The Wars of Watergate (81 page)

The “firestorm” had ignited Congress. Ray Thornton (D–AR) and Tom Railsback (R-IL) of the House Judiciary Committee remembered the “storm of mail” after the Cox dismissal. Thornton realized how suddenly “Watergate” was at the center of the committee’s attention, given Agnew’s resignation and the need to confirm a vice-presidential successor, arrive at new guidelines for a Special Prosecutor, and consider impeachment resolutions. Nobody, Thornton said, could have anticipated “judging these extraordinary questions.”
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By month’s end, newspapers across the land and across the political spectrum had called for the President’s resignation or his impeachment. The
Atlanta Constitution
, the
Salt Lake City Tribune
, the
Boston Globe
, the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
, and the
Detroit News
joined the growing chorus, demanding action against the President. Most wrote more in sorrow than in anger; nearly all had supported Nixon’s re-election in 1972. More startling, on November 12,
Time
published the first editorial in its history, calling upon the President to resign. The editorial catalogued Nixon’s succession of lies and his defiance of court orders and agreements with Congress. He had passed the limits of “permissible” offenses, he had betrayed the constitutional system, his oath, and his “informal compact with the people.” The “nightmare of uncertainty,”
Time
concluded, “must be ended.”

Sam Ervin received a staggering amount of mail following the Cox dismissal. To his constituents, both those supporting and those opposing the President, he said that the events constituted “a great tragedy for America.” Ervin thought Cox had no reasonable alternative but to oppose the Stennis verification scheme. Some of his correspondents urged him to “Remember Chappaquiddick” and suggested that the smears against the President smacked of a “very strong Communist conspiracy.” Ervin stood his ground, but added that he “fervently hope[d] that past and future events do not give cause for impeachment of the President.”
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The events of the last days of October numbed and galvanized. Bork’s predecessor as Solicitor General, Erwin Griswold, was shocked. Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus had been his students—and all were “honorable men.” Griswold had “lost faith” in the President by April; October’s events only confirmed his misgivings. For recently appointed FBI Director Clarence Kelley, the “Saturday Night Massacre” was a turning point. He no longer thought the Administration could be saved. Kelley’s “emotions,” and those of others in the top echelon of the Bureau, “all shifted into neutral,”
for he recognized that the President “had indeed something to hide on those White House tapes.” During the firings, Haig directed Kelley to seal the offices of Richardson and Cox, as well as those of the Special Prosecutor’s staff. But Kelley already was wary, and he ordered his subordinates to maintain contact with Henry Petersen and avoid any appearance of participating in anyone’s cover-up enterprise. Richardson warned Kelley to be careful in his future dealings with the White House. For Richardson, the FBI action was the most blatant exercise of presidential power in the “whole sordid history” of Watergate. “A government of laws was on the verge of becoming a government of one man,” was Richardson’s perception, a strikingly pointed observation from this most accommodating of men.
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In the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon attempted to flush out his demons from the Watergate thicket. But there were legions more in the undergrowth. The Watergate affair had not yet matured into the “greatest constitutional crisis,” but the full glare of publicity made it clear that matters had escalated to a new level. The unfolding crisis was of a house divided with regard to the fate of its president. Whether the nation would support or reject him now was the question on the table. The fractures, the divisions would have to cease; in one way or another, Richard Nixon would have to “bring us together.”

The Nixon Administration was floundering amid the scattered debris. The President had to choose a new Vice President and a new Watergate Special Prosecutor, and he had also to confront the new challenge from the House Judiciary Committee. His two-front war persisted; now, however, he faced fresh adversaries determined to contest his continued right to his political domain. Meanwhile, the demands for his tapes and papers persisted, as the Cox firing heightened suspicions of his conduct.

The assaults on the Administration had matured into criminal indictments for prized (or formerly prized) subordinates. John Dean pleaded guilty on October 19 to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, but the charge encompassed a collection of nefarious activities: raising money for the Watergate defendants, suborning Jeb Magruder’s perjury, and gaining access to FBI reports from L. Patrick Gray. Judge John Sirica delayed Dean’s sentencing pending his cooperation in forthcoming criminal trials, a move that promised the President more difficulties in the days ahead. Donald Segretti pleaded guilty on November 1 to distributing false campaign literature and five weeks later was sentenced to six months in prison. At the end of November, the grand jury indicted Dwight Chapin, the President’s former appointments secretary, on four counts of perjury in connection with his dealings with Segretti.

