The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (19 page)

“You don’t think he did?”

“No. But Magruder does, fortunately. And we’re just going to leave it at that. Let him go ahead and think it, because there’s no possible way he could harm Sloan. Sloan will never know what Magruder says. And he can’t, because Sloan’s not culpable at all under this case. Now, they laid some groundwork in a grand jury record for another case, but apparently they can’t use it. And they gave Sloan immunity on the other case, on anything beyond this case.”

The president found this interesting, and Haldeman continued, “It’s too
early to say, but it would appear that, given a very difficult situation, and no cooperation from Justice, either the FBI or Kleindienst, that our guys and these two lawyers the committee’s hired have done a superb job of keeping this thing—” But the president did not want to be overly optimistic, and he cut off Haldeman to remind him that the worst might still happen. “Let’s just be, let’s be fatalistic about the God damn thing.”

“If it blows, it blows,” Haldeman said. “If it blows, it blows, and so on,” Nixon repeated. “And we’ll ride it out,” Haldeman noted. “I’m not that worried about it, to be completely candid with you,” the president remarked. This surprised Haldeman somewhat, given the effort being made to prevent the worst, and he was prompted to add, “Well, it’s worth a lot of work to try and keep it from blowing.”

The president explained his thinking: “After all, if Mitchell’s gone, and we find out that nobody at a higher level was involved, the White House not being involved, and all that stuff, and the Cuban crap in there—are the Cubans going to plead not guilty, too?” Haldeman explained that everybody was being taken care of, so they need not worry about those involved in Watergate. He began vaguely, answering Nixon’s question about whether the Cubans would plead: “I don’t know, but everybody’s satisfied. They’re all out of jail, and they’ve all been taken care of. And they’re all—” Haldeman rephrased, “They’ve done a lot of discreet checking to be sure there’s no discontent in the ranks, and there isn’t any.”

“They’re all out on bail,” the president noted. “Hunt’s happy,” Haldeman added. “At considerable cost, I guess?” the president inquired. “Yes,” Haldeman said flatly. “It’s worth it,” the president said, giving his blessing to the expenditures. “It’s very expensive. It’s a costly exercise—” Haldeman said, to make the point that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. “That’s what the money’s for,” the president injected. Haldeman continued, “—but that’s better spent than, than, ah—”

“Well, they have taken all the risk and they have to be paid. That’s all there is to that,” Nixon declared, making it clear that he approved of the payments to those involved. “They have to pay, although, I must say that I’m second-guessing whoever made the decision,” the president added, regarding breaking into the DNC. “That’s pretty damn stupid,” Haldeman agreed. “About as stupid a thing as I’ve ever heard of. I mean, that is as bad as you can get it,” the president said. “But whoever it is has suffered for his sins, plenty,” Haldeman observed.

“I know. Oh no, don’t do that. Never blame. But the poor son of a bitch, what the hell, you’ve got such a stupid God damn idea. He must have got it from Hunt. It sounds like him, doesn’t it? Hunt, Liddy, I mean. I can’t think of anybody in our, in that organization. Magruder wouldn’t think up such a damn thing. I mean, he isn’t—” Nixon said. Haldeman added, “I can’t conceive that he did. I think it’s Liddy. Liddy, apparently, is a guy that just, you know—”

“Hates ’em,” Nixon speculated. “Well, he lives on this kind of stuff. I mean, he loves the—” Haldeman was starting to explain Liddy’s zealotry when the president asked, “Now, he resigned?” seeking to reaffirm his recollection. “A long time, no, he was fired,” Haldeman explained, and they reviewed the fact that Liddy had been dismissed when he had not cooperated with the FBI, a fact that had been published in the media. Nixon asked if Hunt’s noncooperation was publicly known, but Haldeman was not certain.

“Well, he’s not here,” Nixon noted, and then fell silent. Given his next comments it is clear that he was thinking about the information Haldeman had provided: Those involved in the Watergate break-in were now being paid, and he was concerned.
*
“You know, they might just be so silly to be paying a bribe on Hunt, if they are putting him on, to make this case, the case about Watergate and so forth. Well, let me say, he’s not worth that. I think, it’s not that much, I hope, I mean, I know of, I never discount the kind of crap the press will put to us on a thing like this. But, Bob, it does not, we’ve, we’ve stayed completely away from it. I’ve stayed completely away from it, and we will, ah, MacGregor, of course, will take, as he should, a holier than thou attitude, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ Right?”

