Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (5 page)

I looked around. Ventilated air. Stored supplies. Beds. An appropriately Presidential desk flanked by flags. And a conference room with three built-in television sets, plus radio equipment and telephones everywhere. It looked like a President’s bomb shelter.

Bud said Ehrlichman found this an ideal command post for monitoring demonstrations, which puzzled me. It was remote, to say the least, and totally out of touch with what would be occurring on the streets. I conjured an image of “Field Marshal Ehrlichman,” whose interest in demonstrations Haldeman once likened to that of a firehouse Dalmatian at a blaze. I knew I wouldn’t use the shelter for monitoring demonstrations, although Haldeman had told me that that would be one of my responsibilities. The only time I ever returned there was for a secret screening of
Tricia’s Wedding
, a pornographic movie portraying Tricia Nixon’s wedding to Edward Cox, in drag. Haldeman wanted the movie killed, so a very small group of White House officials watched the cavorting transvestites in order to weigh the case for suppression. Official action proved unnecessary; the film died a natural death.

As Bud and I went past the offices of the White House staff members, I noticed furniture and files being moved. The White House, far more than any other government office, was in a state of perpetual internal flux. Offices were constantly exchanged and altered. One day I visited the President’s Congressional-liaison man, Bryce N. Harlow, in his first-floor West Wing office (which later belonged to Clark MacGregor and then to William E. Timmons) and found a team of workmen busy constructing a new wall where a door had once been. Bryce explained he had been forced to give up his private bathroom because the stairwell from the basement to the second floor was being made smaller so that Henry Kissinger’s office could be expanded. “In a way, I’m glad to know the place I used to shit will be Henry’s office,” he said with a wry smile. “That tells me who’s who around here.” Harlow was perhaps the only man in the White House who did not care about losing space; he was planning to leave anyway.

Everyone jockeyed for a position close to the President’s ear, and even an unseasoned observer could sense minute changes in status. Success and failure could be seen in the size, décor, and location of offices. Anyone who moved to a smaller office was on the way down. If a carpenter, cabinetmaker, or wallpaper hanger was busy in someone’s office, this was a sure sign he was on the rise. Every day, work men crawled over the White House complex like ants. Movers busied themselves with the continuous shuffling of furniture from one office to another as people moved in, up, down, or out. We learned to read office changes as an index of the internal bureaucratic power struggles. The expense was irrelevant to Haldeman. “For Christ’s sake,” he once retorted when we discussed whether we should reveal such expenses, “this place is a national monument, and I can’t help it if the last three Presidents let it go to hell.” Actually, the costs had less to do with the fitness of the White House than with the need of its occupants to see tangible evidence of their prestige.

Our tour ended and it was time to go back to my “temporary” EOB office and work. By all White House standards my office was shabby. The walls needed painting and the furniture looked like military discards. I was across and down the hall from Special Counsel Charles W. Colson, whose growing staff had lovely views of the White House and its tree-filled south lawn from their freshly decorated offices. From my window I could gaze on an interior asphalt courtyard filled with delivery trucks and parked cars plus the rear ends of air conditioners in other office windows.

I spoke with Larry Higby about this situation, which I felt did not befit a man with my title. “Larry, I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but I’m embarrassed to invite anyone to my office for a meeting, it’s such a dump. Also it’s sometimes hard to concentrate, listening to the urinals flush all day, since you’ve got me right beside the men’s room.”

“It’s only temporary,” he said. He agreed to have the walls painted and some decent furnishings delivered, but added a teaser: “Bob hasn’t decided where he wants to put you yet.” Then he dangled “possibilities” before me—nice big offices of people Haldeman might move out in order to move me in. I did not have to be told what was happening. I was being tested and my performance would determine what I would get. I was at the bottom of the ladder, and instinctively I began to climb.

For a thousand days I would serve as counsel to the President. I soon learned that to make my way upward, into a position of confidence and influence, I had to travel downward through factional power plays, corruption, and finally outright crimes. Although I would be rewarded for diligence, true advancement would come from doing those things which built a common bond of trust—or guilt—between me and my superiors. In the Nixon White House, these upward and downward paths diverged, yet joined, like prongs of a tuning fork pitched to a note of expediency. Slowly, steadily, I would climb toward the moral abyss of the President’s inner circle until I finally fell into it, thinking I had made it to the top just as I began to realize I had actually touched bottom.

Chapter Two: Firefighting

THE TESTS STARTED that first day at the White House. After a brief examination of my meager quarters, I had sat down at my desk. I didn’t have anything to do, but then my secretary brought me a sealed envelope with a small red tag. I asked her what it was. She had not opened it; it was stamped “CONFIDENTIAL,” and the red tag meant “priority.” Someone had been planning work for the new counsel. The cover memorandum was a printed form, with striking blue and red instructions filled in:

ACTION MEMORANDUM

FROM THE STAFF SECRETARY

LOG NO.:
P523

Date:
Friday, July 24, 1970

Time: 6:30
P.M.

