The Wars of Watergate (71 page)

The Democrats proved so accommodating that Inouye devoted his time to reading questions prepared by White House Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt (aided by Haldeman and Ehrlichman), questions so blatantly hostile that even Inouye’s deadpan rendition could not disguise the intensity of the Administration’s hostility toward Dean. The White House had assigned extra staff to Buzhardt, including Diane Sawyer and Larry Speakes, to “prove” that Dean had lied. Speakes later claimed that he concluded Dean had not lied, and had so informed Sawyer, but the effort to discredit Dean continued.

Inouye suggested that Buzhardt’s questions might serve as an
in absentia
cross-examination of Dean by the President himself. Ervin never interrupted as Inouye followed the White House script, interspersed with a few clarifying questions and comments of his own, for more than an hour and a quarter. The White House framed its questions to place Dean at the center of the cover-up conspiracy to protect his patron, John Mitchell, and to advance his own importance and career. What had been imaginary scenarios concocted in the Oval Office by the President and his top aides in March and April now saw the light of day. Their net effect gave Dean an opportunity to reiterate, even reinforce, his story and thereby strengthen his public credibility—and ironically enough, to do so at the expense of the White House.
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In the afternoon of June 28, Howard Baker began his questioning. He conceded that Dean’s testimony had been “mind-boggling,” and that some of his allegations were “prima facie extraordinarily important.” Baker said that he had no desire to test Dean; what he wanted instead was to plow over the ground and structure the testimony in order to have a “coherent presentation” to measure against the testimony of other witnesses.

With that, Baker went right to what had emerged as the “central question” from Dean’s testimony: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” The Senator’s question had nothing less than the purpose of impeach Dean’s importance as a witness. He asked Dean to structure his answer within three categories: direct, circumstantial, and hearsay evidence. Baker seemed confident that any complete answers to his basic question could only fall within the last or, at best, the second category.

Baker led the witness through different time frames for both the break-in and the cover-up to show that his knowledge was based only on circumstantial or hearsay evidence. Dean counterattacked with a memorandum he had prepared for the President’s meeting with Baker to discuss the proceedings of the Senate Select Committee. For his part, Baker managed to establish
that the meeting focused on his advice that the President waive executive privilege. Dean preserved his credibility and Baker his. But the moment disarmed Baker, and again the White House apparently suffered a net loss. After Dean’s revelations, Baker seemed more muted, even more obsequious and deferential to Ervin, lavishing praise on his cooperativeness, sensitivity, and bipartisanship. “It has been a great privilege for me to learn from you and to go forward in this unpleasantness,” Baker told his colleague.
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The discussion of White House maneuvers to discredit the Senate hearings also unmasked the Administration’s hostility toward Lowell Weicker. The Connecticut Senator deftly used the moment to equate the attempts to smear him with the heavy-handedness of the “enemies list.” He had a transcript of an Ehrlichman-Kleindienst March 28 conversation discussing the Senator’s attacks on the White House. Weicker delivered what amounted to a stump speech, defending his credentials as a Republican and contending that Republicans did not commit illegal acts, did not view fellow citizens as enemies, and did not cover up crimes. It was stirring television, whether live or on the evening news. And again, it did not exactly make a profitable moment for the Administration.
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By Friday, June 29, John Dean had completed a remarkable week of testimony. The senators and the staff counsels had followed his prepared testimony with a variety of cross-examination, some friendly, some hostile, and some skeptical. Rumors abounded about Dean’s sexual escapades, his misappropriation of funds, and his fears of homosexual attacks if he went to prison. Dean stood up to the challenges. “Truth,” he confidently asserted, was his “one ally.” At one point in his testimony, he confused the name of a hotel with a coffee shop, but when his critics tried to use this to derogate his truthfulness, they succeeded only in humanizing him. Throughout, Dean maintained his composure, his appearance of restraint, and above all, his consistency. He had painted a pattern that shaped the rest of the hearings—and the emergence of the case against the President. Few would dispute Dean’s conclusion: “there was a terrible cloud over this Government.”
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The committee adjourned for eleven days over the Fourth of July holiday period. Perhaps to regain the initiative, or to win sympathy, the White House chose to reveal at this time that the President had considered resignation. Julie Nixon told reporters on July 3 that her father had raised the subject as “devil’s advocate,” suggesting that his resignation might be best for the country. His family dutifully objected, contending that it would be “an admission of wrongdoing.” Nixon thus projected both a grievance and a sense of hurt; more, there was the inevitable comparison to worse villains. His daughter attacked the media for portraying Daniel Ellsberg as a “hero,”
even though he “stole” documents and “broke the law” involving national-security matters.

