The Wars of Watergate (44 page)

“Almost by osmosis,” Haldeman observed, Dean assumed command of the “project.” In fact such an assumption of power was unlikely in a Haldeman-managed enterprise. White House aide Richard Moore, who befriended Dean and who saw him as a “schemer” but a “very disarming gentleman,” refused to believed that Dean “initiated any activity that he thought unauthorized.” Haldeman needed someone to manage the cover-up, Moore remembered. He knew that Leonard Garment would never be a party to that enterprise, and neither would Moore himself. Nor could Haldeman pick Colson, because he “would run away with it or blow it up.” Dean was the “logical” man for the cover-up; “who else,” Moore thought, “would he have turned to?” John Mitchell, too, knew that “somebody gave Dean a charter.” Mitchell was bemused. “Who gave him the charter and put him on that course?” he asked, as he scoffed at Haldeman’s seeming confusion.
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Henry Petersen of the Justice Department met Dean at the outset of the cover-up and bluntly told him that the investigation could not be shut down. Earlier, according to Kleindienst and Gray, Ehrlichman had ordered Petersen to terminate the Watergate investigation within forty-eight hours. “Screw you,” Petersen reportedly replied. Petersen liked Dean and even confided in him, quite unsuspecting of Dean’s role. Petersen later bitterly recalled that Dean had become the “linch pin” (a term Dean himself used) of the conspiracy, acting through Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He grudgingly recognized that Dean was a splendid choice to direct the cover-up. Because Dean had worked in Congress on the committee to reform the criminal laws, and because he had been in the Justice Department, Petersen said, “we trusted him. We thought he was one of us. He had a degree of rapport with us that an ordinary counsel who just came in out of the political hinterlands never would have had with the Justice Department.” What we saw, Haldeman testified, summing up a commonly held view, “was a young man, unquestionably intelligent, unfailingly courteous, doing his job efficiently.”
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Haldeman’s characterization of Dean as the “project manager” of the Watergate cover-up was disingenuous and uncharacteristically modest. Dean perhaps managed details, but the mission had been determined by others. John Dean did not decide that there would be a cover-up: that was determined by the President of the United States and his Chief of Staff. “The
President was involved in the cover-up from Day One,” Haldeman later revealed—thus conceding his own involvement. After Nixon returned to Washington following the break-in, he learned on June 20 about Hunt and Liddy and their connection to CREEP, but he did not order Haldeman or anyone else to inform the FBI. That night, Nixon talked to Haldeman about raising money for the burglars and for the first time suggested bringing CIA pressure on the FBI to limit the investigation. Surely he was anxious to avoid any links between the burglars and the White House; but Haldeman also knew that Nixon feared any exposé of “other things,” as the President often characterized certain White House activities and campaign “dirty tricks.”

One of the President’s June 20 meetings with Haldeman, according to the Chief of Staff, involved a public-relations treatment of Watergate to counterattack the criticism, as well as to deal with Nixon’s fear that Colson had initiated the break-in from his White House office. How, the President asked, could his enemies “justify this [the break-in] less than stealing [the] Pentagon Papers?” That conversation, Haldeman claimed, was all or part of an 18½-minute tape segment subsequently erased—by the President himself, according to Haldeman.
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During the course of at least three meetings covering more than two hours on June 23, Nixon and Haldeman took steps to impose a blanket on the investigation and to cover up any links between the burglars, CREEP, and the White House. Their actions, in legal terms, constituted an obstruction of justice. In political terms, in the public’s perception, the cover-up projected an indelible impression that Nixon personally was involved in the crime.

The President and Haldeman met on the morning of the twenty-third to discuss the FBI’s widening investigation of the break-in. Haldeman reported that Dean had advised him and Ehrlichman that Gray could not restrain his agents. According to Haldeman, Mitchell had suggested that CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters (a recent Nixon appointee) call Gray and tell him to “stay the hell out of this.” Walters was to complain that FBI investigators were intruding into sensitive areas of CIA operations. Haldeman pushed the idea, confident it would work because the FBI was aware of the Cuban burglars’ CIA links and could recognize that the affair might have national-security implications. Haldeman knew the FBI had traced the source of the burglars’ money, and he realized that this would implicate the re-election committee. Nixon eagerly agreed on the need for containment. He ordered Haldeman to tell CIA Director Helms and Walters that the White House needed their cooperation. It was time to call in debts, Nixon said: “we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things.”