Due Date:
Wednesday, August 5, 1970

Time:
2:00 P.M.

SUBJECT:
Request that you rebut the recent attack on the Vice-President.

An attached “confidential memorandum” said that a new muckraking magazine called
Scanlan’s Monthly
had published a bogus memo linking Vice-President Agnew with a top-secret plan to cancel the 1972 election and to repeal the entire Bill of Rights. Agnew had publicly denounced the memo as “completely false” and “ridiculous,” and the editors of
Scanlan’s
had

replied: “The Vice-President’s denial is as clumsy as it is fraudulent. The document came directly from Mr. Agnew’s office and he knows it.” My instructions were clear: “It was noted that this is a vicious attack and possibly a suit should be filed or a federal investigation ordered to follow up on it.”

“Noted” by whom? Since the memorandum was signed by John Brown, a member of Haldeman’s staff, I called him to find out. The “noter” was the President, I was told; he had scrawled my orders in the margin of his daily news summary. No one had to explain why the President’s name was not used. He was always to be kept one step removed, insulated, to preserve his “deniability.”

So this is my baptism, I thought. I was astounded that the President would be so angrily concerned about a funny article in a fledgling magazine. It did not square with my picture of his being absorbed in diplomacy, wars, and high matters of state. Was it possible that we
had
a secret plan to cancel the election and the Bill of Rights. I was embarrassed by the thought. Now I cannot look back on this episode without laughing, but then I was not at all loose about it. It was the President of the United States talking. Maybe he was right.

On the due date, I wrote my first memorandum to the President, explaining the hazards of a lawsuit and the wisdom of waiting to see what an FBI investigation produced. I thought the affair had been put to rest. Not so. Back came another action memorandum from the staff secretary. The President agreed with my conclusions, but he wasn’t yet content. “It was requested,” said the memorandum, “that as part of this inquiry you should have the Internal Revenue Service conduct a field investigation on the tax front.”

This was the “old Nixon” at work, heavy-handed, after somebody. I began to fret. How could anything be at once so troubling and so absurd? The President was asking me to do something I thought was dangerous, unnecessary, and wrong. I did nothing for several days, but the deadline was hard upon me. I couldn’t simply respond, “Dean opposes this request because it is wrong and possibly illegal.” I had to find some practical reason for doing the right thing or I would be gone. I called Bud Krogh several times, but he was out. Then I thought of my recent acquaintance, Murray Chotiner, and arranged to meet him.

“I need some counsel, Murray.”

“You’re the lawyer. You’re the one who is supposed to give counsel around here,” he said with a chuckle.

“I’m still trying to find the water fountains in this place,” I said. “Murray, seriously, I need some advice. The President wants me to turn the IRS loose on a shit-ass magazine called
Scanlan’s Monthly
because it printed a bogus memo from the Vice-President’s office about canceling the ‘seventy-two election and repealing the Bill of Rights.”

Murray laughed. “Hell, Agnew’s got a great idea. I hope he has a good plan worked out. It would save us a lot of trouble if we dispensed with the ‘seventy-two campaign.” Murray wasn’t taking my visit as seriously as I was. We joked about Agnew for a few minutes before I could get him to focus on my problem, and he had the answer. “If the President wants you to turn the IRS loose, then you turn the IRS loose. It’s that simple, John.”

“I really don’t think it’s necessary, Murray. The President’s already got Mitchell investigating it. The FBI, I guess.”
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“I’ll tell you this, if Richard Nixon thinks it’s necessary you’d better think it’s necessary. If you don’t, he’ll find someone who does.”

I was not convinced and said so, but nicely. “Okay, but let me ask you this, Murray. You’re a lawyer. Isn’t it illegal and therefore crazy to use the IRS to attack someone the President doesn’t like?”

“Not so,” he snorted. He stopped and retrieved the calm he rarely lost. “John, the President is the head of the executive branch of this damn government. If he wants his tax collectors to check into the affairs of anyone, it’s his prerogative. I don’t see anything illegal about it. It’s the way the game is played. Do you think for a second that Lyndon Johnson was above using the IRS to harass those guys who were giving him a hard time on the war? No sir. Nor was Lyndon above using the IRS against some good Republicans like Richard Nixon. I’ll tell you he damn near ruined a few.”

Murray was testy, or maybe defensive—I couldn’t decide. It was clear that he didn’t want to discuss the matter further. I thanked him and left. If I was going to play ball in Richard Nixon’s league, I would have to get over my squeamishness. I am not sure what I would have done if John J. Caulfield had not walked into my office.

