Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (41 page)

When the call ended, however, the President aroused my suspicions again. He looked down at his pad and resumed his questions about the facts, focusing on my own involvement, my own legal weaknesses. Each time I told him what they were, he would say, “Now, John, I want you to tell the truth about that when you’re questioned, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I would reply, but my mind was elsewhere. I was studying him. He is posturing himself, I thought—always placing his own role in an innocuous perspective and seeking my agreement. I wondered if the meeting was a setup. Was he recording me? I noticed a small cassette recorder on the table beside him, but it wasn’t running. I glanced around the room, looking for a machine somewhere else. My hopes wrestled my mistrust to a draw. So what? I thought finally. What difference does it make if I admit my involvement?

“Well, John,” he said after running through his list of questions, “what’s your counsel on whether I should keep Haldeman and Ehrlichman on? I think that’s an issue that I’d like to have your advice on. Uh, I’ve been talking with Petersen about it, and he thinks maybe they should be removed.”

I was surprised by the question. The President did not seem to be posturing. Maybe he was seriously weighing this option. My hopes rose again. “Uh, frankly, Mr. President, I would follow Petersen’s advice on that. I really can’t see any alternative, you know, to protect the Presidency.”

The President shook his head sadly. “You think their problems are that bad, eh?”

“Well, I’m afraid so, yes. I think they are at least as bad as my own,” I replied, restraining myself. “My lawyer and I have gone over these obstruction statutes, Mr. President, and you’d be surprised by them. They are as broad as the imagination of man, and I’m convinced all of us have serious legal problems.”

The President sighed. “What about you, John? Are you prepared to resign?”

“I have thought a lot about that, Mr. President, and I am. I’m not happy about it, but I think it has to occur. I want you to know I’m ready when you say so.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Good. Let me say this, John. I’m not happy about this, but Petersen has been talking to me about it. It is a painful thing for the President, you know. I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t think it’s right. But what can you say?” He looked off helplessly.

“I understand, Mr. President, but I want you to know I understand the important thing is the Presidency.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“That’s what matters.”

“That’s right.” The President looked at me, paused, and then spoke in a soft, quiet voice. “John, let me ask you this. Have you talked to the prosecutors at all about your conversations with the President?”

“No, sir, Mr. President,” I replied immediately. “I haven’t even talked to my lawyer about anything in that area. Those are in privileged areas, as far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s right,” he said, nodding vigorously. “And I don’t want you talking about national-security matters, or, uh, executive-privilege things. Uh, those newsmen’s wiretaps and things like that—those are privileged, John. Those are privileged. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, understand. But they’re national security. There’s no doubt about that.”

“I agree, Mr. President.” I knew he was protecting himself with this admonition, but I didn’t care. That was my purpose as well.

The President sat up slowly, removing his feet from the ottoman and placing his pad on it. “John, do you remember that conversation when you came in and told me about, you know, the cancer on the Presidency and things like that?”

“Yes, sir.” I wondered what he was driving at.

“Well, let me ask you something. When
was
that?”

“Well, let me think. I can’t put a date on it off the top of my head, but I know it was the Wednesday just before Hunt was sentenced. It wouldn’t be hard to find out.”

“Good,” he said. “Would you check on that for me? That’s when you brought the facts in to me for the first time, isn’t it? And gave me the whole picture?”

“Yes, sir, it is.” Now I knew he was posturing that he’d known nothing about Watergate until that day. It was a lie, but it was all right with me as long as he didn’t do so at my expense. I couldn’t tell which way he was going.

The President leaned over toward me, and a mischievous look came across his face. “You know, that mention I made to you about a million dollars and so forth as no problem...” He laughed softly. “I was just joking, of course, when I said that.”

I smiled and nodded as the President rose to his feet with some effort and stretched briefly. “Well, Mr. President, I’m not even getting into those areas. You can be assured of that.”

“Good,” he said, looking down at me. He began walking slowly, circling around my chair toward the window. “You know, John, this guy Hunt has caused us a lot of problems, but I can kind of understand how sad it is for him. You know, with his wife dead, and being in jail like that. Awfully tough. I really feel sorry for him, and it’s hard to look at his situation objectively.” The President stopped in the corner behind his chair, about ten feet away from me. He paused and looked out the window toward the lights on the West Wing of the White House, his arms folded in front of him. Then he looked over at me. “John,” he said in a hushed tone, “I guess it was foolish of me to talk to Colson about clemency. Uh, wasn’t it?”

I nodded silently and slowly. The President had just mentioned the two most troublesome areas he had discussed with me. He knew they were his biggest mistakes, but he was telling me that he considered them small ones—jokes, little errors.

His spirits suddenly picked up again. “Well, John, I want to thank you for coming in here tonight. I want you to think about these things, and we’ll talk again about them soon, maybe tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” I said, rising. “I will think about them. I feel a lot better after this conversation.” And I did feel better. At least the President had not exploded at me, called me a Judas, fired me, announced a new cover-up.

We started walking across the office together, stopped, and then began heading in our different directions. “Well, John, say hello to your pretty wife for me, okay?” he said brightly.

I had been brooding as we crossed the office. I thought the President was on the brink of a decision that could determine his future. Maybe I had given him the impression it would be too easy. I mustered my courage to give him a parting warning, a last shove in the right direction. “I will tell her you said that, Mr. President. I know she’ll appreciate it. Uh, just one other thing, Mr. President.” Drifting away from each other, we were now about five feet apart. We both stopped. “You know, uh, Mr. President, I would hate to have anything I have started here by talking to the prosecutors and getting these facts out—uh, I would hate to have any of that ever result in the impeachment of the President.”

