Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (20 page)

Chapter Five: Containment

LATE IN JUNE 1972 I was summoned to Haldeman’s office and found Ehrlichman there as well. Ehrlichman asked my advice as to whether Mitchell and Magruder should be removed from the Reelection Committee. I felt a surge of self-importance—unnoticed, I hoped—at the thought of sitting in judgment on a man of such consequence as Mitchell.

“It would be presumptuous of me to pass judgment on John Mitchell, but...” I began, and I cited persuasive reasons for removing both men which rested on a feeling that they might both be indicted.

A few days later Mitchell was gone. I was overruled on Magruder; my superiors feared that if fired he might break and end any chance for a successful cover-up.

I became possessed of the toughness I imagined generals display when called upon to sacrifice divisions and battalions for the overall effort. It is part of the game at the higher levels, I thought. And it is part of the game not to take such decisions personally. I began to take privilege for granted. I began addressing Mitchell by his first name, he was no longer “Mr. Mitchell.” I started calling Haldeman regularly on his I.O. instead of going through the White House switchboard. Haldeman’s staff switched me into the citadel of the executive mess, where I ate with the select potentates. White House functionaries sensed the new stature of the counsel. They no longer questioned my requests for air-travel expenses or limousine service. I was above the bureaucratic hassles.

Visions of my new role, and the heights it might lead to, extended to my personal life. I broke off with Maureen Biner, the woman I had been living with for the past two years. Our relationship and my love for her had been a godsend to me, but she wanted to get married and I did not. Not now. I was enticed by my prospects as a bachelor; I wanted no hindrances to my career. Maureen went home to California, and I resolved to conquer as many new women as time and power would grant. Henry Kissinger once remarked on power’s properties as an aphrodisiac, and I found it true. At the time, it seemed like just compensation for the lonely burdens of state.

As the cover-up progressed through July and August, I was struck by its tremendous political success. Secret White House polls indicated that the Watergate break-in had not made the slightest dent in the President’s popularity. Most voters questioned did not know about it, and the few who did said they didn’t care. Public consciousness of the Watergate scandal was light-years removed from the reality I lived in the White House, and I conceived my efforts as having helped keep it that way. I was keeping Richard Nixon in office by keeping control of the Watergate investigations. We were way ahead of the FBI and the Justice Department, and, just as importantly, we had prevented their probes from uncovering any of the “other matters” on the fringes of Watergate. We were even further ahead of the press.

The elementary fact that the break-in had been financed with campaign funds did not hit the newspapers until August, and by that time we were prepared with the explanation of “diverted” funds. Hunt and Liddy were not placed at the scene of the break-in until late August, by which time we were prepared to make the claim that they were the ones who had diverted campaign funds to illegitimate uses. Many reporters seemed privately skeptical of this implausible story, and the White House press corps roasted Ziegler with hostile questions each day. I was amazed at how small a part of the hostility that Ziegler absorbed made it into print; the press seemed reluctant to take on the power of a President. The papers had carved up Senator George McGovern, the Democratic nominee, because his running mate had undergone psychiatric treatment. The Democratic campaign had fallen into disarray. I was sitting in an Administration in which a dozen high officials were guilty of criminal violations that I knew of, and I watched the President’s lead in the polls climb steadily: roughly twenty points ahead in August and still rising.

On August 29, 1972, I was in San Clemente to report to Haldeman and Ehrlichman on cover-up matters. By then this seemed almost routine. The President was holding a news conference that day on the lawn of his Pacific estate. I was in my hotel room as it went on the networks, and I turned on my television set, listening with one ear as I worked. I remember hearing the President announce that he would not engage in televised campaign debates with Senator McGovern because such debates might be divisive to the nation in a time of delicate negotiations on the Vietnam War. This, I knew, was part of the “high profile” campaign strategy: he would ignore Senator McGovern, as he did Watergate, for as long as possible. The press conference dragged on through other matters of little concern to me. My attention snapped into focus, however, when a reporter asked a very polite question about Watergate: “Mr. President, wouldn’t it be a good idea for a special prosecutor, even from your standpoint, to be appointed to investigate the contribution situation and also the Watergate case?”

I shifted quickly to a bed in front of the television. The President explained that a special prosecutor was absolutely unnecessary, because there were no fewer than five investigations already under way. He referred to the FBI “full field investigation,” to inquiries under way by the Department of Justice, the grand jury, and the General Accounting Office, and to an incipient investigation by the House Banking and Currency Committee under the chairmanship of Representative Wright Patman of Texas. All these investigations, he said, naming them once more, had received “at my direction” the “total cooperation...of not only the White House, but also all agencies of the government.” I was stunned that the President had not ducked the question but had instead plowed into it with such bold lies. These investigations, plus several others, were precisely the ones I was spending most of my waking hours juggling and deflecting, containing them with stories and delay tactics. For a moment, I wondered whether the President might not really know what I was doing. My desire to believe any President, especially my own, was strong. No, I thought, Haldeman and Ehrlichman would never let him make such a strong statement without detailed discussions of its impact. This was hardball, it would probably work. I damn near fell off the bed at what I heard next. “In addition to that,” the President continued, “within our own staff, under my direction, the counsel to the President, Mr. Dean, has conducted a complete investigation of all leads which might involve any present members of the White House staff or anybody in the govemment. I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.”

How about that? The President was mentioning my name! On national television. That, I thought, was a real vote of confidence. He was saying I could pull off the cover-up. I was ecstatic to be so recognized by the President before the world. I had never been certain the President even remembered he had a fellow named Dean as his counsel, given the negligible contact I had with him. Obviously, he knew how I had been busting my ass to keep this mess from spilling all over everyone, including him.

