlie handed the document back to me with a look of disapproval. “I don’t want to see this,” he said. “Look, John, we agreed not to get into national-security matters. I’m willing to play rough for you, but I’m not going to get myself prosecuted for receiving stuff like this without a clearance. And I’m sure those bastards in the White House would love to shove it to me. I’m a Kennedy Democrat, and I bet they’ll figure I put you up to all this.”

“Okay. I just wanted you to know that national security is like executive privilege. It’s vague, and you can use it for anything. Because I’m going to tell you another thing that’s considered national security at the White House. Hunt, Liddy, and those same Cubans who’re in jail broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office out in California. They wanted to get some dirt on Ellsberg to destroy him in the press. How’s that?”

Charlie stopped and put his cigar down. “Who knew about that?”

“Well, Bud Krogh told me he approved it,” I replied, “but Bud works for Ehrlichman and I’m sure it’s an Ehrlichman operation. That’s what everybody who knows about it assumes, including John Mitchell.”
4
*

“So that’s why Ehrlichman carried so much water for Mitchell in the cover-up,” Charlie said in excitement. “I confess I wondered about your story on that, John, since the two of them hate each other so much. Now it makes sense.”

“That’s
one
of the reasons, Charlie.”

“Christ, I don’t need any more now. I’ve got to figure out how to lay this one on Earl and Sy before they get here.”

“Well, I have something else on that one.” I explained about the CIA pictures of Liddy in front of Dr. Fielding’s office in the Justice Department’s Watergate files. Charlie put his cigar down again in amazement.

“Does Petersen know about this break-in?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” I said. “I never asked him. If he knew, it would just put him on the spot. If he didn’t, I didn’t want to volunteer it. It’s been in the files since last July, and most people are curious about stuff from CIA. I figured Henry didn’t have it investigated. You know, he put limits on the investigation—Watergate only—and Liddy wasn’t standing in front of the Watergate in that picture. I doubt he knows much about it.”

“Well, these prosecutors soon will,” said Charlie. “You have an obligation to report this to the government. Otherwise you’re going to be involved in a continuing obstruction of justice. We should do that this afternoon.”

“What do you mean? I don’t really understand, Charlie.”