Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (48 page)

“
Laughter sounds insincere
.” No forced laughs. If something funny did happen, which I doubted, a genuine laugh might push its way to the surface. Laughing to be polite, or to make light of something, as I had tried to do on the Cronkite
show, was bad. It looked and sounded insincere, and it was. People tend to think that somebody telling the truth will be calm about it.

“
Too many ‘you knows
.’” These came from starting to answer before I had thought out what I was going to say. “You knows” are sound fillers. Think, I told myself. Don’t answer a question until you know the answer you’re prepared to give.

“
Shaggy look
.” I needed a haircut when I did the Cronkite
interview. I always needed a haircut, it seemed. I would have to get my hair trimmed.

The executive session on Monday, June 18, was held in a Capitol office. We had just started over procedural matters when the buzzer signaled a vote on the Senate floor, and the senators had to leave. Charlie, Bob, and I waited in a small, windowless hideaway office. Thirty minutes later the session resumed, but we were soon asked to step out of the room again. Another thirty minutes passed as Charlie, Bob, and I took shifts pacing the floor. Then Sam Dash called Charlie and Bob out of the room and explained that the committee was voting to postpone my appearance for a week. Leonid Brezhnev
, the Russian head of state, was coming to Washington, and the White House had passed word to the Senate leadership that my appearance might not be convenient for the President.

Suddenly the postponement seemed very attractive. I was ready for the inevitable, but I did not want it to happen. That night I took Mo out to dinner, to a restaurant near our home, something I hadn’t done in many months. Bob used the extra week for more press-relations work, and I did several on-the-record interviews. Charlie discussed with his friend Jim Neal a worry that he did not wish to discuss with me. Then he asked if Mo and I had any objections to having U.S. marshals live in our house and guard me during my testimony. It was not until they arrived that I thought about the implications of protection. I would live with the marshals night and day in the years to come.
5
*

Late Saturday, June 23, I remembered the haircut. After scouting out three different shopping centers in suburban Virginia, I found a barbershop.

“Cut it nice and clean, please.”

“Yes, sir.” The barber busied himself at the task as I sat silently. “What do you think of these Watergate hearings?” he finally asked.

“They’re pretty interesting, but I haven’t been able to see much of them.”

“I’ll say they’re interesting. I’m bringing my TV set to the shop next week. I want to see this guy Dean get his butt kicked.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be something,” I said. “We’ll find out what the squealer has to say for himself.”

“Right. You know, I can’t imagine a guy lying that way about President Nixon. The guy is crazy, maybe?”

“Could be.”

The barber finished the haircut. “See you soon,” he told me in a friendly manner.

“Sooner than you think, probably Monday!”

Chapter Ten: On Camera

CAPITOL HILL POLICEMEN LED US IN a processional through the subway passage that joins the two Senate office buildings—Sam Dash and his deputy James Hamilton
first, Mo and me right behind, then Charlie and Bob, flanked by two marshals from my protection detail, with a plainclothes police officer following. We walked silently and in formation, like soldiers. I felt as if I were being led to the electric chair.

When we arrived at the old Senate Caucus Room, shortly before ten o’clock, it was packed with people, television cameras, and klieg lights. A buzz passed through the room as we entered. I tried to block it out. I heard my heart pounding hard and I felt that tingling sensation run up and down my spine; it was alternately pleasant and excruciating. I was worried that I would have to go to the bathroom every five minutes. Behind my plastic smile, I had to keep reassuring myself that the first day would be easy. All I had to do was read a short book—my 245 page opening statement. The work was already done. I was thankful that I would not have to do any thinking.

Senator Ervin administered the oath, and it was time to begin. I had planned to offer a few ad-lib remarks before diving into the dry narrative, but the words did not come easily. “First of all, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Vice-Chairman and members of the committee,” I said, scanning the faces of the seven senators before me, “I sincerely wish I could say it is my pleasure to be here today, but I think you can understand why it is not.” I had intended this as an ice-breaker, and I waited for a senator to make some lighthearted welcoming comment, but there was no reaction, not even an understanding look. Sam Dash leaned forward soberly and told me to speak louder into the microphone.

I started again, haltingly. “It is a very difficult thing for me to testify about other people. It is far more easy for me to explain my own involvement in this matter. The fact that I was involved in obstructing justice. The fact that I assisted another in perjured testimony. The fact that I made personal use of funds that were in my custody. It is far easier to talk about these things myself than to talk about what others did. Some of these people I will be referring to are friends. Some are men I greatly admire and respect. And particularly with reference to the President of the United States, I would like to say this: it is my honest belief that while the President was involved, he did not realize or appreciate at any time the implications of his involvement. And when the facts come out, I hope the President is forgiven.”