This was not the first discussion of resignation to emerge from high-level circles. The day after the Senate hearings began, John Mitchell’s wife told reporters that the White House was to blame for the scandal. Her husband, she contended, had only been protecting “Mr. President.” She predicted that Nixon would resign or be impeached. “I think he’d be much wiser to resign,” Martha Mitchell said. Mitchell himself told reporters afterward that he would not be a “fall guy.” On June 6 a liberal Republican congressman began to read a speech in the House, charging that the President might have violated criminal laws, when a fellow Republican stopped the proceedings for lack of a quorum. A week later, a congresswoman suggested that the House of Representatives establish an impeachment inquiry.
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Meanwhile, Nixon urged his staff to seize the initiative. In a memorandum reminiscent of the public-relations concerns that had so preoccupied the President and Haldeman in the first term, he complained to Haig that “we have tried to get a point across using only one bullet [while] our opponents have been enormously effective in getting three or four rides out of the same story.” He wanted more Cabinet officers and Republican senators to speak out in defense of his aides. Typically, he suggested a counterattack focusing on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations for their uses of the FBI and the military for wiretapping and surveillance activities and their use of the IRS for political purposes. But perhaps more important, Nixon wanted Elliot Richardson to rein in Archibald Cox and take him to task for conducting “a partisan political vendetta rather than [doing] … the job he was appointed to do—bring the Watergate defendants to trial at the earliest possible time.” Richardson, the President feared, would “be a relatively weak reed in this respect.”
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During the holiday recess, Nixon released a letter he had sent to the Senate committee, refusing to make presidential papers available or to testify himself. He had urged his staff to furnish “information pertinent” to the investigation, but he would not allow “public scrutiny” of his private papers. The Senate request that had elicited that response had been vague and, to some extent at that point, constituted a fishing expedition. Dean had described the President’s habit of annotating daily news summaries, for example—words that sometimes in a vague sense implied a directive but often simply reflected his momentary responses. Those notes, Nixon insisted, in no way constituted a criminal act, and, more important, they had no bearing on the legislative concerns of a Senate investigating committee. As to whether or not he would testify, Nixon insisted that his doing so would offer “irreparable damage” to the separation-of-powers principle.

The Senate Select Committee met on July 12 to consider the President’s position. Baker urged his colleagues not to confront Nixon, confident as he
was that the President would eventually comply with the request because of other pressures. But the committee insisted on stating its position to the President, and Ervin allowed Baker to draft the letter. Baker suggested that Nixon meet with representatives of the committee to avoid “a fundamental constitutional confrontation between the Congress and the Presidency.” When Ervin read the letter in open session and announced that it been sent in a sealed envelope, marked for the President’s eyes only, the spectators laughed. Earlier, in executive session, Ervin spoke to the President on the telephone and described the substance of the letter. Throughout the call, Ervin insisted that “we are not out to get anybody.” The Senator assured the President that he would be delighted to say that there was “nothing in the world to connect you with the Watergate in any way.” Nixon told Ervin that he was ill with viral pneumonia and would be hospitalized. He added that he would meet the Chairman at some future date to discuss the impasse.
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Magruder and Dean had revealed themselves as foot soldiers, prepared to sacrifice themselves, though not in silence. They had implicated the President’s closest and most important aides, and by indirection, Nixon himself. The President would not appear before the committee—there would be no subpoena—but others had no choice. John Mitchell testified for nearly three days. The cooperation so apparent in the Magruder and Dean testimony now evaporated, replaced by a public display of what the President himself had called “stonewalling.” The printed record inadequately conveys Mitchell’s behavior. His recalcitrance, his foggy, vague answers, his angry interruptions, and his snide, sarcastic remarks directed at the committee and at some of his own associates need to be seen and heard to be fully appreciated. His long pauses, his silent rejection of questions, and his facial expressions amply reflected his absolute contempt for the proceedings and his total loyalty to the President. That loyalty is the more remarkable in view of what Mitchell and the President both knew: Mitchell acted as he did despite Nixon’s eagerness to make him a scapegoat just two months earlier.

