The Wars of Watergate (37 page)

If Haldeman was the conduit from and to Mitchell, there is no question who was the intended party at the other end. During the peak months of the campaign, July through November 1972, Haldeman’s meeting notes are predominantly—perhaps 80–90 percent—concerned with campaign activities. One finds few direct orders regarding policy matters. As with everything else that touched him closely, the President kept a tight rein on his campaign and remained intimately involved. Equally clearly, the events that flowed from the Watergate break-in in the summer and fall of 1972 deterred him not at all in his quest for re-election and the overwhelming favor of American voters.
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In late 1971, Mitchell asked Harry Dent to work with him on the campaign. The two knew each other well from the 1968 election; together, they had worked to fashion and realize the “Southern Strategy.” Dent was attentive to details and relished the role of political operative. He was a natural choice and was anxious to work with Mitchell. But Dent told Mitchell that it would never happen. Haldeman would never permit Dent to enter the campaign, preferring one of his trusted lieutenants to work at CREEP headquarters. Dent thought Haldeman would select Magruder, but Mitchell assured him that the President had put the Attorney General in charge, and Dent was his choice. Two months later, Mitchell informed Dent that he had been vetoed and that indeed Magruder had been selected. Dent later learned that Haldeman had considered him too much of a “boy scout.” Dent also knew that, as always, “it was the hand of Haldeman but it was the voice of Nixon.” Nixon undoubtedly respected John Mitchell, but only Nixon himself could command his political operations. “He trusted no one else to handle his politics,” Dent observed.
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Certainly, politics dominated the President’s daily discussions with his aides.

Haldeman’s memos faithfully reflected the President’s views that “RN” had matters well in hand. In a June 10, 1972, memo, Haldeman told other White House aides that the current North Vietnamese offensive only proved that the Communist infrastructure in the South no longer existed. The enemy
“are absolutely at the end of their rope. The only possibility now is that they may try to stagger through to November, hoping that President Nixon will lose and they can get a good deal from the next Administration.” Obviously, this was the line that the aides were to peddle to media sources.

Many memos reflected the President’s concern for tactics rather than substance. On June 20—as the Democrats stepped up their attacks because of the Watergate break-in—Haldeman asked the staff to collect the worst “smear materials” about Nixon and develop a counterattack blaming the Democrats for the charges. Time and again, he relayed the leader’s warnings against the most dangerous enemy: complacency. “There is no thought of coasting this election, or of just sailing through it. We are not taking anything for granted. The President considers this terribly important and is working like Hell and it will be an intensive campaign as far as Presidential activity is concerned.” Then Haldeman warned against the appearance of nonchalance. In a message that floated through the White House, he said that the Vice President “should knock off golf and use of the White House tennis courts.” (Typically, the suggestion was oblique, and Agnew apparently did not receive a direct order on the matter.) Nixon had only limited respect for his running mate. The President had told Haldeman that he wanted Agnew kept at “low key” so he did not become an issue. In August 1972, Haldeman parceled out campaign assignments and responsibilities for those close to the President, including Mitchell, MacGregor, Ehrlichman, Colson, Dent, and Connally.

There was concern over a campaign song. The President thought that it should be one with country-music performers. Haldeman wrote detailed suggestions for television commercials. As in so many other matters, the President involved himself in the most minute details. He discussed his choices of suit colors with Haldeman, convinced that he appeared best in light tones. He told Ehrlichman that bumper stickers were the most effective form of campaigning; he warned, however, that they should never be forced on a car owner. The President wanted his people to “co-opt” the American flag lapel button. He also insisted that the line on his campaign buttons be changed from “Re-elect the President” to “Re-elect President Nixon.” But the word “re-elect” bothered him, fearing as he did that it might reflect upon himself as part of the establishment.

The attempted assassination of George Wallace during the spring primaries, and his subsequent paralysis, undoubtedly saddened the President. Nixon offered Wallace a plane with medical facilities to allow him to attend the Democratic Convention. Was there a political motive? “This would be done with no fanfare,” Haldeman wrote, “and, of course, no obligation on his [Wallace’s] part.” A day later, Haldeman suggested that CREEP applaud Wallace for his strong stand on defense, contrasting the Southerner with
those who sought to hurt the President in that area. Planting seeds of division in the opposition, of course, lay within the rules of the game.

