Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (14 page)

I knew Liddy did not understand what I meant; but then I had not
said
what I meant. I wanted him to take my remarks as a general disapproval of all of his illegal plans, but I could not say it, and he was concluding that, like a good lawyer, I was merely protecting Mitchell from illegal knowledge, building in deniability and insulation. He might even interpret my sense of urgency as a sign that his plans were
important
—that
they were not out of the question. Liddy was more knowledgeable than I about the world of clandestine security precautions, where an action like mine might be a sign of high priority. I was troubled by my unwillingness to confront Liddy or Magruder directly. I decided I should add something, to indicate that I didn’t want any part of it.

“And, Gordon,” I said, “I don’t think you and I should ever talk about this subject again.”

“I understand,” he assured me, “and we shall not.” I thought he had picked up my distaste for this business, but, again, I had been ambiguous. He might interpret that remark as a security precaution. I left, annoyed by my weakness but thinking positively about what I had accomplished.

Now, I determined, I had to see Haldeman. As I walked into his office, I flashed back to my meeting with Ehrlichman on the Brookings break-in. I was upset and uncomfortable. I did not want to bring bad tidings to Haldeman, especially when I knew he was absorbed in his work on the President’s trip to China, only a few weeks away. He had a half-dozen books on China on his bookshelf, which he was hoping to read.

I floundered at first, not knowing where to begin. I told him in detail about the two meetings. I knew Haldeman had never seen me troubled. “Bob, this stuff is incredible, unnecessary, and very unwise,” I protested. Since I assumed Haldeman and the President were part of the pressure on Mitchell and Magruder to do something, this amounted to saying that
he
had been unwise, but I had to extricate myself some way. “We don’t need buggings, muggings, and prostitutes and kidnappers to handle demonstrations. No one at the White House should have anything to do with this.”

“You’re right,” he said instantly. “You should have nothing further to do with Gordon Liddy.”

I felt better as I left his office, thinking that at least I was out of the campaign intelligence business. And I was. Even the tickler stopped tickling.

I had not scored any points for bravery, by Haldeman’s standards, but nonetheless I felt good about having protected myself. I was jaded by my life in politics, especially in the White House, and I had certainly ignored the canons which politicians profess to live by but which few have found as the path to success. Several times I had stopped short of a hazy line that kept me off the first team, where men like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, Colson, and even Bud Krogh trampled the rules, believing that their power kept them from danger. I was not sure whether it was fear, timidity, some shred of morality, or a lawyer’s caution that held me back, but I accepted it.

While I was personally out of the intelligence business, the business itself did not stop. Pressure kept coming down through the tickler, and the ITT-Kleindienst scandal that erupted a few weeks later renewed interest in Larry O’Brien, who was given much credit in the White House for initiating our woes. He was second only to Jack Anderson as a target of ugly thoughts—bitterly resented, even feared. For O’Brien was a seasoned pol who campaigned, we thought, with more than simply lofty moral sentiments.

Shortly after the ITT scandal subsided, I approached Haldeman at the end of a staff meeting for a rare bit of political gossiping.

“Bob, who do you think McGovern will select as his campaign manager?” Senator George McGovern was going to be the Democratic nominee.

“I don’t have the foggiest notion,” he answered.

“How about Larry O’Brien?”

“God, I hope that’s who he picks. We can nail O’Brien,” said Haldeman, leaning back in his chair, grinning smugly and enjoying something privately.

I went off on another trip abroad, and again I was called back by a crisis. This time, all the forces the President had set in motion with his dictation machine—the O’Brien investigation and the intelligence tickler—had come together. This time the firefighting would not be so easy, but I would at last make the first team.