The President asked if Mitchell knew about the break-in. “I think so,” Haldeman replied. “I don’t think he knew the details, but I think he knew.” The President wanted to find out what “asshole” devised the plans. He
thought it might be Liddy, whom he described as “a little nuts.” Interestingly, Haldeman thought that Mitchell had pressured Liddy for “more information” on the Democrats. The President’s response was quite knowing: “All right, fine, I understand it all. We won’t second-guess Mitchell and the rest.” He was enormously relieved on one point: “Thank God,” he declared, that Colson was not responsible.

Nixon was careful not to get too close; Haldeman would instruct Helms and Walters. But the President advised Haldeman to tell CIA officials that he feared the investigation would reopen questions involving the Bay of Pigs. Therefore it would be best if they told the FBI that for the good of the country the case should not be further investigated. “That’s the way to put it, do it straight,” the President said. The conversation drifted to a discussion of the McGovern campaign and homosexuals, to Herbert Klein’s incompetence (“He just doesn’t have his head screwed on,” Nixon said), to his daughter Tricia’s complaints about “labor thugs” booing at one of her talks, and to the President’s advice to keep the campaign away from anything having to do with the arts (“The Arts you know—they’re Jews, they’re left wing—in other words, stay away”).
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Nixon and Haldeman met briefly again just after 1:00
P.M.
on June 23 to go over the “game plan.” The President warned Haldeman, in asking the CIA to help quash the FBI’s investigation, to avoid letting Helms and Walters “get any ideas we’re doing it because our concern is political.” But he quickly added, “I wouldn’t tell them it is not political.” In his memoirs, the President recalled only that he wanted the matter handled “deftly.”
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An hour later, Haldeman returned to the Oval Office to report that Helms and Walters had agreed to help despite some uncertainty that the scheme would work. Haldeman reported that Gray already had informed Helms the day before that the Bureau thought it might have “run right into the middle of a CIA covert operation.” Helms had assured him at the time that it had not. But as Haldeman relayed his conversation with Helms to the President, Nixon seemed less confident. He thought the FBI still could trace the money seized with the burglars, but Haldeman told him that the Bureau already had enough evidence to convict the burglars without worrying about the money.
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Helms remembered that he immediately thought Haldeman’s concerns amounted to “baloney,” but he did not know “what the baloney was.” Gray himself testified that Helms told him on July 22, and again on July 27, that the CIA had no concern about the FBI investigation of the burglars’ money. Helms claimed to be mystified about a current White House notion that an FBI investigation would uncover the Agency’s “money-laundering” operation in Mexico; “we never used the term,” he insisted. The CIA, Helms revealed, had no need to operate in such a fashion: “We could get money any place in the world. We ran a whole arbitrage operation. We didn’t need to launder money—ever.”
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The President also met with Colson and Ehrlichman at one point on that memorable June 23. According to Ehrlichman’s notes, either the President or Colson put a fitting epitaph on the day: “Responsible administrations in a tough political year are born losers.”
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The President capped his long day with a western gunslinger movie,
Hang ’Em High.
The story centers on a wrongfully accused man who promises to play by the rules but then disposes of his enemies one by one, convinced that he is an avenging angel.

Vernon Walters later claimed Haldeman and Ehrlichman had directly demanded that the CIA persuade Gray to halt the FBI investigation of the break-in, despite Helms’s assurances that the Agency was not involved. After the White House meeting, Walters told Gray that he had been “directed” by White House officials to say that the FBI investigation jeopardized the Agency’s covert operations. He checked again at the CIA and confirmed that the FBI’s investigation in no way threatened the Agency’s “assets,” including operations in Mexico. But Walters made no effort to convey that information to Gray, who had dutifully carried out the order to cut back the investigation. Gray, in his later testimony, insisted he did not know that Walters and Helms had met with Haldeman, and swore Walters never mentioned “senior people at the White House.” He thought Walters was speaking for the CIA.

