The Arrogance of Power (102 page)

19.
Ehrilichman said the two aides were Frank Gannon and Diane Sawyer, former White House staffers who stayed on after the resignation to help with Nixon's memoirs.

20.
The original “skeletal operations plan” to get “derogatory information” on Ellsberg came to Colson in the form of a memo from Howard Hunt. One scheme specifically mentioned was to “Obtain Ellsberg's files from his psychiatric analyst.” It was Colson whom Ehrlichman asked for a “game plan” on how, if the operation was successful, the resulting information could best be used. During Watergate, on the White House tapes, Nixon said flatly: “I never talked to Colson about Ellsberg.” This was not true, as several 1971 taped exchanges show. (“Plan”: Howard Hunt to Charles Colson, July 28, 1971, E, Bk. 9, p. 3886; “game plan”: John Ehrlichman to Charles Colson, Aug. 27, 1971, E, Bk. 6, p. 2651; “I never talked”: WHT, March 27, 1973;
AOP,
p. 265; 1971 exchanges: WHT, RN-Colson conversations, June 29, July 2, Sept. 18, and see Aug. 12, 1971,
AOP,
pp. 6, 15, 34, 27.)

21.
The other Nixon attorney was Len Garment.

22.
The author of the study was Robert Fink, who had worked with Bob Woodward of the
Washington Post.
Senator Abourezk inserted the results in the
Congressional Record
(vol. 120, No. 153, Oct. 9, 1974, “The Unsolved Break-ins”).

1.
Nixon's personal attorney, Herbert Kalmbach, held money remaining from the 1968 campaign, plus other sums, until passing them to the reelection campaign treasurer in early 1972.
He testified that it amounted at that time to $915,000. (Kalmbach testimony: E, Bk. 17, p. 7580.)

2.
Khashoggi; see p. 282–.

3.
Nixon later called it a “hypocritical myth” that his administration “sold” ambassadorships. It is true that he was not the first president to give the London embassy to a rich supporter—
vide
Roosevelt's appointment of Joseph Kennedy—but the White House tape passage cited demol-ishes his claim. (“myth”: Nixon,
Arena,
op. cit., p. 32–, and see
Fortune,
June 1970.)

4.
Nixon seriously considered dropping Vice President Agnew for the second term, hoping to replace him with John Connally, whom the president saw as his “logical successor.” (
AMII,
p. 457, July 20, 1971, entry;
HD,
CD.)

5.
This was the controversial donation that would eventually lead to CREEP fund-raiser Stans and John Mitchell being indicted for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. They were acquitted in 1974, while the indictment against Vesco for the same matter remains outstanding today. (Schoenebaum, op. cit., p. 445.)

6.
Curtis Counts double-dated with Nixon and Pat when they were courting. See p. 31.

7.
The author interviewed one of the agents, the late John Daley, while researching two previous books, and his widow kindly made his papers available for this project.

8.
Leads included information brought to the Watergate Special Prosecution Force that Teamsters official Salvatore Briguglio raised five hundred thousand dollars as a bribe to obtain a pardon for Hoffa, which was allegedly delivered in a Las Vegas restaurant. Mob associate and convicted racketeer Allen Dorfman had a receipt, purportedly signed by John Mitchell, for one hundred thousand dollars. A “financial diary,” handed over to authorities in 1979 by reputed mob hit man Gerald Denomo, contained an entry that appeared to reflect a bribe to Nixon involving Dorfman and Fitzsimmons. It read: “Fitz OK. Al Dorfman Chi OK. Tony Pro [mob-ster and Teamsters official Provenzano] OK. ($500.-to C.C. (equals) Nix OK.)” “$500” has been taken to indicate five hundred thousand dollars. The
Arizona Republic
reported that law enforcement officials thought the diary implicated Nixon and key aides, including Colson, in the Hoffa deal. A Nixon spokesman denied it, and Colson dismissed it as a “discredited story.” Another mob hit man, Charles Allen, claimed that he and another man delivered a briefcase containing forty thousand dollars to John Mitchell on Hoffa's behalf. (Briguglio: William Lynch to Charles Ruff, Aug. 9, 1976, WSPF, NA; Moldea, op. cit., p. 397; Dorfman: Friedman and Schwarz, op. cit., p. 131; Scheim, op. cit., p. 301; Denomo: AP,
San Francisco Examiner,
Nov. 16, [?]1979; Provenzano: Scheim, op. cit., p. 30; Allen:
WP,
Feb. 13, 1980.)