The President was filled with sympathy, if not remorse, for his people. He told Chapin to “keep your balance and eventually this will all be seen in perspective. Your service to the nation will be remembered long after this
unfortunate episode is forgotten.” He had his secretary pass word to Charles Colson that he was confident Colson would get “off” in the end. He uttered a familiar refrain: “The irony is that Ellsberg is a hero and those who tried to protect the nation’s security are now under attack.”
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Egil Krogh, one of the directors of the Plumbers, was indicted on October 11, the first fruits of Archibald Cox’s five-month tenure. The charges consisted of two perjury counts in connection with the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. By the time of the charges, Krogh had admitted in a sworn affidavit to Judge Matthew Byrne (presiding in Ellsberg’s criminal trial) that he had authorized burglars “to engage in covert activity” to secure Ellsberg’s psychiatric history, contrary to his earlier testimony. Several days before the indictment, Nixon confidently assured Krogh that he would be vindicated. “The situation is really topsy-turvy when a man who stole hundreds of top secret documents goes free on a technicality and those who were trying to expose him are prosecuted. Your courage—under great stress—inspires us all.” Nixon seemed genuinely fond of Krogh—“a superior property,” he once labeled him. But when Krogh pleaded guilty on November 30, his statement to the court devastated the foundations of the Administration’s defenses.

Krogh told Judge Gerhard Gesell of the D.C. District Court that he had intended to invoke “national security” as the basis for his defense. In earlier motions, his attorneys had argued that Krogh had merely been protecting official secrets “classified by the highest security office in the government of the United States, the President himself.” But Krogh, an earnest, devout man, had a change of heart. “I now feel,” he stated, “that the sincerity of my motivation cannot justify what was done and that I cannot in conscience assert national security as a defense.” Whatever his motivations, he added, they could not surmount “the transcendent importance of the rule of law.” No Nixon “enemy” struck so hard at the Administration’s behavior and its rationalizations as that “superior property,” Egil Krogh: “I simply feel that what was done in the Ellsberg operation was in violation of what I perceive to be a fundamental idea in the character of this country—the paramount importance of the rights of the individual—I don’t want to be associated with that violation any longer by attempting to defend it.” John Ehrlichman had unsuccessfully—and unwisely—defended that same violation in his testy exchange with Herman Talmadge during the Senate Select Committee hearings three months earlier. Richard Nixon’s persistent comparisons of his subordinates’ deeds to the wrongs of Daniel Ellsberg made it doubtful whether he understood the distinction.
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The same day Krogh appeared in court, the President signed a bill extending the Watergate grand jury until June 4, 1974, with a provision for an additional six months if requested. The bill was humiliating; more, it was dangerous. Krogh’s painful, yet eloquent, admission pointedly revealed that
the Nixon Administration had abused power; the question now was whether the President himself had been complicit.

For the tenth time in its history, the United States was without a vice president. At other times the office had simply remained vacant and, as variously provided by law, different officials, including the Secretary of State, the President
pro tempore
of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, had formed in varying order the line of succession to the presidency. Following Lyndon Johnson’s assumption of the presidency after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress moved to alter the system and passed the Twenty-fifth Amendment in July 1965. The amendment was ratified in February 1967. It attempted to deal with the thorny problem of determining presidential disability in addition to ordering the succession. It provided that the president nominate a vice president in the event of a vacancy, who then would take office following a favorable majority vote in both houses.
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The Constitution had served for 180 years without such a provision, but now events would dictate its use twice in one year.

Less than a year after Richard Nixon had been re-elected by a landslide, his maneuvers to select a Vice President exposed his diminished authority. The Democratic-controlled Congress had been the President’s nemesis since he had assumed office in 1969. He had ignored it, spurned it, and fought it—at all times, he believed, for personal political advantage. Battling Congress undoubtedly had value on the hustings, but reality and the political system required cooperation. The Democratic congressional dominance alone dictated the need for compromise. But after five years of studied contempt, Nixon could have no realistic expectation that Congress would extend him a free hand in the selection of the Vice President. The Constitution gave Congress an equal voice; that provision in the current context of political reality in effect gave Congress a veto.