“Yeah, and we’ve kept Colson clear of it,” Haldeman said, and added, “And we’ve held up this civil thing. It’s on a discovery deal, but [a] motion will be made on the civil suit just to suspend all activity on that, pending the outcome of the criminal.” The president was still thinking about pardons for those involved, and he asked Haldeman if they had gathered charges against his opponents, as they had done with a veteran’s group down in Florida that had been charged for antiwar activities. Haldeman said that they were looking for more,
and maybe they would catch some “bad guys” at the forthcoming Republican convention, whom they could hang on to for a while, and then let them go.

After a brief silence, the president asked: “You say no cooperation from the Justice Department? I understand the FBI.”

“Well, it’s been very hard. It’s, it’s hard. Petersen has been reasonably good, in fact, pretty, I guess, darn good,” Haldeman reported. “The problem has been Kleindienst just totally washed his hands. And now he’s come back in. Ehrlichman hauled him in yesterday and said, ‘You know, this has gotten ridiculous. Now that you’ve got everything you need. Now, for God’s sake, turn it off. Bring your indictments.’ And Kleindienst seemed to see the light. At least he’ll be on it.” The president wanted to know the timing, if indictments could be handed down sooner by the grand jury, and if there was a way to speed up the process. Haldeman said that it was possible, but he did not think it was desirable to have them until after the Republican convention in August, because of the press coverage. “Well, I’m just nervous about it. Maybe there could be some problems,” the president said. “Not Jeb, I’m not nervous about Magruder.” Then he explained what was on his mind. “Do you think Sloan pocketed the money?”

Haldeman did not, and the president moved on to address the intelligence-gathering operation at the reelection committee, softly scolding that it “was a very bad place to have it, Bob.” Haldeman explained, “Well, sure. Except this was something John was after, apparently.”

“Mitchell?” Nixon asked. Haldeman gave an affirmative “hum, hmm,” then explained that Mitchell’s interest had been “on the finance thing.” But Nixon did not understand and asked, “He had the idea of getting their contributors?” Haldeman reported, “Well, he had some log on who it was, or where it was coming from, or something. He thought he had something. There probably is something on there, money sources or business or something.” Again Haldeman vaguely explained his understanding of the reason they had entered the DNC’s offices.
*

“Yeah,” the president curtly commented, and again fell into silent thought before continuing. “You got to give Dean a lot of credit, the lawyers know everything.” This observation led to a digression about a Justice Department investigation of an associate of former secretary of the treasury John Connally, in which the president felt Kleindienst had been less than helpful, as
mentioned earlier by Haldeman. “I don’t think, Bob, that you can blame anything on Gray, in the sense that he is in a very difficult position.” “He doesn’t have any control. He doesn’t know how to do these things,” Haldeman said. “Very difficult position. He cannot, he just can’t do it,” the president acknowledged. “I don’t believe that we ought to have Gray in the job after this is over. I don’t think it’s the right thing. I think it’s too close to us. I think if you could get Felt, he’s a good man, and they’re watching him, I guess. Like this [George] Bush fellow I have, he’ll grow in the job.
*
You know, it just isn’t right to have the Bureau select him,” he said, referring to Felt.

“You put him in, he’d be your guy,” Haldeman said. Following another brief discussion of Larry O’Brien’s tax returns, where Nixon hoped to find nefarious profiting (which did not exist), Haldeman said, “This Watergate thing was stupid, but again, nobody made anything out of it. It’s stupidity, but not personal venality or anything. Nobody’s done anything for his own gain.” This comment caused the president to raise again Magruder’s charge about Hugh Sloan’s taking money. Haldeman did not know Sloan’s current status with the reelection committee, but he was able to report that Sloan’s wife was still working at the White House. Haldeman assured the president that Sloan was not going to be indicted, although he did “know things.”

During a morning meeting, which ran some two hours, the president returned to his concerns about Magruder’s testimony.
¹²
Nixon understood that if Magruder went down, Mitchell would follow, and maybe even Haldeman and Ehrlichman as well, not to mention his reelection bid. So once he understood the significance of Magruder’s role, given his attention to detail, he could not leave this detail unattended. It is a behavior pattern that plays out time and again, as Nixon moves from issues to issue. Thus, his question that morning: “Is the game plan still the same over there this morning? When will Magruder testify?” “I don’t know, soon,” Haldeman reported. “I’d like to get him in and out,” the president instructed, hopefully.

