Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (21 page)

The resentment boiled over when the President paid his first visit to the Reelection Committee offices. He gave a pep talk to the political employees, thanked them, and predicted victory, and his magic presence lifted their spirits. He did not so much as visit the Finance Committee, whose offices were on a separate floor. Within minutes of his departure, I received an angry call from Arden Chambers, Maurice Stans’s secretary.

“John, a lot of people over here are outraged,” she told me. “And so am I. The President didn’t even wave at our door. He excluded us. And we’re the ones who are getting all the bad press for the stupid things those people upstairs have done. We’re the ones who do all the hard work, and they get all the credit. I think you ought to know a lot of people over here are very upset.”

“Arden, I understand perfectly. I know just how you feel.” I knew that nothing I could say would allay her anger. I told her I would see what I could do and apologized profusely.

It was time for some firefighting. I called Haldeman on the I.O. It could be explosive, I told him, if the finance people got mad enough to go public. They didn’t know many of the Watergate details, but they surely knew what was going on both by instinct and by osmosis. I recommended a Presidential “stroking session.” Haldeman agreed and told me to call Chapin and arrange a visit to the White House for Finance Committee employees. The President would meet them personally in the Roosevelt Room, shake hands, slap a few backs, renew their loyalty.

In the midst of this small crisis, and several others, the Justice Department announced the first Watergate indictments on September 15.
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The fanfare was heavy; it had been preorchestrated. Kleindienst said the investigation was “one of the most intensive, objective, and thorough investigations in many years, reaching out to cities all across the United States as well as into foreign countries.” The Justice Department said, “We have absolutely no evidence to indicate that any others should be charged.”

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The new Reelection Committee chairman, Clark MacGregor,

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called on “those who have recklessly sought to connect others with the case” to “publicly apologize for their unfounded charges.” Senator Robert Dole, the Republican Party chairman, said the indictments proved “there is no evidence to substantiate any of the wild and slanderous statements McGovern has been making about many high officials in the Nixon Administration.” Congressman Gerald R. Ford, the House Republican leader, said the indictments reinforced his “understanding that none of the people in the White House, in positions of leadership in the party or [in] the Committee to Reelect the President were involved.”

I was pleased as I scanned the wire-service reports coming off the ticker machines down the hall from my office. They would be in every paper in the country by the next day, drowning out Larry O’Brien’s reported complaint that the investigation had not gone far enough. Phase one of the cover-up was a success. The doors that led to Magruder, Mitchell, and many others were closed, at least for the present. I went back to my office, where Jane greeted me with a startling message.

“The President wants to see you,” she said. “Right now. In the Oval Office.”

My stroking session, I figured, and a well-deserved one. As I headed toward the West Wing, I thought of my previous meetings with the President, in which I had been little more than an inert fixture as he signed his tax return, testamentary papers for his estate plan, or other legal documents. I used to joke that I was of far less concern to the President than the little bust of Lincoln he kept on his bookshelf. Other than for legal ceremonies, my contacts with the President had been fleeting and few. The only one I could remember during the previous year had been odd. An urgent call had summoned me to the Oval Office. I arrived, panting, and was ushered in. “John,” said the President, “a bunch of long-haired college newspaper editors are coming in here in a minute. You and I will be discussing the budget.” Aides were busy spreading budget documents out on his desk as the President fidgeted with his watch. I sat in silent bewilderment, I knew absolutely nothing about the budget.

“Oh, hi,” said the President in surprise when the editors filed in. “John Dean, my counsel, and I were just discussing the budget.” Then he gave a ten-minute performance on budget priorities and the complexities of government. The editors were ushered out, and so was I.

Later I talked to Haldeman. “Bob, why was I in that meeting?” I asked.

“Because the President thinks you look hippier,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“You’re shitting me!” I said, but I remembered the jokes about my Porsche and my refusal to wear an American-flag lapel pin when everyone else had eagerly followed the President’s lead.

“No, I’m not,” said Haldeman.

But after the Watergate indictments I was expecting to be treated with more dignity. A pat on the back, staged carefully to seem informal. Still, I wasn’t sure. For all I knew, the President might have some garden club in his office.

I was not prepared for what I found. Haldeman was slumped in a chair in front of the President’s desk, his yellow pad dangling from his hand rather than poised as usual for note taking. The President was reclining in his swivel chair at what seemed a precarious angle, his feet propped up on his desk to leave the Presidential heel marks. From his nearly supine position, the President looked at me through the V his shoes formed. I paused at the door, feeling like an intruder, and waited for Haldeman and the President to snap back into form. But they didn’t, and I walked hesitantly to a chair. I wouldn’t have been much more surprised by the atmosphere if the two of them had been wearing dresses. I was flattered to be so collegially received.

“Well, you had quite a day today, didn’t you?” the President said cordially, still glancing at me through his feet. “You got Watergate on the way, huh?”

“Quite a three months,” I responded, thinking back over the scramble. An awkward silent moment followed, because I didn’t know what to add.

Haldeman, noting my uneasiness, rescued me. “How did it all end up?” he began.

“I think we can say...” What can I say? I wondered. What should I say? I thought of the wire-service stories I had just read. “Well, at this point, the press is playing it just as we expected.”

