The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (89 page)

61. “Mr. Dean,” the judge advised early on during Fleming’s cross-examination, “if you will listen to the question and respond to the question, that’s what you should do.” The next day, Dean provoked Gagliardi to sterner words: “Mr. Dean, I must caution you—you are aware of it by training—if you will listen to the question and answer the question directly, there will not be motions to strike and I will not have to instruct the jury to disregard it.” There was a third offense (“Mr. Dean, I have cautioned you before, please answer the questions”) and a fourth (“You know, Mr. Dean, it is very difficult when a lawyer has to strike an answer and has to ask the court to give instructions [to the jury], and I would ask you again to listen to the question and respond directly to the question”) before the fifth engendered the judge’s explicit threat of punitive action (“Mr. Dean, I don’t want to reprimand you again, sir”); see UMS, 5529 (should do), 5549 (by training), 5613 (cautioned you), 5759 (very difficult), 5761 (use that date), 5788 (reprimand).

62.
CBS Morning News
, April 29, 1974; Marcia Chambers, “Jurors Couldn’t Believe Federal Witnesses,”
New York Times
, April 29, 1974 (often unbelievable).
CBS Morning News,
April 29, 1974 (reasonable doubt).

63. Joseph M. Treen, “Mistrial Ruled Out in Mitchell-Stans Case,”
Newsday
, March 5, 1974 (surprise); Joseph M. Treen, “Now It’s the Prosecution Who’s on Trial,”
Newsday
, March 25, 1974 (every prosecution witness); Fleming interview (jury wants); Fleming interview (always knew).

64. Fleming interviews.

65. UMS, 7527–29 (series, relented, somewheres).

66. Ibid., 7742–54.

67. Ibid., 7831–35.

68. Ibid., 7815 (in part), 7882 (three different), 7886 (bad notes).

69. Wing interview; Rayhill interview.

70. D. J. Saunders, “Charges Mitch, Stans Felt Above Law,”
Daily News
, April 25, 1974 (chin); Joseph M. Treen, “Accusations Abound as Lawyers Sum Up the Mitchell-Stans Case,”
Newsday
, April 25, 1974 (Fleming quotes).

71. Treen, “Accusations Abound” Martin Arnold, “Both Sides Sum Up in Mitchell Trial,”
New York Times
, April 25, 1974.

72. Stans interview.

73. Chambers, “Jurors Couldn’t Believe.”

74. D. J. Saunders and Theo Wilson, “Mitchell Jury Focuses on Memo to Don Nixon,”
Daily News
, April 27, 1974; Martin Arnold, “Mitchell-Stans Jury Seeks ‘Don Nixon Memorandum,’”
New York Times
, April 27, 1974; Martin Arnold, “Sears Testimony Studied by Jury,”
New York Times
, April 28, 1974.

75. Arnold, “Mitchell and Stans Are Acquitted.”

76. “Mitchell and Stans Found Innocent on All 18 Counts,”
Daily News
, April 29, 1974; Arnold, “Mitchell and Stans Are Acquitted.”

77. Joseph M. Treen, “At the Victory Party, Feeling No Pain,”
Newsday
, April 29, 1974; Ida Libby Dengrove and Frank W. Martin,
My Days in Court: Unique Views of the Famous and Infamous by a Court Artist
(William Morrow, 1990), pp. 64–71. Dengrove said Mitchell “displayed remarkable control” as a witness, appearing “levelheaded even under cross-examination” off the stand, he was so flirtatious the ladies dubbed him “Mr. Twinkles.” Dengrove also suspected that during court recesses, Mitchell was “tippling in the back room,” adding “there were times…that he looked red-nosed and appeared to sway.”

GEMSTONE

1. WHT, 773.

2. UMS, 7651–52.

3. Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, pp. 44–45 (
Triumph
); Gordon Strachan quoted in Notes of Seymour Glanzer from Interview with Jeb Magruder, April 14, 1973, RG 460 WSPF—WGTF, Investigative Files,
U.S. v. Mitchell
(Jencks), Magruder, Box 73, NARA (Hitler incarnate). “I, a qualified Israeli Defense Force paratrooper, would just as well you did not indicate you think I am a Nazi,” Liddy told the author in 2004. Despite his undeniable obsession with the Third Reich, Liddy has taken pains to rebut unkind suggestions about his belief system. “I have absolutely no sympathy for Adolf Hitler and Nazism,” he told
Playboy
in 1980. “Remember, German history spans thousands of years, and the twelve years of the Third Reich was [
sic
] no more than a historical aberration…a stain on German honor from which the country will take many years to recover….[F]or Adolf Hitler and the psychopathic scum in the concentration camps who butchered babies on an assembly line because they were born into the wrong race, I have nothing but contempt.” Some scholars have questioned whether the Third Reich was a “historical aberration” in German history, and, too, Liddy’s characterization of European Jewry as a “race”—but his sincerity in condemning Nazism was genuine; see G. Barry Golson, ed.,
The Playboy Interview, Volume II
(Perigee Books, 1983), p. 364 [originally published October 1980]; Daniel Jonah Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
(Vintage, 1997); e-mail to the author from G. Gordon Liddy, November 14, 2004.