Chapter Four: Linchpin of Conspiracy

MANILA, PHILIPPINES, June 19, 1972 (Monday). I was heading back to Washington. The four-day round trip, including a day in Tokyo, had been rushed. Pigeon, octopus, and turtle delicacies from a native Philippine restaurant challenged my digestion on the flight. Tomorrow, when I crossed the international date line, it would be yesterday. I arrived in San Francisco on Sunday, June 18, and decided to stay over. I was tired, and the exotic cuisine was still sending distress signals. I called Fred Fielding to tell him I would not be in the office Monday morning as planned. “Listen, Fred, I’m wiped out. There’s no way I can sit on a plane for another five hours. Also, nobody should be expected to have two Mondays in one week. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

“I think you’d better come back, John.” His voice was unexpectedly serious.

“Why?”

“There’s a story in the newspaper that’s going to cause some problems.”

“I don’t really give a damn, Fred.”

“You’d better.” He told me about the
Washington Post
story on the arrest of five men in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building. Allegedly they were attempting to bug Larry O’Brien’s office. Fred was persistent. He wanted to talk to me, but not on the telephone.

Halfway across the country, I was stretched across two seats when a stewardess approached.

“You look awful,” she said. “Got a hangover? ‘Cause I’ve got the cure.”

“What’s the cure?”

“Oxygen. “

“Why not,” I told her, and she produced a canister and a face mask and warned me not to smoke. A few hefty snorts revived me. I felt groggy but respectable when I landed in Washington after twenty hours in the air. Fred was waiting for me at my house.

“What’s so damned important I have to jeopardize my mental and physical health to hear it from you?” I asked testily.

“Caulfield called me about that story, about the DNC break-in.”

“Did Jack do it?” I interrupted, trying to be funny.

Fred wasn’t in the mood. “No, damn it, John, just listen. Jack said a guy named McCord, from the Reelection Committee, was arrested with some Cubans in the DNC. McCord told the police his name was Ed Martin.”

I knew that was James McCord. He was security coordinator of the Committee to Reelect the President.

“But here’s the clinker,” Fielding went on. “They found a check on one of the Cubans from Howard Hunt. How about that?”

“Shit, I’ve always told you Colson is crazy.” This sounded like Colson, who was about as subtle in pursuing political intelligence as a pig hunting truffles.

“What else?” I asked.

“That’s all Jack told me and all I know.”

I sat and thought, all that crazy screwing around has finally caught up with us. No one can help now. “Well, Freddie, there’s not a damn thing I can do tonight. I’m bone tired. Leave it to Colson to blow the election. I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

It was a good night’s sleep. The best I would have for years to come.

The White House, June 19, 1972 (Monday morning again). I walked into the office and made a few cracks about the octopus in my stomach. It would be a bad week, I told Jane, because it had started with two Mondays. This didn’t register. I acknowledged a few welcome-home waves from my staff and went on to my desk, preoccupied. I had hardly begun sorting through the pile of paper in my in box when Jane buzzed. Caulfield was on the line.

“Johnny,” he said, “I’m worried.”

“Yeah, I thought you would be. Fred tells me Jim McCord got picked up at the DNC. Are you sure?”

“Yep. The Secret Service boys told me. They got it from the police.”

“Do they know who McCord is yet?”

“Jesus Christ! It’s in the paper this morning. He gave them an alias, but it didn’t even last through the weekend. Listen, I’m the guy who put Jimmy over there at the Committee. But I didn’t know he was mixed up in this business. I had no idea.”

“Well, Jack, I don’t think you have anything to worry about if you’re not involved.”

“Rest assured, John, I’m not involved.” He tried to sound solemn, as if he were taking an oath, but his voice quickly gave way to panic. “Not at all. Believe me!”

“Well, then, just sit tight and don’t worry.”

“I’ve got to worry. This thing could go all over the place.”

“Is that stuff about Howard Hunt’s name being on one of the Cubans true?”

“Yeah, it’s true. That’s what I mean.”

“It figures. Look, Jack, the best thing you can do is to hold on, and don’t call people about this thing. You’ll be all right. Okay? I’ve got to go.”

“Okay, John.”