I paused. This time the words had spilled out. I was apologizing for what I would say about the President. The squealer’s fear was still very much on my mind, and so was Charlie’s admonition against self-serving testimony. I realized, however, how difficult it would be to give a convincing account of my motivation. Even confession seemed self-serving. My conflicting emotions bounced off each other like balloons. It was a relief to turn to the facts, to my prepared text.

Sustained by a diet of throat lozenges and water, I droned on for nearly three hours before the lunch break. Our group trooped through the crowd back to Dash’s office, where I lay down and breathed like a fighter between rounds. Dash appeared a few minutes later with a glowing report on the soundings he had taken about my testimony. No one was going to sleep, he said. Several senators’ offices had sent word that their staffs had suspended work for the day to listen. Sam was excited. He painted a picture of millions of viewers doing the same thing, as if I were FDR delivering one of his fireside chats. “Everything looks great, John,” he concluded, “but I wanted to ask what you were trying to say at the beginning. It sounded to me, you know, like you were—“

“Like he was pulling his punches,” Charlie interrupted bluntly. His mouth was full of cheeseburger, which he had picked over like a health inspector before daring a bite. Charlie hates junk food.

“Eat your lunch, Charles,” I retorted. Buoyed by Sam’s report, I was in no mood for one of Charlie’s sermons. “Sam, I said what I felt. It’s that simple.”

Sam looked skeptical. “You don’t mean to tell me you think Nixon didn’t know the legal implications of what he was doing, do you?”

“No, I was talking about how he slipped into this mess like everybody else...”

“Get off that pussyfooting line,” Charlie snorted again. He was fingering through a box of french fries. I looked at him sourly. He laughed. The lunch break soon ended.

To my amazement, I managed to finish reading the entire statement in one day. Mo and I watched a brief segment of the rerun on public television that night. I assessed my performance against the notes from the Cronkite
interview and nursed my aching neck, which had cramped during the hours of leaning over the witness table toward the microphone. Sleep was fitful.

Sam Dash began the cross-examination the next morning. His questions were soft and mushy—long-winded recitals of my statement, with tag lines asking me if I agreed with his summaries. “That is correct,” I answered repeatedly. This is too easy, I thought, trying to stay poised for anything. But Dash’s friendly probing put me in a thoughtless state, and he caught me badly off balance at the end.

“I guess you are fully aware, Mr. Dean,” he said crisply, “of the gravity of the charges you have made under oath against the highest official of our land, the President of the United States?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied softly. But the question struck like a dart. I felt my control loosening.

“And, being so aware, do you still stand on your statement?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions,” Dash announced, and settled back in his chair.

The silence further unnerved me. Dash’s summary and his precipitous exit had been too stark, and I felt compelled to say something. “I might add this, Mr. Dash,” I said. “I realize it is almost an impossible task if it is one man against the other that I am up against. And it is not a very pleasant situation...” My voice trailed off. I knew I was choking up, feeling alone and impotent in the face of the President’s power. I took a deep breath to make it look as if I were thinking; I was fighting for control. I ground my teeth and squeezed the pen I held in my hands, damn near breaking it. You cannot show emotion, I told myself. The press will jump all over it as a sign of unmanly weakness. I thought of how Senator Muskie’s campaign had collapsed after he had cried briefly in New Hampshire. “...But I can only speak what I know to be the facts, and that is what I am providing this committee.”

“Mr. Dean, do you want to take a break?” Senator Ervin asked in a grandfatherly tone. His question alarmed me. I was sure I had not betrayed my state of mind, but apparently the Senator had sensed something wrong. The chairman’s offer was kind, but I fought immediately to resist it. Accepting his offer would be an admission of weakness.

“I am here at the will of the committee,” I replied stoically, “and whatever the chair would like.”

“We will proceed, then,” Senator Ervin said, and he recognized Fred Thompson, Dash’s Republican counterpart, for cross-examination.

“Mr. Dean, you have, of course, made some serious accusations with regard to the cover-up of criminal activities,” Thompson began. “And we have heard other testimony about the cover-up of certain criminal activities. And, of course, the responsibility for prosecuting these criminal activities did lie with the Department of Justice...”

This will be my first major test, I thought as Thompson drawled on. I had still been in the White House when he was selected minority counsel, and all we had been able to learn about him was that he had handled a lot of moonshine cases as an undistinguished assistant U.S. attorney in Tennessee. He was a young political crony of Senator Baker
, and Haldeman had been irritated at our failure to obtain a more experienced Republican counsel to help keep a lid on the committee’s investigation. That failure was a comforting thought now, but I was still apprehensive about Thompson. Where was he going with his speech about the Justice Department?