A couple of weeks later, on July 6, the President telephoned Gray from San Clemente. Gray told Nixon that he and Walters believed that “people on your staff are trying to mortally wound you by using the CIA and the FBI and by confusing the question of CIA interest in, or not in, people the FBI wishes to interview.” The President, Gray reported, paused slightly, and then urged Gray to continue his “aggressive and thorough investigation.” After the call, Nixon advised Ehrlichman not to “raise hell” with Gray or Walters, adding that the White House could take the heat. But at another meeting later in the day, he told Ehrlichman that Gray and Walters were not to discuss Watergate any further with him. The President seemed to recognize that covering up for subordinates could only be harmful to him. He had told newly appointed campaign chairman Clark MacGregor the day before never to talk to him about Watergate. Distance was now important.

Nixon repeatedly recalled at the time that it had been because of a Democratic cover-up that “I got Truman”—an exaggerated reference to both Truman’s and his own part in the Alger Hiss affair. Later, he said that Truman’s role was “pure political containment,” which was not a corrupt motive; otherwise, he insisted, Truman would have been impeached. He warned Ehrlichman again on July 8, however, that there could be no appearance of a cover-up—“not a whiff of it.” But more than cover-up was
on his mind. Nixon discussed Helms, Walters, the CIA, the Pentagon Papers controversy, the Bay of Pigs, and the Diem assassination—somehow connecting them all with an ongoing Watergate investigation. If the probe persisted, he said, “all will blow.”
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The President later insisted that his efforts did not constitute a cover-up, because “my motives were not criminal. I didn’t believe that we were covering any criminal activities.” Five years after the event, he insisted that neither Mitchell nor any of his aides were involved, despite the public record of his June 23 discussions with Haldeman. Nixon finessed his directives to the FBI and the CIA with a convoluted linkage between the political interests of the Agency and his own: it would be best if the investigation did not uncover the role of a former CIA agent—Howard Hunt—who, incidentally, worked in the White House. Nixon thus rationalized that there had been no cover-up; the CIA was simply protecting one of its own agents “with a long history of distinguished service.”

Not coincidentally, and straining for a note of altruism, Nixon said he “didn’t feel at the time that any eroding of the strength of the President in the country … [or] his defeat in an election … would be in the best interest of the country.” As he described his actions in his memoirs, he simply was “handling in a pragmatic way … an annoying and strictly political problem.… I saw Watergate as politics pure and simple. We were going to play it tough.” As always, the justification was that he acted tit-for-tat: “I never doubted that that was exactly how the other side would have played it.”
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“I was being set up by the President of the United States to take a fall.” Thus Richard Helms made his assessment of the President’s political tactics as the summer of 1972 wore on. But Helms was determined not to be the “goat” of the affair. Helms knew that Walters had been a longtime Nixon loyalist and that the President could have his way with him. Helms believed that Nixon intended to “embroil the Agency … and use the Agency as the cover for the cover-up.” Although he later resisted further demands from the White House, however, Helms at first cooperated in allowing the Agency to be used accordingly. His resistance eventually cost him his standing with the President, and his cooperation exposed his treasured organization to unprecedented public scrutiny. The Watergate affair was a disaster for Richard Helms and the CIA.
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Nixon’s “pragmatism” in approaching the cover-up often lost touch with practical reality. Meeting with Ehrlichman in San Clemente on July 10, he rambled about potential disruptions at both presidential nominating conventions. If he were in any danger, he wanted the Secret Service to make arrests, to book and charge people. Then the day after the election, he would issue a general pardon and cease prosecutions of those who provoked the demonstrations. But there was a
quid pro quo:
that pardon would be
“a basis for pardon on both sides”—presumably meaning the Watergate burglars.
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Between the break-in and September 15, John Dean met with Nixon only once, when on August 14 he prepared an estate plan for the President’s signature. But Nixon was aware of his Counsel’s work in more immediate problems. In a press conference on August 29, he turned aside a suggestion that he appoint a special prosecutor. He pointed to the FBI’s investigation, one by the House Banking and Currency Committee, and John Dean’s “complete investigation” as ample evidence that “we are doing everything we can to take this incident and to investigate it and not to cover it up.” Dean’s investigation had satisfied him, Nixon insisted. “I can say categorically that his investigation indicated that no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.” Charitably, the President said that “overzealous” people often do wrong things in campaigns. But his charity had limits. “What really hurts” in dealing with wrongdoing, he remarked, “is if you try to cover it up.”
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