He gazed off and thought for an instant. I wondered whether anybody on his staff had ever before suggested such a thing seriously. Of course not.

The President shook his head assertively. “Oh, no, John, don’t you worry about that. We’re going to handle everything right. You can be assured of that. So don’t worry about it.”

“All right, Mr. President,” I sighed. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said, heading toward his private bathroom.

I drove home, turning the conversation over and over in my mind. Everything could be interpreted many ways. At least I didn’t feel humiliated or repudiated. The cover-up was hanging in the balance.

Maybe the President
would
thank me for what I had done. Maybe he was plotting to screw me to the wall. I knew that was a possibility. For the rest of the evening I wavered back and forth, slowly drowning my worries in alcohol, imagining Nixon doing the same.

The President summoned me to his office first thing the next morning, April 16. As I walked over to the West Wing my mind was nearly blank; I felt as if I were on automatic pilot. The President would give me some sign of the way he was moving, I knew, but I had no idea how strong it would be. On so many occasions I had seen momentous decisions evaded.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman burst out of the Oval Office as I arrived. They were laughing together like college pranksters, but went abruptly straight-faced when they noticed me. The first bad sign. Those were not the looks of men who had been told they had to resign. We exchanged grave nods.

I took a chair to the right of the President’s desk, on his left. He greeted me, shuffled some papers nervously. I felt oddly calm by comparison with last night. The President was too worried to explode at me. He now knew what I had done. I thought he was frightened, just as I was.

He came quickly to his point. “You will remember we talked about resignations, et cetera, et cetera, that I should have in hand,” he said, waving his hand in an effort to lighten the matter. He paused. “Not to be released.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, as I always did when the President said something I didn’t like. We had talked about resignations, indeed, but never about having to have them “in hand.” I waited.

“But I should have in hand something, or otherwise they will say, ‘What the hell. After Dean told you all of this, what did you do?’

“You see?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I talked to Petersen about this other thing, and I said, ‘Now, what do you want to do about this situation on Dean, et cetera?’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t want to announce anything now.’ You know what I mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But what is your feeling on that? See what I mean?”

I looked at the President without expression. He was being sneaky, but he was weak, I thought. Stroking me. Asking for my advice. Hoping I’d volunteer to do what he wanted: resign alone. “Well,” I said quietly, “I think it ought to be Dean, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman.”

“Well, I thought Dean for the moment,” the President replied, but without much force.

“All right,” I said, waiting to hear him out.

“Dean at this moment,” he continued, “because you are going to be going, and I will have to handle them also. But the point is...” He hesitated as if he had lost the thread. “What is your advice?” Before I could answer, he remembered his next point. “You see, the point is, we just typed up a couple, just to have here, which I would be willing to put out. You know...”

“Uh-huh.” Christ, I thought, he’s going to ask me to sign a resignation right here on the spot.

“... in the event certain things occur.”

Sure, I thought bitterly. Like releasing it about five minutes after the “event” that I sign it. “I understand,” I told him.

Nixon was fumbling awkwardly for something on his desk, near the telephone. “To put, just putting...” He faltered, groping for something with his hands while keeping his eyes on me to maintain the visual pressure. “What is your advice?”

“I think it would be good to have it on hand,” I replied, “and I would think, to be very honest with you—”

“Have the others too?” he interrupted.

“Yeah, have the others too.” The President had anticipated me. I didn’t know whether it was because he was genuinely weighing resignations from all three of us or because he backed down at the slightest resistance. I thought it was the latter.

“Well, as a matter of fact, they both suggested it themselves, so I’ve got that
—” The President stopped and looked up. Steve Bull was striding into the room. I turned around in surprise. “I’m sorry, Steve,” the President said with a nervous laugh, “I hit the wrong bell.” Fumbling, the President had accidentally pushed the button that summoned Bull.

Steve sensed the President’s embarrassed agitation, the smell of fear in the Oval Office, and he quickly backed out. I started to laugh, then stopped. I was amazed that the President had come so unstrung.

He had finally gotten hold of what I knew he’d been looking for: my letter of resignation. He had two of them, in fact, and he slid them across his desk toward me with a jerky push. As I scanned the first one, the President kept assuring me, unconvincingly, that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had also offered their resignations.

The first letter stunned me.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

As a result of my involvement in the Watergate matter, which we discussed last night and today, I tender to you my resignation effective at once.

No wonder he’s so nervous, I thought. He’s asking me to sign a confession. I saw Ziegler reading this letter in the Press Room. I visualized Judge Sirica announcing that since Liddy had gotten twenty years, I deserved no less than forty. I suppressed the thought and read the second letter. It was worse.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

In view of my increasing involvement in the Watergate matter, my impending appearance before the grand jury, and the probability of its action, I request an immediate and indefinite leave of absence from my position on your staff.

The President was suggesting that I sign
both
letters. I was shocked. Mechanically, I discussed both letters as if they were drafts of speeches. And, as I did, a debate raged deep inside me. A voice said, The President is undeniably a devious bastard who’ll ruin you any way he can. You should lash out at him, tell him what you really think, tell him how to save himself. He’ll probably fall off his chair and agree. Another voice said, The President is your whole life. He is vacillating; he is talking about firing Haldeman and Ehrlichman too; he just needs a little push to do the right thing. The voices canceled each other out. I was just strong enough to resist the President, not strong enough to defy him.