4. Liddy,
Will
, pp. 180–83, 200. In previously unpublished testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, Dean said he had “no specific knowledge of telling [Liddy] a million dollar figure” but “may” have told Liddy he would get “whatever you need” see SSCEX, John Dean, June 16, 1973. Testifying in public session, Dean said he had “no recollection” of “specifying a dollar amount” see SSC, IV: 1442. Yet in his 1976 memoir, Dean recalled telling Liddy he could have “maybe half a million bucks…maybe more” for intelligence operations; see Dean,
Blind Ambition
, p. 71. Asked in a 1995 deposition whether he promised Liddy “half a million dollars for openers,” Dean wavered. At one point he said “there was no such discussion” elsewhere, he claimed “no recollection of such a conversation” but added, “If it was said as a passing remark, it did not register with me”—a suggestion Dean paid his
own
words no heed. Finally, Dean allowed that he “might have said something to Gordon Liddy based on a question he had posed to me, ‘What kind of budget do I have?’ something to the effect that, ‘A half-million-dollar budget.’” See
Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean v. St. Martin’s Press, et al.
, C.A. No. 92–1807 [hereinafter referred to as “DVS”], Deposition of John W. Dean [hereinafter “JDD”], September 13, 1995. Certainly the phrase “for openers” was a favorite of Dean’s; he used it, in contexts unrelated to the Liddy meeting, to end a sentence in each of the first four days of his deposition.

5. Magruder,
An American Life
, pp. 14–56; DVS, Deposition of Jeb Stuart Magruder, August 29, 1995.

6. Liddy,
Will
, pp. 185–86; CI, July 29, 1988 (spend); HJC summary (July 4, 1974) (left the matter). In the HJC interview and elsewhere, Mitchell said the November 24 meeting marked his first encounter with Liddy. However, Liddy testified in a 1972 deposition that he first met Mitchell, perfunctorily, in 1969; see
CBS Morning News
, February 7, 1973. Dean claimed Mitchell and Liddy held a “passing discussion” of intelligence, during which Liddy promised he would “familiarize himself with the problems…and would develop a plan.” According to Dean, Mitchell replied: “Fine, take him by to meet Magruder.” Dean’s account conflicts with that of the other men—who said there was no discussion of intelligence—and with logic itself: After all, the session was necessitated by Liddy’s salary dispute with Magruder; thus Mitchell would not suggest anyone take Liddy to “meet” Magruder. See SSCEX, Dean.

7. Dean,
Blind Ambition
, pp. 7–16.

8. SSC, II: 491; CI, March 11, 1988 (artistically). On the January 27 and February 4 meetings in Mitchell’s office, see the conflicting accounts of Dean,
Blind Ambition
, pp. 72–78; Magruder,
An American Life
, pp. 207–11; and Liddy,
Will
, p. 196–200. Magazine illustrators twice re-created the January 27 meeting: in
New York
(June 17, 1974) and
Time
(April 21, 1980).

9. Magruder recalled Liddy himself, prior to the January 27 meeting, boasting of having worked as an assassin for the FBI, and of having hanged one of his victims from a garage rafter; see Magruder,
An American Life
, p. 206. Told this, Liddy laughed and dismissed it as “utter fabrication” see G. Gordon Liddy, interview with author, August 9, 2004.

10. Though Dean later tried to take credit for ordering Liddy to burn the charts, Mitchell and Liddy remained adamant the order came from Mitchell. For Dean’s claim, see SSCEX, Dean; UVM, 2634; and Dean,
Blind Ambition
, p. 78. For Mitchell’s and Liddy’s accounts, see SSC, IV: 1612; UVM, 8030; Liddy,
Will
, p. 200; and Liddy interview. Magruder supported Dean; see UVM 4510.

11. Glanzer notes; SSCEX, Jeb Magruder, June 12, 1973. In fact, in the second version of the Liddy plan, the houseboat was dropped, but the call girls remained, as did the kidnapping of radicals; see Liddy,
Will
, p. 203. “[Liddy] had cut off all the horror aspects of it,” Mitchell told the Senate, “and it had been reduced down, basically, to the electronic surveillance.” Asked if “burglary and bugging” were again proposed, however, Mitchell said they were; see SSC, IV: 1844–57.

