The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (108 page)

23
Anonymous editorial, “Now, More Than Ever,”
The Washington Post
, October 12, 1972, A-18.

24
Conversation No. 366-6.

25
Conversation No. 797-3.

26
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Key Nixon Aide Named As ‘Sabotage’ Contact,”
The Washington Post
, October 15, 1972, A-1.

27
Conversation No. 220-12.

28
Dean Senate testimony, 3 SSC 965.

29
Conversation No. 799-6.

30
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “GOP Hits Post for ‘Hearsay’: News Stories on Sabotage Held Malicious,”
The Washington Post
, October 17, 1972, A-1.

31
Conversation No. 801-24.

32
Lawrence Meyer, “Sirica Sets Watergate Trial Nov. 15,”
The Washington Post
, October 18, 1972, A-1.

33
Conversation Nos. 803-22, 804-1.

34
At the time I assumed it must be Edward Bennett Williams who represented
The
Washington Post
. But Max Holland reports in
Leak
(p.
235, note 26) that “John Mitchell learned, reportedly from Wall Street lawyer Roswell Gilpatric [who never worked for the FBI or Justice Department], that Felt was leaking to
Time
magazine.” Nixon will refer to this in later conversations as the basis of his knowledge that Felt was leaking. Holland was unable to determine if one or more sources were involved in revealing Felt was a leaker. After listening to the conversations and examining the relevant schedules, I believe it is entirely possible that I spoke with John Mitchell before giving this information to Haldeman, who was not available when I first learned about Felt. And, in turn, Mitchell may have made some inquiries on his own and determined or speculated that it was Roswell Gilpatric. I doubt my meeting with Haldeman lasted more than a few minutes, and based on the conversation that followed with the president, it appears he had spoken with John Mitchell as well. Haldeman’s diaries are silent on this matter. There is, however, no hard evidence that Gilpatric was involved in any manner.

35
Conversation No. 370-9.

36
Conversation No. 371-1.

37
Conversation No. 371-12.

38
While it appears that Felt was generally aware of the plumbers operation, because of the Watergate investigation, there is no evidence that he was knowledgeable about their other illegal activities, nor of anything else that could create problems for Ehrlichman. Nor did any information not widely available in news accounts later surface in either of Felt’s ghosted autobiographies,
The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1979), written by Ralph de Toledano, or
A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for Honor in Washington
(New York: Public Affairs, 2006), which was written (published posthumously) by John O’Connor and largely rehashed the earlier de Toledano work after Felt had been identified as Deep Throat.

39
Conversation No. 806-6.

40
Anonymous, “CBS Says Bug Probe Reopened,”
The Washington Post
, October 24, 1972, A-12.

41
Conversation No. 806-13.

42
Conversation No. 373-1.

43
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Testimony Ties Top Nixon Aide to Secret Fund,”
The Washington Post
, October 25, 1972, A-1.

44
Peter Osnos, “White House Denies Story on Haldeman,”
The Washington Post
, October 26, 1972, A-1.

45
Bernstein and Woodward,
All the President’s Men
, 193, 195.

46
Conversation No. 32-29.

47
Conversation No. 372-24.

48
Conversation No. 807-2.

49
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 711.

50
Conversation No. 809-2.

November 1 to December 30, 1972

1
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 391-5.

2
Conversation No. 390-14.

3
Conversation No. 389-19.

4
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 717.