“Whitewash?” Bob asked, suspecting the worst.

“No, not yet. The story right now—”

“It’s a big story,” the President interrupted. He swung his feet to the ground and brought his chair to its upright position. He had become intent and sounded optimistic. It was important to the cover-up strategy that the press play up Hunt and Liddy as big catches.

“That’s good,” said Bob, satisfied that the media were running the story as we wanted. “That, that takes the edge off whitewash really...which...that was the thing Mitchell kept saying, that to those in the country Liddy and, and, uh, Hunt are big men.”

“That’s right,” I agreed.

“Yeah. They’re White House aides,” said the President.

“That’s right,” I agreed again.

The President seemed pleased. He sensed his reelection firmly within his grasp, and he initiated a bull session, opening it with the use of wiretaps by his predecessors. He was toying with the idea that a juicy revelation of political wiretapping by a Democratic President might further bury Watergate, I thought. He and Haldeman discussed whether to use information we had that President Johnson had ordered the Republican campaign tapped in 1968. “The difficulty with using it, of course, is that it reflects on Johnson,” said the President.

“Right,” I agreed, trying to sound tough and knowledgeable about such matters. I was busy studying the tone and the mood of the President.

“He ordered it,” the President continued. “If it weren’t for that, I’d use it. Is there any way we could use it without reflecting on Johnson? Now, could we say, could we say that the Democratic National Committee did it? No. The FBI did the bugging, though.”

“That’s the problem,” said Haldeman.

“Is it going to reflect on Johnson or Humphrey?” I asked in an attempt to offer an acute question. Since Johnson was retired, I thought, maybe the bugging would reflect on his Vice-President, who was still quite active.

“Johnson,” said Haldeman emphatically. “
Humphrey
wouldn’t do it.” He intended it derisively.

“Humphrey didn’t do it?” I asked.

“Oh, hell, no,” said the President quickly.

“He was bugging Humphrey too,” cracked Haldeman, breaking into peals of laughter. Bob liked dark humor; the idea of crafty old LBJ bugging his own Vice-President set him off.

“Oh, goddam,” chuckled the President. I tried to join in the laughter, too, but I was embarrassed at having been so naive about Humphrey. It was clear the Senator was considered a babe in these woods.

I dropped out of the bugging discussion as the President told Haldeman to seek John Connally’s advice as to how President Johnson, his fellow Texan, might react. Then he asked Haldeman if the revelation would also tarnish the image of the FBI. Haldeman said it would, and a brief discussion followed on the dangers of insulting the Bureau. Finally the President dropped the idea. “It isn’t worth it, dammit,” he said. “It isn’t worth—the hell with it.”

The rap session turned to other subjects. I reported on the status of the civil suit Larry O’Brien had filed against Maurice Stans and the Reelection Committee. The case looked under control, I said. It had been assigned to Judge Charles Richey, a Nixon appointee, who was sending encouraging signals through our contacts. The judge, I reported, had been so accommodating as to urge Stans to file a counter suit against O’Brien for libel. Stans had done so.

Alexander Butterfield, the President’s executive-office manager, interrupted to tell the President he had a call waiting from Clark MacGregor. The President got on the phone and joked with MacGregor a bit before telling him to get on with the “big game,” the campaign, now that Watergate was contained with the indictments. Haldeman and I twiddled silently while he was on the phone. I looked out the window at the dusk. This has already been a long audience, I thought. I noticed a greenish light reflected through the windows of the Oval Office and realized it was the effect of the special Secret Service bullet proofing.

My attention snapped back when I heard the President sign off with MacGregor: “...Anyway, get a good night’s sleep. And don’t bug anybody without asking me. Okay?” He hung up with a laugh. When he had finished signing several papers Butterfield had placed before him, he turned to me but said nothing, apparently waiting for me to say something.

I figured the meeting must be about over, so I tried to wrap it up. “Three months ago, I would have had trouble predicting where we’d be today. I think that I can say that fifty-four days from now [Election Day] nothing will come crashing down to our surprise.” A pause.

“Say what?” mumbled the President, as if coming out of a dream. I realized that his mind had been off somewhere even though he had been looking directly at me. I repeated myself.

The President’s concentration returned. He leaned back in his chair, said a few words, and propped his feet up on the desk again. To my surprise, the bull session resumed. “Awfully embarrassing,” the President continued, shaking his head. “And, uh, but the way you, you’ve handled it, it seems to me, has been skillful, because you—putting your finger in the dikes every time that leaks have sprung here and sprung there.” Haldeman had, clearly filled him in on how busy I’d been. He knew I would relish such praise from the President.

We rambled on about the remaining trouble spots, including the bruised egos over at the Finance Committee, and the proposed “stroking session.” Suddenly, the President’s mood darkened. He sat up again and set his jaw tightly. “They should just behave, and recognize this, this is, this is war!” His voice was low, but anger spilled out. “We’re getting a few shots,” he continued. “It’ll be over. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side right now. Would you? I wouldn’t want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ position after this election.”

“No, no,” I agreed. Williams was representing Larry O’Brien in his lawsuit.

“None of these bastards,” the President said, trailing off into a vague but bitter passion.