The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (48 page)

Dean knew enough about the peculiar goings-on at the DNC to inform H. R. Haldeman, on September 12, 1972, as the Democrats’ civil suit against CRP was entering discovery, that depositions probing “the sexual activities of employees of the DNC…should cause considerable problems for those being deposed.” Similarly, in all the countless meetings and tapes, only Dean raised with President Nixon, three days later, the notion that the Democrats “were hiding something” that might be exposed, in the aforementioned depositions, by “getting into the sex life of some of the members of the DNC.”
³⁸

Magruder would have done anything Dean told him to do. Too timid to approve a venture like the Watergate operation on his own, Magruder let it be known at the White House that Gemstone could move forward if someone “countermanded” Mitchell’s opposition to the project. Though Magruder’s credibility has been shattered by the sheer multiplicity of the tales he has told about, and at, each stage of the scandal, he has, over the years, occasionally told the truth about Dean. The first time was when the Watergate cover-up started unraveling, and it began to dawn on Magruder that he was either going to be thrown to the wolves or could surrender to the prosecutors. In late March 1973, recently declassified tapes show, Magruder passed word to his former superiors at the White House that he was prepared to bring Dean down with him.

HALDEMAN:
[Magruder] has now clarified his memory and figures that he’s got to—he’s now got to—if they’re going to haul everybody up, he’s got to clean himself up, too.

NIXON:
Right.

HALDEMAN:
And that what really happened on the Watergate was that all this planning was going on and Dean set it up and was involved in getting the planning worked out…. Magruder has chosen to say he believes [this] to be the actual fact now, and he told these two lawyers this. And Dean said: “Don’t discount Magruder as a witness; he’s a hell of a convincing guy.”
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Five years later, in a little-noticed book about his Christian rebirth entitled
From Power to Peace
, Magruder again hinted at Dean’s centrality, listing him as the “initial” planner of Watergate. And in an interview in February 1990, Magruder was asked: “If you thought it through now, what would you say…to a direct question, ‘Who told you to go back in?’” “I’d say probably John Dean,” he answered. Six months later, he went even further. “Mitchell didn’t do anything,” he said. “All Mitchell did was just what I did, [which] was acquiesce to the pressure from the White House. We [at CRP] didn’t do anything; we weren’t the initiators. Hell, the first plan that we got had been initiated by Dean…. The target never came from Mitchell.”
⁴⁰

Questioned under oath about these statements in a deposition in August 1995, Magruder claimed he had been quoted out of context and withdrew his allegations against Dean. “I don’t recall John Dean talking to me about Gemstone after the second meeting with Mitchell, Dean, and Liddy,” Magruder testified, reprising the story he had told the Senate. Yet elsewhere Magruder’s deposition unmistakably implicated Dean as a prime mover in the DNC operation.

QUESTION:
Is it true that John Dean was one of the people in the White House that was pushing for the Gemstone plan?

MAGRUDER:
Yes.

QUESTION:
[…] Is it, in fact, truthful that you and John Dean had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in?

MAGRUDER:
Yes.
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To his death, Mitchell remained puzzled by Magruder’s lies. “Why in the hell would he be protecting Dean?” Mitchell would ask. “In order to protect himself?” The answer was simple and lay, as Mitchell should have understood, in the way successful criminal prosecutions tend to unfold. In April 1973, as the Watergate cover-up crumbled and Nixon’s men jockeyed to secure the shortest possible prison sentences, Dean, always a step ahead of his White House peers, beat Magruder to the U.S. attorney’s office by two weeks. When Magruder showed up to see Earl Silbert, ready to trade testimony for leniency, the witness learned he would have to deliver bigger fish than John Dean to whet the prosecutors’ appetites. “One thing I did tell Silbert early on, when I decided to cooperate, was that Dean was as involved as I was,” Magruder recalled in 1990. “I made it clear to Silbert that Dean was in from the beginning, but Silbert didn’t care about that…’cause Dean was already in their pocket.”
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If, on the other hand, Magruder could implicate higher-ranking officials—like the former attorney general of the United States—then the Watergate prosecutors would listen.

Mitchell knew he had been set up. In later years, his mind reeled at the singular confluence of amazing characters that produced Watergate—Dean, Magruder, Liddy, Helms, Hunt, McCord, Martinez—and reckoned himself and the president, neither of whom enjoyed foreknowledge of the Watergate break-in, victims in the affair. “The more I got into this,” Mitchell said in June 1987, “the more I see how these sons of bitches have not only done Nixon in but they’ve done
me
in.”
⁴³

On June 16, 1972,
following a morning meeting with the vice president, Mitchell met up with his wife and child, and with Magruder and Mardian they boarded a Gulfstream II bound for Los Angeles. They checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the Mitchell party occupied an entire wing. It was going to be a memorable weekend, capped by a star-studded Saturday night party at the Bel Air home of MCA president Taft Schreiber.