The antagonism between Mitchell and the President’s closest aides ran deep, especially in the case of Ehrlichman. Early in the Administration one White House staff member supposedly remarked that Mitchell believed only in his own advancement and that of his friends. Nixon’s April meetings with Haldeman and Ehrlichman consistently betrayed hostility toward Mitchell on the part of the President’s retainers. Ehrlichman complained that “M lies unsuccessfully,” and told the President to stand by his immediate advisers and not move “a peg.” Dean had testified about the “rather strained relationship” between Mitchell and Ehrlichman and the “longstanding competition” between Mitchell and “certain people” in the White House. The
White House memorandum and questions Inouye read to Dean implicated Dean for trying to protect his earlier patron, Mitchell. But shortly before Mitchell testified, Buzhardt said that the memo did not represent the White House position and that the President had not “reviewed” it, although he had been “briefed” on its contents. Shortly afterward, Mitchell’s lawyer told reporters that the former Attorney General “definitely has no information implicating the President in the Watergate bugging or cover-up.”
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The White House disavowal of the memorandum and Mitchell’s subsequent posture before the committee seemed more than coincidental.

Mitchell early on indicated how he would deal with the committee. When Talmadge asked him about his March 1972 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no “party responsibilities” while Attorney General, Mitchell tried to distinguish between party matters and the President’s re-election campaign. Talmadge found that the record showed that Mitchell had been asked specifically about “re-election campaign responsibilities.” Mitchell simply insisted that the question had been raised in the “context” of party matters. Talmadge was disgusted and brought forth CREEP memoranda illustrating Mitchell’s campaign activities as far back as December 1971. “The public can draw their own conclusions,” he said. The next day Ervin reminded Mitchell of his confirmation hearings in 1969, in which he pledged to be the President’s legal, not political, adviser. Why had he not fulfilled that promise? Ervin asked. “Mr. Chairman,” Mitchell answered, “that would have been my fondest wish. Unfortunately, it is very, very difficult to turn down a request by the President of the United States.”
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In his own fashion, Mitchell revealed a great deal about the nature and character of the White House and the President’s close aides. He vehemently denied Magruder’s allegation that he had been involved in discussions regarding bugging the Democratic National Committee. “To the best of my recollection,” Mitchell said, no targets had been discussed, and “to the best of my recollection,” he had not suggested any. He admitted that Liddy’s original plan for spying on and sabotaging their opponents was “beyond the pale” and that he had instructed him to return with detailed plans for dealing with demonstrators. But why didn’t Mitchell throw Liddy out of his office? Dash asked. “Well, I think, Mr. Dash, in hindsight I not only should have thrown him out of the office,” Mitchell somberly replied, “I should have thrown him out of the window.” When Dash further queried why Mitchell did not arrest Liddy for conspiring to commit illegal acts while talking in the Attorney General’s office, Mitchell wryly answered that it “would have been a very viable thing to do.” He denied having seen any wiretap documents; Magruder’s contention to the contrary was “a palpable, damnable lie.”
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As Dash led Mitchell through his knowledge of the Huston Plan and the Plumbers’ operations, Mitchell referred to these activities as the “White
House horrors.” His remarks at this point effectively diminished the singularity and importance of the Watergate break-in and provided a window on the entire pattern of wrongdoing and abuse of power in the Administration. He bluntly stated that the cover-up really was designed to conceal the “horrors” rather than any aspects of the Watergate break-in. Watergate, in short, “did not have the great significance that the White House horror stories … had,” Mitchell concluded. When Magruder told Mitchell that it would be best to “cut their losses” and acknowledge their role in the break-in, Mitchell replied that the White House could not allow that. Indeed, he told the committee substantially the same thing: “some” White House people had been involved in those adventures, and their “interests” dictated a cover-up strategy.