Haldeman had some encouraging news on another front: “Kleindienst
has now ordered Gray to end the investigation. He said that they’ve got all they need to wrap up their case.”

“The problem is, do you think that’s correct?” Nixon asked. “Yes,” Haldeman answered with no hesitation. “I mean, if it really is,” Nixon began, then started again, “if it isn’t over, you can’t,” and then finally he hit on his point, “because otherwise it’s now just a fishing expedition. They’ve got enough without it. The Magruder thing is the only thing that concerns me,” the president said. “But, you know, I would think his case would be pretty good, Bob. I think he could just say, ‘Look, I was in charge of the damn thing. I approved money, and Liddy wanted this money, and I gave it to him, but I haven’t the slightest idea what the hell he was doing with it.’ Correct? Or was that a stand?”

“I think that’s his stand,” Haldeman answered, reminding the president that Magruder had, in fact, been totally involved. Nixon continued, “But on the other hand, if somebody else testified that he received the copies of information and so forth—” The president was worrying whether there was a fundamental flaw in Magruder’s concocted testimony. Haldeman attempted to assuage Nixon’s concern, but ineffectively: “I don’t think so. Someone that’s testified, well, I don’t know.” Nixon raised it again, and Haldeman awkwardly assured the president that Magruder was not a target of the grand jury, explaining, “They’re using Magruder as a witness to convict the other people, not as a witness to involve him—”

“Let me know when there’s something that’s a little bit more fundamental,” Nixon said before turning to a related topic. “As you know, I have been the most intolerant with Stans as anybody, with this penny pinching. But budget control in a campaign, Bob, is terribly important. And it’s because we didn’t have budget control, the campaign stuck out too fat and too damn big. And it’s because we didn’t have much control, this kind of thing happened, in my opinion,” he said, referring to Watergate. “I mean, if you can piss away two hundred thousand dollars, you know, on some cops-and-robbers thing, Jesus Christ, that’s a hell of a lot of money.
*
Who the hell is in charge of budget control over there? I wouldn’t leave this in the hands of Magruder, for example. I don’t think he’s that buttoned-down.” Haldeman assured the president that MacGregor had been spending a lot of time on budget matters and now had it under his control.

“You know, we get so many assholes—” The president stopped, then
corrected himself. “Christ, we’ve got less than others. But campaigns attract them, attracting them like flies, Bob. You know, they piss away the money.” The president recalled how, despite all his other faults, Murray Chotiner, his first campaign manager when he ran for the House and Senate, was excellent on the budget. “He didn’t waste one hell of a lot of money.” Nixon added, “Chotiner saw to the stuff,” meaning he played rough-and-tumble, “but he didn’t go into personnel about it. He really didn’t. God damn it, it went into things. It went into advertising. He worked the piss out of everybody, but I just have a feeling that maybe budget control was a weakness in this [current] operation. I may be wrong.”

During a morning meeting in the Oval Office with both Haldeman and Ehrlichman, the president sought an update on Ehrlichman’s efforts at obtaining Larry O’Brien’s tax returns.
¹³
Nixon was in a bad mood, still annoyed over a nasty
Washington Post
headline from the day before that, in his mind, harkened back to his infamous slush fund when he was vice president.
*

Nixon continued, “But anyway, here we go. What in the name of God are we doing on this score? What are we doing about their financial contributors? Now they, those lists are made, they’re there. Are we looking over McGovern’s financial contributors? Are we looking over the financial contributors of the Democratic National Committee? Are we running their income tax returns? Is the Justice Department checking to see whether or not there are any antitrust suits? Do we have anything going on any of these things?”

“Not as far as I know,” Ehrlichman answered, which only upped Nixon’s rant a few notches: “We’d better forget the God damn campaign right this minute, not tomorrow, but now. That’s what concerns me. We have all this power and we aren’t using it. Now, what the Christ is the matter? In other words, what I’m really saying is this: I think we’ve got to get it out. Now, I’m just thinking about, for example, if there’s information on Larry O’Brien. If there is, I wouldn’t wait. I’d worry the sons of bitches now, because after they select somebody else, it’s irrelevant, even though he’s still in the campaign. It’s much more relevant now, but then they drop him, because, see what I mean?”