In a daze, I listened to the President push coolly and brazenly on to bury the Watergate affair as a campaign issue. John Mitchell, he said, had launched his own intensive Watergate investigation before retiring as campaign chairman. Careful, I thought, that might be going too far. He added that Clark MacGregor, Mitchell’s successor, was continuing the probe. All these investigations were laudable, said the President, because “we want all the facts brought out.” Then he concluded, “What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.”

I turned off the television. What a performance. That’s what it takes to be on the first team. I thought of the millions of viewers who must have been nodding in agreement. What a reality warp. I knew its epic dimensions. I also knew that this knowledge was the key to my present success.

The fact that I had never heard of a “Dean investigation,” much less conducted one, did not seem important then. I was basking in the glory of being publicly perceived as the man the President had turned to with a nasty problem like Watergate. The President’s move suited me fine. Damn shrewd politically too, I thought, particularly the carefully worded touch he had given it by referring to those “presently employed.” That was his fallback position in case former employees like Mitchell or Magruder should be indicted. We were trying desperately to prevent that.

The door to Ziegler’s office from the hallway to the Press Room was always locked. Atop his other door, the working entrance, he had installed two small lights, one red and one white, mounted on a little gray electrical box attached to the framing. Ron controlled his stop light system with a switch on his desk, and anyone who trespassed through a red light could expect an outburst. I liked nothing better than to stick my head in his door when the red light was lit, wait for him to snarl and paw like a foul-humored lion, close the door, and go on about my business after a good laugh.

Shortly after the President’s announcement of the “Dean investigation,” I was summoned by a Ziegler secretary and given a “white light” reception. I entered, sat down, and waited for the press secretary to finish his telephone call.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?” I asked with a smirk.

“You want a drink?” he said, ignoring my sarcasm.

“No, it’s against the law to drink in federal buildings,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit,” he retorted as he got up to fix himself a Scotch. He flipped on the red-light switch and then zapped on his two televisions with his remote-control gadget. It was almost time for the evening network news.

“I’m getting a lot of heat out there about your investigation,” he said, shaking his head toward the Press Room. “They want to read your report. They want to know when it was finished and who you talked to. Tell me, how did you report to the President?”

“Ron, I didn’t.”

He nodded. “Well, can I say it’s an oral report?”

“Ron, there’s no report.”

“Well...” he paused. “Can I say there’s a report still in progress? Are you still working on it?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, I don’t think I can just keep saying it was an internal study,” he declared plaintively. “How should I handle it?”

“That’s what you get paid that high salary for. You know as much about this report as I do.” I left. Ehrlichman had long ago instructed me to tell Ziegler nothing, and I no longer feared retaliation from Ziegler for curt behavior. A touch of hubris had set in.

But there was a seed of doubt. Ziegler talked with me several times over the next week as he ducked, deflected, and stonewalled a barrage of press inquiries about the “Dean investigation.” I began to have second thoughts about being publicly identified as the man who had established White House innocence on Watergate.

I raised the issue with Fielding. “Fred, let me ask you something. You know how this place operates. Do you think I’m being set up on this thing?”

“No,” he replied. A perplexed look came across his face. “What do you mean?” Fred had been kidding me about “getting on with” the Dean investigation, and ribbing me about my sudden notoriety. He knew I liked it.

“Well, I’m not sure I like being thrown out in front like this. If something goes wrong, I could be the fall guy.” I was thinking of Ehrlichman; I was certain that the President’s announcement had been his idea.

“I don’t think I’d worry about it, John,” Fred said seriously. “It’s just a PR move, like the death penalty statement.” He was referring to a previous press conference at which the President, when questioned on the Supreme Court’s death penalty decision, prefaced his answer by stating he had “just conferred with the counsel, Mr. Dean.” He had not, of course, conferred with me and he never did, but no harm had come from the remark. I took Fred’s advice and repressed my concern. I had no time for it, anyway.

The cover-up blistered on, with me throwing water on it. Each day brought threats, dramas, and more legal strategies. Clandestine conversations with Kalmbach and LaRue about hush money. Nervous sessions with Pat Gray, during which he would hand me his personal attaché case filled with FBI reports. Conversations with Paul O’Brien and Kenneth W. Parkinson, the Reelection Committee lawyers who were fighting to stall discovery proceedings in a civil suit filed by Larry O’Brien. Constant messages between Mitchell and the White House. Crisis calls from Colson and Mardian. Coaching sessions for the witnesses being interviewed by FBI agents or paraded before the grand jury. Reports from Henry Petersen on the status of the criminal case.

In late August, when the press uncovered the source of the money used to pay for the break-in, and the Reelection Committee’s Finance Committee became the target of a long string of stories, its chairman, Maurice H. Stans, was named a principal defendant in O’Brien’s civil suit. Treasurer Hugh Sloan was under attack for having passed money to Liddy on Stans’s authority. Former general counsel Gordon Liddy was being painted as a wild man, a notion that was not discouraged by the White House. We wanted Liddy to sound like a man strange enough to have pulled Watergate off on his own.
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The strategy worked, but the cumulative effect of the critical stories on the Finance Committee created “human problems” among the aides and secretaries. The Finance Committee became tainted. People were ashamed to say they worked there. Many of them grew resentful of the protection given the political people at the Reelection Committee, such as Magruder. Finance Committee workers generally feel trampled upon in campaigns, anyway. They watch the political people spend their hard earned cash like water, taking all the credit, always demanding more. We suspected that most of our adverse press leaks were coming from disgruntled Finance Committee employees.