12. SSCEX, Dean (very late); UVM, 8032 (shortly); SSC, II: 789 (most). Elsewhere, Magruder said Dean entered “approximately fifteen minutes” after the others; see UVM, 4511.

13. SSCEX, Margruder. See also Lawrence F. O’Brien,
No Final Victories: A Life in Politics from John F. Kennedy to Watergate
(Ballantine, 1976) and Richard B. Trask,
Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy
(Yeoman Press, 1994), pp. 44–45.

14. SSCEX, Magruder; SSCFR, 22. Magruder wavered on whether the safe-cracking idea arose in the first or second meeting, and whether it originated with Dean or Mitchell, neither of whom recalled it arising at all. The claim also conflicted with Magruder’s own acknowledgment that Mitchell objected to Liddy’s second plan because it was “still too broad in scope” presumably if Mitchell was raising such objections, which tracks with others’ recollections, he would not
also
have been proposing that Liddy study the feasibility of a burglary and safe-cracking mission in Las Vegas. Also, when Magruder first began plea-bargaining with federal prosecutors, on April 13, 1973, he claimed “there was mention of the Watergate offices of DNC as a [wiretapping] target…at both meetings” in Mitchell’s office. Perhaps alerted that a different story was being told by John Dean, who had begun meeting with the prosecutors several days earlier, Magruder dropped this claim the very next day; see Glanzer notes, April 13–14, 1973. Glanzer’s notes of April 14 showed Magruder saying “no targets” were discussed on January 27. See also SSC memo to Terry Lenzner from Marc Lackritz, Re: Meeting with John Mitchell [conducted] October 18, 1973, RG 460 WSPF,
U.S. v. Mitchell
(Jencks)—Mitchell, NARA.

15. SSCEX, Dean; SSC, III: 929–30; UVM, 2632–33. A White House aide recalled Dean confiding that “the Watergate location had not been mentioned” at
either
meeting in Mitchell’s office; see SSC, V: 1944.

16. Dean,
Blind Ambition
, p. 79.

17. Liddy interview. Even Magruder agreed that Dean posed his objection not in moral terms, but so that “Mr. Mitchell could have deniability” see UVM, 4513.

18. SSC, III: 1152–53 (more info); Magruder,
An American Life
, p. 227 (feelings); Glanzer notes (in which Magruder recalled Dean conveying “his interest in having Liddy continue”); AOP, 159 (primary season). Howard Hunt told the Senate Watergate committee, in previously unpublished testimony, that Dean was “instigating” Liddy to develop his intelligence plan; see SSCEX, E. Howard Hunt, December 18, 1973. Yet Dean later claimed he immediately took his profound moral concerns about Liddy and Gemstone to H. R. Haldeman, from whom he sought—and received—permission to disengage from Liddy altogether. Captured on tape speaking with President Nixon in March 1973, Dean said he had gone to see Haldeman “right after the [February 4] meeting” testifying before the Senate, however, Dean changed his story, saying it had taken him “several days” to get an appointment with Haldeman. This change may have stemmed from the fact that Haldeman’s office logs showed no meetings with Dean between February 2 and March 9. In
Blind Ambition
, Dean reverted to his first version, strongly implying he met with Haldeman immediately after the February 4 meeting. For his part, Haldeman initially accepted Dean’s claims that they met shortly after the February 4 meeting, and that they had agreed Dean should steer clear of Liddy; ultimately, however, Haldeman came to believe Dean was, as Ehrlichman put it, “salting the mine”—laying an evidentiary trail for an event that never happened. The evidence shows, in any case, that Dean continued to exhibit an interest in Liddy’s covert projects; see SSC, III: 930; SSC, VII: 2719; SSC, VIII: 3035, 3098; WHT, 136, 230, 386; Dean,
Blind Ambition
, pp. 79–81; Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, p. 28; and WSPF draft memo by George T. Frampton, Dean’s Anticipated Trial Testimony—From The Beginning Up Until March 21, 1973, [written] July 22, 1974, RG 460 WSPF, NARA.

19. Colson,
Born Again
; J. Anthony Lukas, “Why the Watergate Break-In?”
New York Times
, November 30, 1987 (evil genius); “Excerpts from White House Tape of a Nixon-Haldeman Talk in May 1971,”
New York Times
, September 24, 1981 (murderers); Raymond K. Price Jr.,
With Nixon
(Viking Press, 1977), p. 30 (worst); AOP, 279 (Kennedy); Garment interview.