The next morning, Mitchell woke early, enjoyed breakfast with his family in their suite, and proceeded to his first meeting of the day: a session in a nearby room with Mardian and Thomas C. Reed, a Republican committeeman from California (later President Reagan’s secretary of the air force). The meeting, Mitchell later testified, was called to discuss the sorry state of the GOP in Texas, “where they were having the usual donnybrook among factions in the party.” At one point—the timing of which later became crucial—there was a knock on the door. Mitchell went to answer it, and found Fred LaRue standing before him. LaRue had sobering news and suggested they speak privately.

Mitchell excused himself from Reed’s company and followed his most trusted aide into an adjoining room. There LaRue broke the news to Mitchell that five men, including CRP’s security chief, James McCord, had been arrested overnight inside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex and were now in jail. LaRue never forgot Mitchell’s astonished reply: “That is incredible.”
⁴⁴

THE NEEDLE

I was all over this thing like a wet blanket. I was everywhere—everywhere they look they are going to find Dean.

—John Dean, 1973
¹

THE NIGHT BEFORE,
Mitchell had retired “several hours earlier” than Martha, who turned in “drunk” around 2:00 a.m. She, not surprisingly, remained in bed while the former attorney general and their daughter, Marty, awoke after seven and ate breakfast in their suite.

Downstairs, at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s chic Polo Lounge, Jeb Magruder was beginning breakfast with his wife, Gail, the LaRues, and others, when a waiter informed Magruder he had a telephone call. It was Gordon Liddy from Washington. At first, Liddy insisted Magruder call back on a “secure” phone from the air force base in nearby El Segundo. Impatient with Liddy’s “cloak-and-dagger games,” Magruder refused. Then Liddy told him about McCord’s arrest. Magruder, reeling with shock, left the table abruptly and headed for a pay phone.
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What happened next—indeed, everything that happened over the next eleven months—was later disputed by the participants. This was Watergate: an endless clash of memories over the substance of meetings and telephone calls featuring a revolving cast of self-interested men, most of them lawyers. Only with the passage of time, the accumulation of testimony and memoirs, the release of declassified documents and tapes, and the interviewing and reinterviewing of the scandal’s players, could a true picture be drawn of the Watergate cover-up, which commenced immediately. That Mitchell played a role is indisputable; however, it is equally true that the former attorney general was, in simplest terms, framed, a casualty of a wicked alliance between coconspirators eager to tell lies and prosecutors eager to believe them.

Magruder’s account of the
Watergate cover-up came in kaleidoscopic form, contradicted, as usual, by his own testimony and that of others. First he told prosecutors he received Liddy’s shocking call not at breakfast, but earlier, in his hotel room, and that he immediately convened a meeting of Mitchell, LaRue, and Mardian and “told them the problem.” Mitchell then supposedly ordered Bob Mardian to call Powell Moore, a CRP spokesman back in Washington, with the instruction that Moore was to find Attorney General Kleindienst, golfing at Burning Tree Golf and Country Club in Bethesda, and beg him to spring McCord from jail. The next day Magruder changed his story: Mitchell had ordered Mardian to get in touch not with Powell Moore, but with Gordon Liddy, to have
him
find Kleindienst.
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In his 1974 memoir,
An American Life
, Magruder sought refuge in vagueness and passive tense:

We all agreed
that McCord was the heart of the problem. “If we could just get him out of jail before they find out who he is,”
someone
suggested, “then maybe he could just disappear.”
I don’t recall who made what specific suggestions during this talk…. Someone
recalled that McCord had once worked for the CIA….
One of us
suggested that Mitchell call Dick Kleindienst, his successor as attorney general, and see if he could help us get McCord out of jail. “No, that wouldn’t be appropriate,” Mitchell said. “It would be better if Bob called him.”
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If this actually occurred—Mitchell ordering his aides to enlist the attorney general in a scheme to obstruct a criminal investigation—the Beverly Hills Hotel was itself the scene of a crime. Indeed, the discussions that took place between Mitchell and his men in Los Angeles on the morning of June 17 were later depicted by prosecutors as the inception of the Watergate cover-up, with Mitchell’s alleged order cited as the first “overt act” in his indictment, a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice on which the former attorney general was convicted and incarcerated.

Magruder’s house of cards began crumbling during his turn on the witness stand at
U.S. v. Mitchell
. Until then he had never been subjected to rigorous cross-examination; in impeaching Magruder’s testimony, the Democrats on the Senate and House Watergate committees lacked interest, the Republicans, sufficient skill. Neither was wanting in Plato Cacheris, Mitchell’s defense lawyer at his criminal trial. There Magruder was reduced to claiming that the Kleindienst idea had come from—Liddy himself! Special prosecutor Jill Volner gently corrected the witness, asking casually what happened “after
Mr. Mitchell suggested
that Mr. Mardian call Liddy to call Mr. Kleindienst.”
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Once again, Fred LaRue emerged a crucial witness. Though it changed somewhat over time, his account posed acute problems for the prosecutors’ case against Mitchell. LaRue recalled Magruder leaving the group’s breakfast table to take Liddy’s call shortly after 9:00 a.m., returning soon afterward, and confiding the news. “Last night was the night they were going to go back into the Democratic National Committee,” a shaken Magruder whispered. After ten to fifteen minutes, LaRue testified, Magruder left the table again in search of a pay phone. When he returned, LaRue recalled, Magruder made no show of calmly finishing breakfast, as he claimed; rather Magruder promptly told LaRue what he knew, then watched as the Mississippian stalked off to see Mitchell. LaRue told the grand jury:

L
A
RUE:
I went upstairs and got Mr. Mitchell over into another room. I think we used the security man’s room and I informed Mr. Mitchell of this.