9.
A front-page story in the
Manchester
(New Hampshire)
Union Leader,
published at the height of Watergate, alleged that funding for the burglars' operations came in part from “gambling interests in Las Vegas” and the Teamsters. Liddy, the article claimed, had visited Nevada twice and had picked up $250,000. Hunt reportedly later flew to Vegas to collect an additional $150,000. The
Leader
article was retracted after Murray Chotiner sued over references in it to him. Liddy apparently made two visits to Las Vegas in early 1972. Hunt knew Liddy had been to the city but denied having been there himself. Both Hunt and Liddy and their accomplice James McCord said the interest there was the safe of Las Vegas newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun, supposedly because he had information on Senator Muskie. (
Union Leader: Manchester
(New Hampshire)
Union Leader,
Apr. 27, 1973; Hunt: int. Howard Hunt; Hunt testimony, E, Bk. 9, p. 3686, E, Bk. 20, p. 9345; Hunt,
Undercover,
op. cit., p. 193–; McCord: James McCord testimony, E, Bk. 1, p. 204;
WHT,
Apr. 13, 1973;
AOP,
p. 312.)

10.
Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm was one of the black politicians Nixon and his aides had discussed secretly financing, as a device to take votes away from the Democrats in 1972. See p. 355.

11.
Dean claimed he told Haldeman that the Liddy plan was “unnecessary and unwise” and that the White House should have nothing to do with it. He did not say flat out that the plan itself should be dropped. Haldeman at first accepted that Dean had spoken along such lines, but later said he could not recall the episode. It was claimed recently that Dean could not have met Haldeman as he asserted, on the ground that Haldeman was out of Washington on the day of the alleged meeting, February 4, 1972. Persuasive evidence, however, suggests that he
was
in town. Interested readers should compare the passage at pages 119 and 258 of
Silent Coup,
op. cit., with p. 94 of Fred Emery's
Watergate,
op. cit., (Dean on seeing Haldeman: E, Bk. 3, p. 930.)

12.
Mitchell would deny in testimony that he gave the go-ahead. His aide Fred LaRue, also present, claimed that Mitchell said the decision need not be taken at that meeting. Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan, however, recalled that Magruder called from Florida to tell him Mitchell had decided the project could proceed. Liddy said he got the “go” from Magruder's assistant Robert Reisner. Either Mitchell or Magruder evidently lied about this, or the meeting in Florida produced one of the most fateful misunderstandings in U.S. history. The wider controversy has been thrashed out most controversially in the book
Silent Coup,
by Len Colodny
and Robert Gettlin, op. cit., which blames John Dean for massive deceptions. The most balanced account is Fred Emery's
Watergate: The Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon
(New York Times Books, 1994; see also E, Report, p. 25.)

13.
Haldeman's aide Gordon Strachan testified that directly after the March 30 meeting with Haldeman in Florida, Magruder phoned to say a “sophisticated political intelligence-gathering system had been approved with a budget of $300,000.” Strachan then prepared a Political Action Memorandum for Haldeman, advising him of the development, and Haldeman checked the relevant paragraph to indicate he had read it. Strachan outlined the matter again in the Talking Paper prepared for Haldeman's meeting with Mitchell on April 4. He testified that both documents were among those he shredded within days of the Watergate arrests, in line with Haldeman's order to “make sure our files are clean.” A copy surfaced at the National Archives, however, during research for the television documentary series made for the BBC and the Discovery Channel in 1994. A second copy was found later by an archivist and drawn to John Dean's attention. The copy retrieved by the documentary makers bears a circled letter that is either an incomplete
P
or an odd
F.
The copy provided to Dean bears a scribbled “OK/LH,” suggesting it was originally copied to Haldeman's assistant Larry Higby. White House logs show that Nixon met with Mitchell and Haldeman for thirty-seven minutes on April 4, after Mitchell and Haldeman had talked separately for about an hour. (Strachan on Magruder call, documents: Gordon Strachan testimony, E, Bk. 6, pp. 2452, 2454, 2459, 2490;
P
/
F?
copy:
Watergate: The Break-in,
Program 1, Brian Lapping Associates Production for Discovery Channel and BBC, Discovery Communications, 1994, [home video] interviews of Dean and Haldeman reflected in program; “OK/LH” copy: provided to author by John Dean; RN met Mitchell: George to Jim memo, Aug. 3, 1973, and WSPF Summary “Prior Knowledge of the DNC Break-in,” Folder 53A-Z, Nixon memoranda, witness files, WSPF, NA, Apr. 4, 1972, entry,
HD,
CD.