20. WH memo to the file by Charles Colson, Subject: Howard Hunt, June 20, 1972, reprinted at HJCW, III: 246–49.

21. Colson memo, June 20, 1972; SSC, II: 793 (O’Brien [emphasis added]). See also Liddy,
Will
, p. 211.

22. SSCEX, Magruder.

23. CI [Ehrlichman], December 9, 1988 (sinew); Douglas Martin, “Fred LaRue, Watergate Figure, Dies at 75,”
New York Times
, July 29, 2004; LaRue interview, September 19, 1993 (best friend); author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Ehrlichman, EOB Office, March 16, 1973, 3:00 to 4:47 p.m. (eyes).

24. Magruder’s grand jury testimony, at HJC, 1: 136–39 (emphases added). The official transcript reads “firm the projects,” probably a stenographic error.

25. SSCEX, Magruder (emphasis added);
Samuel Dash, Chairman, et al., v. Hon. John N. Mitchell, Attorney General of the United States, et al
., Civ. A. No. 3713–70, 356 F. Supp. 1292 (1972).

26. LaRue’s grand jury testimony of April 18, 1973, at HJC, I: 134–35. See also SSC, VI: 2281, 2331; HJCW, I:182–83; UVM, 6546–52; and LaRue interviews, September 19, 1993, and August 4, 2003. “Jeb repeatedly pushed Mitchell to agree to this,” LaRue said in 2003. “He said he was under a lot of pressure from the White House and that he needed an ‘okay’ on it.” However, this recollection contrasted with what LaRue told Senate investigators, who recorded, in a previously unpublished internal staff memorandum, that LaRue “does not remember much discussion about the plan, or strong advocacy of it by Magruder” see SSC memo of Interview with Frederick [
sic
] LaRue, July 6–7, 1973, by Hamilton, Lenzner, Silverstein and Moore, Dictated by Jim Moore, July, 10, 1973, RG 460 WSPF Investigative Files,
U.S. v. Mitchell
(Jencks Material), Box 72, NARA. In this same interview, LaRue stated that his “impression after the meeting was that no decision had been made and that what he referred to as ‘a Mickey Mouse operation’ would be shelved.” The following year, LaRue told House investigators, according to their previously unpublished internal memorandum, that LaRue “does not recall Magruder saying anything” after Mitchell deferred decision; see [HJC memo of] Interview with Fred C. LaRue, [conducted] April 9 and 10, 1974, [filed] April 10, 1974, RG 460—WSPF, Investigative Files,
U.S. v. Mitchell
(Jencks Material), Box 72, NARA. In this same session, four months before Nixon’s resignation, LaRue said he had to “assume” Mitchell approved Gemstone at some other time, since Magruder would not have done so on his own. “LaRue thought perhaps Mitchell had postponed the decision because he did not want LaRue involved,” the House staff reported. In later years, free from criminal repercussions, LaRue abandoned this notion, telling the author and others that Mitchell would have confided in him about any approval order.

27. LaRue interview, September 19, 2003 (lying); WSPF notes of George Frampton and WSPF memo to Files from George Frampton, Subject: Meeting with Jeb S. Magruder, July 25, 1973, RG 460 WSPF—WGTF, Investigative Files,
U.S. v. Mitchell
(Jencks), Magruder, Boxes 73 and 109 [respectively], NARA. Frampton’s typed memo to the file recording Magruder’s newly “triggered” recollections sometimes deviated from the handwritten notes that Frampton took during his re-interview with Magruder, changes that had the effect of making the witness’s new statements conform more neatly with his earlier testimony. For example, where Frampton’s notes had Magruder quoting Mitchell as having said, “Give him [Liddy] the money and get him out of our hair,” Frampton’s memo changed the quote entirely: “Well, let’s give him this much and see what he can do with it.” This was much closer to the language that Magruder, in his Senate testimony, had already attributed to Mitchell (“Let’s give him a quarter of a million dollars and let’s see what he can come up with”). Frampton’s memo also had the effect of preserving some wiggle room for Magruder on his new claim that LaRue had somehow been distracted at the precise moment Mitchell gave the final order on Gemstone. Thus, where the prosecutor’s notes showed Magruder affirmatively changing his story to say LaRue “went to the phone,” location unspecified, Frampton’s typed memo stated: “Magruder recalls that LaRue
may have
gotten up to take a phone call
in the other room
…” (emphases added). Indeed, although they relied heavily on Magruder’s testimony at
U.S. v. Mitchell
, the WSPF lawyers found him a bit too eager to help them build their cases. Prosecutor Jill Vollner “complained often about his eagerness to tailor his story to the prosecutors’ needs” see Dean,
Blind Ambition
, p. 363. Mitchell’s defense team had access to Frampton’s memo—but not to his notes.