5
H. R. Haldeman,
The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1993), 530–31.

6
John W. Dean,
Blind Ambition: The White House Years
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 151.

7
Conversation No. 224-15.

8
Conversation No. 815-6.

9
Conversation No. 815-19.

10
Haldeman,
Diaries
, 543. I had been working gathering information for a Segretti report, but neither Ehrlichman nor I had a clue of how to write an honest report on Watergate that would not widen the case rather than end it all. The problem was that all three of us were involved. Ehrlichman had approved Liddy’s departure from the White House staff because of his botched break-in attempt in California at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and other illegal suggestions, thinking he would not cause a problem at the reelection committee. Haldeman had been told by me of meetings with Mitchell at the reelection committee during which Liddy discussed illegal plans for intelligence gathering, at which I had been present and tried to kill them. Yet Haldeman had instructed Strachan in April 1972 to have Liddy move his intelligence gathering from Muskie to McGovern. (The tapes reveal that neither Haldeman nor Ehrlichman explained these problems to Nixon.) These facts made writing a truthful Watergate report virtually impossible, for there was no assurance that this information, known to varying degrees by Mitchell, Magruder, Strachan, Liddy and Hunt, would not surface at some point and unravel the cover-up. Every time I discussed this with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, regarding how such facts should be addressed, they had no answer other than to shelve the idea of my writing any report on Watergate.

11
Conversation No. 387-4.

12
Conversation No. 157-26.

13
Conversation No. 384-4.

14
Conversation No. 819-2.

15
Conversation No. 820-18.

16
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Executive Phone Used to Hunt ‘Leaks,’”
The Washington Post
, December 13, 1972, A-10.

17
Conversation No. 822-12.

18
Conversation No. 381-18.

19
Joseph Kraft, “Desperate Signals or Sour Grapes at the FBI?”
The Washington Post
, December 28, 1972, A-21.

20
See, e.g.,
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities,
United States Senate: Together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views
at http://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel01unit; Curt Gentry,
J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991); and Tim Weiner,
Enemies: A History of the FBI
(New York: Random House, 2013).

Part III

1
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 741.

January 1973

1
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Conversation No. 829-6.

2
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (SSC) 1233–34.

3
Conversation No. 830-6.

4
Magruder Senate testimony, 2 SSC 806, and Jeb Stuart Magruder,
An American Life: One Man’s Road To Watergate
(New York: Atheneum, 1974), 278–79. When Magruder later
testified (and wrote) about why he had wanted this meeting, he was a bit more subtle: He claimed it was to make sure that Bart Porter was offered a good job in the second term, since Magruder had promised him one when he agreed to corroborate Magruder’s perjury regarding the campaign’s payments to Liddy.

5
Conversation No. 831-6.

6
When all this later surfaced, Colson did not deny his February 1972 meeting with Liddy (and Hunt as well, with Liddy doing all the talking), nor making the call to Magruder, but Colson claimed that he had no idea they were contemplating anything illegal. Knowing both Liddy and Colson, I have always found this claim less than credible. Based on the information that Haldeman provided the president on January 3, it appears that this was the first Haldeman had learned of Colson’s role in moving Watergate forward. Only later would Haldeman tell the president he too had pushed Liddy’s plans, in April 1972, by having Strachan tell Liddy to focus his intelligence gathering on McGovern rather than Muskie.

7
John D. Ehrlichman 1972 Typed Logs, Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Box 25.

8
Conversation Nos. 394-3 and 397-7.

9
Ibid. For example, keywords used by the National Archives archivists for the subject log reveal that they could hear subjects such as: Watergate, -E. Howard Hunt Jr., -Possible plea, -Colson’s meeting with Ehrlichman, -Colson’s role, -Contacts with [William O. Bittman], -US Attorney, -Hunt cooperation, -Jeb Stuart Magruder, -Haldeman” and later “-Possible clemency, -Jail sentence, -Duration,” as well as “-Roles,-John N. Mitchell, -Magruder—to mention only a few.

10
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978)
,
754.