Many presidential comments and Haldeman memos involved tracking the opposition. On September 16, Haldeman ordered a probe of the families of McGovern and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sargent Shriver, just as there had been, he claimed, for Nixon’s and Agnew’s families. Such concern with the opposition persisted to the waning moments of the campaign. The day before the election, Haldeman asked an aide to get a “reading” of McGovern’s final network broadcast. At the end, Nixon complained about “dirty attacks” and warned his aides to be ready for dramatic charges. Haldeman recorded notes from a late-night presidential telephone call in mid-October. “Have to ride the attacks out. Z[iegler], hardline it. They are throwing their big punch now.” Nixon was enraged when McGovern stepped up his attacks by calling the Administration a “cutthroat crew,… a corrupt regime.” Senator Edward Kennedy said he would investigate corrupt campaign practices; the President labeled the criticism as the “last burp of the Eastern establishment.”
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Meanwhile, the polls continued to show Nixon’s insurmountable lead.

The President relished George McGovern as his opponent. He repeatedly stressed that McGovern was doomed, yet he appeared alternately amused by the Democrats’ ineptitude and intrigued by the possibilities of arousing invective against his opponent. When Senator Thomas Eagleton, the Democrats’ original selection as McGovern’s running mate, admitted he had undergone electric-shock treatments for depression, Nixon preferred that Eagleton remain on the ticket. After he watched the Democratic Convention, including vice-presidential nomination speeches for Julian Bond and Martha Mitchell which delayed until 3:00
A.M.
McGovern’s acceptance speech, Nixon thought that the “scene had the air of a college skit that had gotten carried away with itself and didn’t know how to stop.”
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Nixon remembered that Barry Goldwater had never been able to rid himself of the albatross of ultra-right-wing supporters. He used a similar tactic against McGovern, who was saddled with left-wing allies, though Nixon complained that he would “not have the media cooperation” that LB J had in tarring Goldwater in 1964. He wanted such radicals as Abbie Hoffman and Angela Davis publicized as McGovern supporters. He suggested to Haldeman and Colson that they get a prominent veteran’s group or a labor leader or independent Democrat to write a public letter calling on McGovern to repudiate his radical backers. Nixon urged that his aides nail McGovern “to his left-wing supporters and [force] him to repudiate them or accept their support.” The “media blackout” on this point, Nixon demanded, must be broken: “I consider this a top priority objective.”
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Nixon doubtless considered McGovern dangerous to national security and
the economy. Even worse, he regarded McGovern’s nomination as a victory for Senator Edward Kennedy. Perhaps humorously, perhaps not, the President typed McGovern as a “sin-chaser.” In a sense, he welcomed McGovern’s assaults, for they made the challenger’s anti-institutionalism the issue, not the President’s record. Nixon meticulously collected information on Democratic defections, such as those of Connally and former Senator George Smathers, as well as the coolness toward McGovern on the part of AFL-CIO President Meany and Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield. Smathers assured the President that McGovern had alienated Democratic Senate stalwarts Richard Russell, Robert Byrd, and Herman Talmadge, who he said were anxious to avoid an endorsement. Warren Magnuson (D–WA) realized that McGovern’s calls for reduced defense spending might be harmful to the Boeing Company, a key industry in his state. Nixon gleefully told Connally that Magnuson and Democrat Henry Jackson, the state’s other Senator, realized how much the Administration’s policies helped the aircraft industry in Washington. Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz reported to the White House in August that Meany thought McGovern “stupid” and a “dumb cluck.” Through Shultz, Meany conveyed support to the President on specific issues.
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During the summer, the President occasionally expressed concern regarding Watergate. In late July and early August, he and Haldeman discussed White House Counsel John Dean’s suggestion that Magruder be given immunity from possible criminal prosecution for his role in the break-in planning. In September, Nixon wanted the staff to do more checking on Lawrence O’Brien. In an allusion to Lyndon Johnson’s embarrassing protégé, he also encouraged his aides to “run down [the] Bobby Baker stuff,” apparently hoping to find Democratic scandals. Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, had telephoned Baker, the onetime LB J aide who had been convicted for larceny, fraud, and tax evasion, to gain information about O’Brien and Senator Edmund Muskie. (Several days later, the President told Haldeman that Bebe Rebozo was going to see Baker, adding: “If he can help us we will help him”—presumably with a pardon, as Baker had been sentenced to prison in January 1971.) As a response to the Democrats’ million-dollar suit against CREEP, Nixon urged Haldeman to go ahead with a countersuit alleging libels by O’Brien, but the President warned Haldeman not to get into “specific denials.”