Lord Bryce, the shrewd British observer of American institutions in the late nineteenth century, was fascinated by why the “best men” did not become presidents. Given a choice between a “brilliant man and a safe man,” the latter, he noted, was preferred. The eminent men naturally made more enemies and gave their enemies “more assailable points” than obscure men. They were, Bryce remarked, therefore far less desirable candidates. Considering the undistinguished models of nineteenth-century presidents whom Bryce viewed, he concluded that “the only thing remarkable about them is that being so commonplace they should have climbed so high.”

Gerald Ford confirmed Bryce’s theory; in his own words, he stood out as the “ ‘safest’ choice.” Ford also correctly believed that Nixon preferred John B. Connally, Lyndon Johnson’s protégé, an ex-Democrat, and his own former Secretary of the Treasury. Although Nixon did not drop Agnew in
1972, as he and his advisers had considered, the White House maintained an interest in grooming Connally for the election of 1976. Haldeman met Connally in early January 1973, and his “talking paper” on the meeting contained the notation: “When is he going to move? It’s important to develop another horse [before] … time will run out. It would be helpful to know what his plans are.” Nixon warmly admired the Texan. He also had to realize that while Connally provoked sharp reactions, both from Democrats who despised his trace-jumping and from Republicans who remained skeptical about his commitment, such controversy could divert attention from Watergate.

Speaker Carl Albert warned Nixon that Connally would never be confirmed. The President himself indicated to Connally that he was his first choice, but after several days both men realized that the nomination was too controversial to have any real chance for success. Dwight Chapin (then facing a criminal indictment) passed word that Ford would be “sensational,” because he was a team player with strong ties to the party and Congress. But Chapin, too, preferred Connally, although he knew that “the fight would have been rough.”
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The President asked Republican members of Congress for suggestions. Nixon later said that Ford was their first choice, but congressional responses showed very strong support for Nelson Rockefeller and William Rogers. Connally and Ronald Reagan attracted scattered but significant support as well, as did Barry Goldwater. Many of the responses indicated that Ford would have the least difficulty in being confirmed. Liberal Republican Paul McCloskey (CA) endorsed Ford and Rockefeller, among others. He then added that he had omitted Elliot Richardson only because he thought it more important that Richardson restore “professional integrity” to the Department of Justice. As his first choices, Ford himself listed Connally, former Congressman Melvin Laird, Rockefeller, and Reagan. Ford undoubtedly realized that either the President or Congress had profound objections to all these men; the Republican leader, however, was a master in covering all bases.
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Laird, currently a White House aide, who had been a minor player in congressional maneuvers during his lengthy tenure as a representative from Wisconsin, actively promoted Ford’s candidacy. He had been disenchanted with the White House since he had joined the staff in May, but he stayed on, because he thought he could serve his friends and also play “an important role in the use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment,” once he realized that Agnew had to go.

Laird asked Ford to make himself available. Ford, always a bit wary of Laird’s machinations, agreed when he realized that Laird also spoke for others. Ford insisted that he would not promote himself. Laird told the President he would leave the White House if Connally’s name went forward.
He urged leading Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, to oppose Connally and favor Ford. Laird thought the Texan was simply “too controversial” to be confirmed; at bottom, however, he preferred Ford and disliked Connally. Not surprisingly, Nixon summoned Ford. The Congressman said he had no ambitions to serve beyond January 1977 and no expectations to be the party’s presidential nominee in 1976. Nixon, he reported, was pleased, because, he told Ford, he preferred Connally in 1976, a point he also made to Kissinger. Reportedly, the President mocked Ford to Nelson Rockefeller: “Can you imagine Jerry Ford sitting in this chair?” He sent one of the pens he used to sign Ford’s nomination to Fred Buzhardt, with a note: “Here is the damn pen I signed Jerry Ford’s nomination with.”
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