11
Ibid., 745.

12
H. R. Haldeman,
The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1993), 563.

13
Ibid.

14
Conversation No. 835-6.

15
Conversation No. 835-8.

16
Martin Schram, “Watergate Case Called Broad Plot,”
The Washington Post
, January 7, 1973, A-19.

17
Conversation No. 394-21/395-1.

18
Lyndon Johnson’s bugging of the Nixon campaign airplane in 1968 would continue to come up in conversation after conversation, for months. For example, when the president met with Haldeman later that evening in the Oval Office, between 5:59
P.M.
and 6:04
P.M.
, the president instructed him to get more information from DeLoach. Three days later, Haldeman reported that Mitchell was talking to DeLoach, and it was believed that he might produce some hard evidence of what transpired in 1968 or be able to tell Nixon where it could be found. To make a long story very short, there was no hard evidence or documentary traces of a 1968 incident relating to FBI surveillance of Nixon’s campaign plane because it never happened. Years later DeLoach explained the entire bizarre story in his 1995 memoir, after he had been forced to testify under oath about these events. In 1968, through DeLoach, LBJ did call for and the FBI did agree to wiretap the Vietnamese embassy in Washington and Mrs. Anna Chennault (an adviser to the Nixon national security team) in the final weeks of the 1968 campaign. There was a rumor, later proven false, that when Nixon’s campaign plane landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he had called Mrs. Chennault to request that she make sure the South Vietnamese would not participate in the Paris peace talks, thereby sabotaging LBJ’s peace efforts, which might have helped Nixon’s Democratic presidential opponent, Hubert Humphrey. But Nixon’s plane was never in Albuquerque. However, vice presidential candidate Agnew’s plane was there, and at LBJ’s request the FBI did check the toll records of phone calls from his plane, but none were to Mrs. Chennault, nor to anyone else related to national security. DeLoach said that when Nixon was elected J. Edgar Hoover misled Mitchell and Nixon about the purported bugging of his plane to curry favor. In fact, DeLoach asserts that wiring that plane—which was protected by the Secret Service around the clock—would have been impossible
with the technology of the time, and it never happened. Cartha “Deke” DeLoach,
Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 1995)

19
Haldeman,
Diaries
, 567–68. Because of the denials of Colson and Mitchell, Hersh’s January 14, 1973,
New York
Times
story was not nearly as threatening as when he asked for comments. It appears that Hersh relied on an inaccurate
Time
magazine story “that the Watergate defendants had been promised a cash settlement as high as $1,000 a month if they pleaded guilty and took a jail sentence. Additional funds would be paid to the men upon their release.” Hersh reported that Rothblatt was complaining that his clients were being pressured to plead. See Seymour M. Hersh, “Pressures to Plead Guilty Alleged in Watergate Case,”
New York Times
, January 14, 1973. In fact, this was a decision made by the Cuban Americans by themselves after Hunt pled. See, e.g., the Senate testimony of Bernard Barker, May 24, 1973, 1, SSC, 359.

20
See, e.g.,
The Washington Post
’s headlines covering the trial: “GOP Aides Listed as ‘Bug’ Witnesses,” January 9, 1973; “Watergate Trial Judge Wants ‘Exploration,’” January 10, 1973; “Watergate ‘Bug’ Suspect Pleads Guilty,” January 11, 1973; “Hunt Pleads Guilty, Denies ‘Higher-Ups’ In Plot,” January 12, 1973; “Six in Watergate Case Implicated by Witness,” January 12, 1973; “Plea Shifts Hinted in Watergate Case,” January 13, 1973; “Evidence Is Curbed in Watergate Case,” January 13, 1973; “Hunt Said Urging Suspects in Bug Case to Plead Guilty,” January 15, 1973; “Judge Pushes for Answers: Don’t Believe You, Judge Tells Suspect,” January 16, 1973; “Watergate Defendant Claims ‘Bugs’ Legal,” January 17, 1973; “Key U.S. Witness Tells of Bugging Democrats,” January 18, 1973; “Key Witness Can’t Trace Wiretap Log,” January 18, 1973; “Debate on Taped Talks Stalls Watergate Trial,” January 19, 1973; “Witness Can’t Recall Who Got Tapped Logs,” January 23, 1973; “Liddy Indicated He Reported to ‘Others,’ Witness Says,” January 24, 1973; “Judge Scorns ‘Bug’ Defense,” January 25, 1973; “Watergate Mistrial Denied: Sloan Testimony Is Read to Jury in Watergate Trial,” January 27, 1973; “Jury Expected to Get Watergate Bugging Case Today,” January 30, 1973; “Still Secret: Who Hired Spies and Why: Trial Fails to Uncover Who Hired, Paid Watergate Spies,” January 31, 1973; and “Ex-Aides of Nixon to Appeal: Jury Convicts Liddy, McCord in 90 Minutes,” January 31, 1973.