QUESTION:
What did he say?

L
A
RUE:
Mr. Mitchell said, “That is just incredible.” As I recall, he asked me some details and I had no idea, I had no knowledge of any details…. Governor Reagan was in the lobby waiting for Mr. Mitchell…so we had no time for discussion.

Three months later, LaRue appeared before the Senate. Here he remembered that Mitchell had indeed, as Magruder claimed, gathered his men before the motorcade rolled, and had indeed issued an order for one of them to contact Kleindienst—but not for the evil purposes Magruder asserted. “Mr. Mitchell asked that someone call Mr. Liddy and have him contact Mr. Kleindienst,” LaRue told the Senate, “and have Mr. Kleindienst get in touch with [D.C. Police] Chief [Jerry] Wilson and see what details we could find out about this situation.”
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Where LaRue rebutted Magruder’s tale on points of fact, Bob Mardian exposed its prima facie absurdity. Mardian was participating in Mitchell’s meeting with Tom Reed when LaRue interrupted them. Mardian denied making any calls that morning, either from Mitchell’s suite or from nearby pay phones. The most implausible element in Magruder’s tale, where Mardian was concerned, was its central thrust: the idea that the former assistant attorney general for internal security would have taken part in the scheme Magruder described, a preposterous four-bank shot that employed unnecessary intermediaries and held out the fantastical hope that McCord could be prematurely sprung from jail—on a Saturday.
⁷

Mitchell’s story also changed somewhat, but held firm on the essential point: He always denied ordering anyone to do anything to get McCord sprung. As a former attorney general, thoroughly familiar with the internal workings of the criminal justice system, Mitchell understood, as he told an interviewer shortly before his death, that “the concept of going to Kleindienst to get people out of jail is ridiculous.” Mitchell first testified about Burning Tree in September 1972, in a deposition for the $1 million civil suit that the Democrats, three days after the arrests, filed against McCord and CRP. The former attorney general said he first learned of the Watergate break-in “sometime during the early afternoon, California time…twelve or one o’clock, possibly later.” Asked what actions he took, Mitchell testified: “I asked the people that were with me to inquire into it…. I did not call, myself.” Mitchell was later asked if it occurred to him that the arrests bore some connection to the presentations Liddy had made in his office. “Yes, it was one of the first things that crossed my mind,” he said.
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In fact, Liddy had already embarked on his frantic drive out to Burning Tree, Powell Moore in tow, before Mitchell, in California, even learned of the arrests. Liddy’s memoir eliminated all doubt about who ordered him out to Burning Tree and why: It was not Mitchell but Magruder himself. Liddy recounted how he had used the White House Situation Room that morning to place a “secure” call to Magruder at the Polo Lounge. A “short while” later Magruder called Liddy back from a pay phone. “Why did you use McCord?” Magruder cried. Liddy struggled to keep Magruder focused on the most urgent matter: preparing a statement for Mitchell’s use at an afternoon press conference. Contrary to Magruder’s testimony at
U.S. v. Mitchell
, Liddy never raised the idea of getting hold of Kleindienst. Liddy returned to 1701 and immediately reassured Powell Moore, the spokesman on duty that morning, that the CRP leadership in California was aware of the arrests and at work on a statement for Mitchell. Then Magruder called again. “I was set for another bout of sniveling,” Liddy wrote, “but it never came; instead he had a message for me from Mitchell. I was to find Dick Kleindienst, the attorney general, and ask him to get McCord out of jail immediately. ‘Tell him “John sent you” and it’s a “personal request from John.” He’ll understand.’”

Liddy immediately grasped the futility of Magruder’s plan but felt bound to carry it out. “An order from John Mitchell,” he wrote, “was not to be disobeyed.” It was precisely the combination Magruder was banking on: the force of the Mitchell name and Liddy’s Germanophilic reverence for orders. It was Liddy, as directed by Magruder, who placed a call to locate the attorney general, and who was told by Kleindienst’s wife, Marnie, where the attorney general was. Liddy grabbed Moore and raced for Bethesda.
⁹

By all accounts, Liddy’s excursion to Burning Tree proved as disastrous as his raid on the DNC. He found the attorney general seated at lunch and, using hand gestures, beckoned Kleindienst from his table. Kleindienst had met Liddy only once before, three years earlier, and held him in low regard. Kleindienst excused himself and strode to the archway where Liddy and Moore stood. “I’m carrying a personal message from John Mitchell,” Liddy said; “could we speak privately?” The three retreated to an empty locker room. Though the men recalled different language, all agreed on the outcome.