I reached for the morning paper. Caulfield was right. It had not taken long for the press to smoke out McCord’s identity. Headlines: “GOP Security Aide among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair.” The story, written by two
Washington Post
reporters I had never heard of, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, included a statement from John Mitchell denying any relationship between McCord’s job at the Reelection Committee and the break-in. It was meant to sound as if Mitchell had never heard of McCord. That won’t hold, I thought.

While I was still reading, Jane buzzed again. Jeb Magruder was calling. He needed to speak with me urgently.

“What’s going on, Jeb?”

“We’ve got a real problem, John. I think we can handle it, but, well, it’s a hell of a problem. Mitchell told me to get hold of you. Get your help. We’ve issued a statement. Mitchell issued it in California yesterday. He’s still out there. Did you read the paper this morning? Basically the thing is going to be a tough PR problem. But I think we can handle it.” Jeb’s sentences came at me in a rapid staccato. He was on a thin edge between bravado and loss of control. His voice jumped up in pitch every now and again as if he had swallowed a gulp of helium. He was flailing, I thought—throwing Mitchell’s name around, looking for my help. Then he hit me.

“Listen, John, this is all that dumb fucking Liddy’s fault. He blew it. The stupid bastard. He should have never used McCord. He never told us he was using McCord. It was stupid. This mess is all his fault….”

Oh, shit! I lost the next few sentences. Prickles swirled up and down my back. The octopus juice bubbled ominously. I flashed back through the Liddy meetings. My mind sped through its guilt file in an instant and retrieved every seamy entry. I had put Liddy over at the Committee. I saw Mitchell huddled over his budget. Faint hopes against the worst vanished. I was falling off a ledge, and my instincts grabbed for something. What do you mean, we’ve got a problem, Jeb? I thought. You’ve got a problem, baby! I recovered a bit. The first thing I had to do was get Magruder off the phone.

“…I think you should talk to Liddy, John.” He was still going. “I can’t talk to him, because he hates my guts. But he’ll talk to you. And you can find out what else went wrong. And what else we’ve got to worry about. Okay?”

“Uh, I just got back in my office, Jeb.” I was trying to conceal my reactions. “I’ve been out of the country, and I’m trying to figure out what happened—”

Ring-ring-ring. It was my I.O. (interoffice phone line). Someone in the White House was calling. Salvation. Magruder could hear the ring, and he knew what it meant.

“I’ve gotta go, Jeb. I’ll get back to you. I’ll find out what I can.”

“Thanks, John. Listen, Liddy’s over at 1701 [the Committee headquarters, 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue]. You can get him there.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I clicked Magruder off the line and leaned forward in my chair. I took one deep breath and exhaled. The signals from my body were all bad, but stable. I punched in on the I.O. It was Ehrlichman.

“How’s the world traveler?” he asked with facetious calm.

“I wish I hadn’t come back, to tell you the truth.” Ehrlichman’s reaction would be a telling signal, I thought. He knew almost everything, and I knew he was not offended by the idea of wiretaps. I flashed quickly back a few months and saw Jack Caulfield, raconteur, pacing around my office like a happy cat burglar, telling me how he had tried to bug the home of columnist Joseph Kraft on Ehrlichman’s orders: “…You wouldn’t believe it, Johnny. It was a dark night. And here we are in the alley over in Georgetown. And I’m holding a ladder up against the pole….”

“I presume you are aware of the little incident that transpired the other night?” Ehrlichman asked me.

“Yeah, I’m afraid I am.”

“Well, here’s what I’d like you to do. The Secret Service called me on Sunday morning about the arrests, and had some intriguing details. One of the Cubans had a check in his possession made out by Howard Hunt. That made me think of Mr. Colson. So I called Chuck over the weekend to ask about Hunt’s well-being, and Chuck sounded like he hardly knew the man. Said he hadn’t seen him in months. Said he couldn’t imagine how a thing like this could have occurred. Now, I’m not totally satisfied our Mr. Colson is telling all. Why don’t you have a little chat with him and find out what you can, and find out what happened to his friendship with Hunt?”