In the closing days of the campaign, the President discussed with Haldeman and Ehrlichman McGovern’s hammering on the corruption issue. Nixon thought that the evidence linking the White House to the break-in was minimal. He complained, however, about the difficulty of proving a negative. Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman agreed to push hard against the
Washington Post
after the newspaper admitted that it had erred in linking Haldeman to Watergate because of his control over some campaign funds. Yet
Haldeman told his colleagues that he was concerned about the possible incriminating testimony of the campaign treasurer, Hugh Sloan; Haldeman and Ehrlichman talked about “cutting losses.” Six days before the election, the President told Ehrlichman to initiate conversations with journalist Theodore White, who had close ties to Nixon. White, as he had done for campaigns since 1960, was writing a history of this one, and Nixon wanted Ehrlichman “to make the record” on Watergate.
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The 1972 tactic of insulating Nixon from his campaign built on the practices of 1968, but now the Administration enjoyed the advantage of incumbency. The President rarely left the White House to campaign. Ceremonial Rose Garden appearances and other activities kept Nixon in the public spotlight, looking “presidential.” One of the President’s image makers remarked quite appropriately: “There is only one candidate in this election, not two. There is the incumbent. The President. Mr. Nixon. And then there is the only candidate, McGovern.” Nixon remained in his protective cocoon, frustrating his opponent and the media alike. The “television end run,” first deployed in 1968, now was perfected. “We’re being finessed out of our boots,” said one prominent newspaper reporter. “We’re just sitting on the bench while the administration dribbles the ball past us.”
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In spite of his dominating the campaign, the President periodically offered his usual complaints about the media. Haldeman told the staff that the campaign pitted the eastern media, the intellectual elite, and the academic community against the views and philosophy of Richard Nixon. The President undoubtedly liked to portray himself as waging a lonely war against that unholy trinity. “The point is to make this a mandate on the issues,” Haldeman said, “not just the man. We need to pick up the wrong predictions of the media and build off of that.”
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The White House simply refused to acknowledge Watergate publicly in any serious way. During one press briefing, Ron Ziegler responded with variations of “no comment” to some twenty-nine questions regarding possible Administration involvement in the break-in. Here and there, reporters began to talk about “stonewalling.” Indeed, Nixon ordered Haldeman and Ehrlichman to stand firm against reporters—“
never
apologize,” he said. Late in October, after CBS had devoted extensive attention to Watergate, the President complained at length to Haldeman. He ordered Kissinger to do nothing with the network for a week. Ziegler was not to talk to CBS reporters or to the
Post.
Colson upbraided CBS’s top executives and succeeded in having the network reduce a promised follow-up program.

The media remained useful to Nixon as an instrument for manipulation as well as an object of public scorn. Kissinger was instructed to “play” the
New York Times.
When Senator McGovern appeared on ABC’s
Issues and Answers
on October 22, the White House sent seven questions to the program’s moderator. Although the moderator informed McGovern that the
questions had come from the Administration, the point was that the moderator obediently asked them. Meanwhile, McGovern was unable to engage the President in a face-to-face debate.
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The President, of course, saw reporters, but whom and when and how were his choices. He constantly expressed concern about the possibility of being tripped up, of being trapped, of making mistakes, but his anxiety paled before the careful preparations to guard against such contingencies.