14.
Suspect intrusions in early 1972 include four targetings of John Meier, a former aide to Howard Hughes then campaigning for the U.S. Senate; an apparent break-in at the office of Las Vegas newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun; the theft of a safe from the law office of Ralph Denton, who represented Greenspun; and the theft of interview tapes from the office of Benjamin Schemmer, who was writing a book on Howard Hughes. Nixon White House concern about Hughes at this time is reported later in this chapter. CBS newscaster Dan Rather interrupted a burglary at his home in April 1972. Valuables and cash had been left untouched, but Rather's files had been disturbed. Rather, who had angered Nixon on occasion, asked the police to look into the burglary again after Watergate. One of the Watergate burglars, Frank Sturgis, later said he had taken part in two break-ins at the office of Sol Linowitz, former diplomat and senior adviser to Senator Muskie. Linowitz's firm represented the Chilean government of Salvador Allende at the time, and there were also break-ins at the Chilean Embassy and the homes of Chilean diplomats. Sturgis said that he and some of the Watergate Cubans took part in the embassy break-ins. The Linowitz and embassy entries allegedly involved the installation or removal of bugs. As Haldeman noted in his diary, the Hunt men reportedly admitted later that they had “dropped bugs all over town.” In May 1973, a recently released tape shows, Nixon said the Chilean Embassy break-in was “part of the burglar's plan, as a cover.” (Meier:
Playboy
[Sept. 1976]; Greenspun: Emery, op. cit., pp. 93, 97; Denton: int. Sally Denton; Schemmer: “Anatomy of a Break-in,” unpublished article in Jim Hougan collection; ints. Benjamin Schemmer; Rather: Wise,
Police State,
op. cit., p. 166–;
WP,
June 5, 1973; Linowitz: int. Andrew St. George; Robert Fink, “The Unsolved Break-ins,”
Congressional Record,
Oct. 9, 1974, p. S18595; Chilean Embassy: ibid., and Wise,
Police State,
op. cit., p. 178;
WP,
March 8, 1973; “bugs all over town”: Jan. 13, 1973, entry
HD,
p. 568, and see
NYT,
Jan. 14, 1973; RN “part of plan”: WHT, May 16, 1973, cited in
WP,
Feb. 26, 1999.)

15.
The first psychiatrist to see Bremer under arrest said he believed he “might be a mental case.” The following day Bremer spit on a doctor and threatened to kill him. He had an obsession about germs. Of ten psychiatrists who eventually examined him, six found he had been sane on the day of the shooting, three thought not, and one was undecided. (C. W. Bates to Mr. Shroder, May 15, 1972, FBI 44-52576-15, Acting Director to Acting A.G., May 17, 1972, FBI 44-52576-3, Milwaukee to Acting Director, May 18, 1972, FBI 44-52576-68, SAC Baltimore to Director, Sept. 7, 1973, FBI 44-52576-772.)

16.
Colson referred to the events of May 15–16 in two memos, dated May 16 and June 20, 1972. This author shares the suspicion that the “May 16” document was created during the flap after the Watergate arrests—and composed to cover the real facts. The June 20 memo, meanwhile, glosses over his exchange with Hunt in the aftermath of the Wallace shooting. (May 16: memo to file, Oudes, op. cit., p. 445; June 20: memo for the file, re: Howard Hunt, E, Bk. 3, p. 1170–.)

17.
In a summary of his concerns passed to FBI Director Clarence Kelley in 1975, Wallace said he thought Bremer “would not have had the money to buy an automobile and two guns . . . and
rent a limousine and stay at the Waldorf Astoria. . . . How was he able to . . . tail me all over the country?” Wallace also questioned the authenticity of Bremer's diary, saying: “I believe somebody else wrote it and he copied it.” Others shared such doubts. (Wallace doubts: letter from [name censored] to FBI Director Clarence Kelley, Jan. 7, 1975, FBI 44-52576; others' doubts: William Turner article in Blumenthal and Yazijian, eds., op. cit., p. 56, and Gore Vidal article in Scott, Hoch, and Stetler, eds., op. cit., p. 386.)

18.
The offices burglarized two floors above the DNC, on May 6, were those of the Bank Operations Division of the Federal Reserve Board. The office broken into elsewhere in the complex, on May 15, was that of a law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman. Patricia Harris was acting chairperson of the Democratic Credentials Committee, and Sargent Shriver—a Kennedy brother-in-law—was occasionally mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate. Max Kampelman was an intimate of Hubert Humphrey's, and another partner, Richard Berryman, was cocounsel for the Humphrey campaign. Harris and Shriver were on the “enemies list.” The FBI would sweep the offices for bugs following the June 17 arrests elsewhere in the Watergate and, according to Shriver, found a bug in Harris's phone. (Federal Reserve: “The Unsolved Break-ins,”
Congressional Record,
vol. 120, No. 153, Oct. 9, 1974; Fried, Frank break-in: ibid.; bug found?:
Miami Herald,
Aug. 20, 1972.)