“I’ll try, John, but Chuck isn’t likely to tell me anything he won’t tell you.”

“Give him a call, anyway. And give your friend Kleindienst a call, too. Find out what he’s up to. See if you can find out how all this stuff from the Metropolitan Police is leaking to the newspapers.” Ehrlichman and Kleindienst had grown almost openly hostile to each other, and Ehrlichman often used others as go-betweens.

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Uh, listen, John,” I went on, thinking of what I had just learned. People were already calling me out of a compulsion to talk, and I too needed to confide in somebody. “Jeb Magruder just called me. He sounded shaky. He said Gordon Liddy was running the break-in. He said it was Liddy’s fault. That’s pretty strong stuff. Jeb wants me to talk to Liddy and find out what happened. I guess that’s a good idea?”

“I think that sounds fine.” No reaction. “Find out what he knows and call me back. I’ve got to gather up a little report for the party in Florida.” Haldeman and the President were returning from Key Biscayne that night. Ehrlichman hung up.

I sat back. Suddenly I felt calmer. I had a report to make, top priority, one stop away from the President. Somehow the assignment drove my anxiety into temporary retreat. I decided I would call Colson first, then Kleindienst, saving Liddy for last. The I.O. rang again.

“John, this is Gordon. I need to come over and see you.” It was Strachan, Haldeman’s tickler, excited. I didn’t want to hear it. I was riveted to my job for Ehrlichman, miles above Strachan’s level.

“Gordon, I’m tied up right now,” I said abruptly. “I just talked to Ehrlichman and I’ve got to do something for him right now. I’m trying to find out what happened on this Watergate thing. I’ll talk to you later.” I left him no room to protest, hung up, and dialed Colson on the I.O. before anybody else could call.

“Chuck, I just talked with Ehrlichman, and he asked me to look into this incident at the DNC. Howard Hunt’s name keeps coming up, and I wanted to ask—”

“For Christ’s sake! I talked to Ehrlichman about it over the weekend,” Chuck shouted angrily. He spat out words like a machine gun, giving off so much energy I imagined him running sprints around his office. “I told him I had no idea where Hunt was, or what he was doing! I haven’t seen Hunt in months! He’s off my payroll. He has been. I can’t believe Hunt’s involved in that Watergate thing, anyway. That’s the craziest goddamn thing I ever heard! I can’t believe any of it”

“Well, Chuck,” I interrupted, as firmly but mildly as I could, “what’s the story on Hunt’s relationship to you?”

“I hired him as a consultant for Ehrlichman,” he said, stressing the name.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, those guys were all out in California, and they wanted me to bring somebody in to work on the Pentagon Papers. So I sent Hunt over to Ehrlichman. Hell, he wasn’t even at the top of my list!”

“Chuck, you sent Hunt out to interview Dita Beard a few months ago, didn’t you? We worked on that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “and he wasn’t even around here then. I had to go find him. That’s the last time I remember seeing him. Look, I’m going through my files right now to get all the information. I’ll put it all together for you, and I’ll let you know what’s happening. But I don’t know what the hell Hunt’s doing. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Okay, Chuck. Let me know.”

“Oh, and, John, I’d like to have a talk with you and Ehrlichman.” His tone shifted. He became almost subdued. “I’ve got some things I’d like to go over with both of you about Hunt. I think we ought to have a meeting later.”

“All right. I’m gonna see John later today. I’ll raise it with him then. I’ll call you.”

“Right.” He hung up, and I brooded. Obviously, Chuck did not trust Ehrlichman to determine who had sponsored Hunt, and wanted me there as an observer. I called Kleindienst.

“Hello, Junior,” he said. “I can’t guess what you’re calling me about.”

“Yeah. Needless to say, there’s some interest over here in finding out what’s going on.”