“I would like to ask you a few questions based upon some of your testimony yesterday,” he continued, “concerning contacts with Mr. Petersen.” He started grilling me on my dealings with Henry during the cover-up. Instantly my back went up. I realized how shrewdly Thompson had chosen his line of questioning: he wanted me to accuse Petersen of crimes, because Henry would be in an excellent position to destroy my credibility. A man widely respected by both Republicans and Democrats in government, Petersen was as yet unsullied by Watergate. He was, as well, in charge of the Criminal Division at Justice. If I angered him with my testimony, he could make things more difficult for me in the criminal cases ahead. I was already standing alone against the President, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell; I wanted no part of Henry Petersen. Thompson knew this; I figured he was trying to push me out on a limb.

From the thrust of his questions, it seemed to me that Thompson had interviewed Petersen and was fishing for testimony that might cause Henry to accuse me of perjury to protect himself. I sparred with Thompson evasively, volunteering nothing. Fortunately, he did not know the precise questions to ask. Henry, I gathered, had understandably failed to tell Thompson of areas in which he might have compromised himself during the cover-up. I was able easily to deflect the questions, but I worried about appearing vague and uncooperative. Thompson had me on a tightrope, and he seemed to know how to shake the wire.

Suddenly he switched targets and started asking me about Ziegler. Had I lied to Ziegler? Was he involved in the cover-up, too? Another attempt to pull a marginal figure into my charges, I thought. He wanted me to overstate my case. Or at least he wanted me to look as if I were reaching out to drag everyone in the Administration down. I wanted to stick to the charges in my prepared statement. They were more than enough. Again I parried his questions. And again I thought I was successful because Thompson did not know the right ones to ask. I imagined Haldeman and Ehrlichman grinning at their television sets somewhere, watching me squirm, applauding Thompson’s efforts to push me into vulnerable territory. Thompson had me rattled already.

Then he switched directions. “Mr. Dean, let me ask you a few questions about your actions after the Watergate incident by asking about your own personal involvement,” he said. “I hope that I am not appearing to be badgering you in any way...” I flinched. Now he is going to bear down, I thought. “...But I’m sure you understand that your actions and motivations are very relevant?” He looked to me for an expression of agreement, and I looked back at him across thirty feet of television lights. All the sentimentality of the Dash interlude had vanished, and my survival instincts allowed me to concentrate solely on Thompson. They also told me I had to strike back or Thompson would trip me up disastrously.

“Yes,” I replied firmly. “In fact, if I were still at the White House, I would probably be feeding you the questions to ask the person who’d be sitting here.” I stared straight at him. Now he flinched.

“If I were here—as I am—” Thompson said, scrambling to regain his equilibrium, “I would have responded as I have responded. That I do not need to be fed questions by anybody.” I had put him on the defensive. Good.

“Don’t get cocky just ‘cause you hit the guy pretty good,” Charlie whispered from behind. He was right. I eased off, and so did Thompson. He brought his questions to a close without doing further damage. I figured he would save his ammunition for his final round of cross-examination.

Senator Ervin recognized Herman E. Talmadge
, the easygoing Georgia Democrat. I knew that Talmadge
’s colleagues in the Senate considered him one of their brightest members, but I did not expect him to be a skilled interrogator. I had pegged him as a behind-the scenes man without great forensic talent. Wrong. Talmadge
seemed to have a divining rod pointed toward all the questions I had trouble answering, and he bore in on them relentlessly.

“What makes you think that your credibility is greater than that of the President, who denies what you have said?” he asked.

I floundered. “Well, Senator, I have been asked to come up here and tell the truth...” I hesitated and sighed. I was winging it. “You are asking me a public-relations question, really, in a sense. Why should I have greater credibility than the President of the United States?” I repeated his question. I couldn’t say what I was thinking: Nixon is a goddam liar, and if you put us both on the box you’d find out who’s lying. All I could add was, “I’m telling you what I know. I’m telling you just as I know it.”

I felt that my answer had been inadequate, and, by the look on his face, so did Talmadge
. He pressed on. “Now, you are testifying, I believe, under use immunity that this committee has granted you?”

“That is correct.” I braced myself for an attack on my motives.

“You would not be here testifying today had we not granted that use immunity, would you?”

“I would probably be before the prosecutors downtown,” I dodged. He would never believe me if I said I would have testified without immunity.

“Now, you refused to testify before the grand jury, I believe, did you not?”

“That is correct.” Talmadge
was not going to let me get away with anything, including my evasive answer about being “before the prosecutors.”

“You pleaded the Fifth Amendment there?”