Jack Caulfield could easily have been born in the mind of Damon Runyon instead of in New York City. He had moved up the ranks of the New York police force, from a street beat to detective, arriving at the White House after an assignment as candidate Nixon’s personal bodyguard in 1968. Bob Haldeman had assigned him to me without telling me why. Caulfield explained that he was White House liaison with the Secret Service and the local police, but his principal assignment was to investigate Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s conduct in the Chappaquiddick accident for John Ehrlichman.

Jack was a bountiful source of information. He knew what everybody was doing. He could tell you how to get a refrigerator or parking privileges and who was sleeping with whose secretary. And he wanted to help me find my bearings. He seemed a natural person to turn to with my IRS orders, and I decided to show him the memos. “How would you handle this assignment?” I asked.

“This isn’t any problem. I’ll take care of it for you with a phone call,” he answered confidently. He returned the next day to report that a tax inquiry would be fruitless because the magazine was only six months old and its owners had yet to file their first return. Being resourceful, however, he had asked the IRS to look into the owners themselves. “You can tell the President everything is taken care of,” he assured me.

“I’ve got a good one for you to pass along to the President,” Jack added proudly. His Treasury Department sources had noticed an authoritative article on U.S.-Mexico drug traffic published by
Scanlan’s
Monthly.
It would make excellent background reading for the President’s upcoming meeting with Mexican President Diaz Ordaz. I attached a copy of the article to my memo to the President, and was amused to hear that the article was removed before the memo landed on the President’s desk. No one in Haldeman’s office wanted to be responsible for passing along anything from a magazine the President hated so much.

I summarized the tax situation in my report. “The fact that
Scanlan’s
is a new entity does not make the tax inquiry very promising,” I concluded. “Accordingly, I have also requested that the inquiry be extended to the principal organizers and promoters of the publication.” Thus, within a month of coming to the White House, I had crossed an ethical line. I had no choice, as I saw it. The fact that I had not carried out the assignment myself eased my conscience slightly. I had no idea how Jack had done it so easily, nor did I ask, and I never found out what became of the IRS inquiry.

Scanlan’s
came back to plague me again the following month. This time it was charging the White House with inviting some “labor racketeers” to the President’s famous “hardhat luncheon.” I was asked to have the FBI check into the magazine’s charges and reported back that the labor leaders were indeed shady characters. Shortly after this report
, Scanlan’s
went out of business, its editors unaware of how much trouble they stirred up at the White House.

Soon Haldeman was testing me again, with a sensitive task regarding what was to be known as the “Huston Plan.” Thomas Charles Huston, its patron, was the second person Haldeman assigned to my staff, again with no explanation. He was as mysterious and complex as the label on his plan: “Top Secret/Handle Via COMINT Channels Only.” Haldeman called me to his office to explain that Tom Huston had been charged with responsibility to revise domestic intelligence gathering. Every official involved agreed with the plan except FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had irritated the President by blocking its implementation. Huston could do nothing further, for he had offended the powerful Hoover. My assignment was to get the plan implemented.

Before I read the plan, I thought there was nothing more than a personality clash in my way, and the fact that Huston had offended Hoover was no surprise. I had discovered his abrasiveness the hard way when I once asked Tom to draft a routine memorandum to the Attorney General asking for some information. The memo was sent, over my signature, to the Justice Department, where it exploded. Kleindienst had called me. “Listen, Junior,” he yelled, “I don’t like having to make this call, but John Mitchell is damn upset. I’m surprised at you acting like the rest of those assholes up there!” He then read me the memorandum Huston had drafted. It was curt and quick; I seemed to be ordering John Mitchell around like a deckhand. Horrified, I told Kleindienst I had signed the memo without reading it and assured him I would start reading my mail.

Obviously I now had to read the plan, but Huston wouldn’t give me a copy until I had been given security clearance. The clearance procedure was hardly the ritual swearing to secrecy I anticipated, and it would have been funny if everyone had not been so solemn. Two CIA officials came to my office and told Jane Thomas, my secretary, and me that we had to keep the plan locked in a combination safe; we could not move these classified materials without a guard to accompany us; and, finally, we should not talk into lamps, flowerpots, or pictures if we were in a foreign hotel. Bugs, you know.

With my “Top Secret/COMINT Channel” status, I received the plan. The President, I discovered, had ordered removal of most of the legal restraints on gathering intelligence about left-wing groups. He had authorized wiretaps, mail intercepts, and burglaries. These were the hottest papers I had ever touched. The plan had the full support of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council of everyone except Hoover’s FBI. Hoover had footnoted the document with an objection that the risk of each illegal method was greater than the potential return.

Tom Huston came to brief me. With rabid conviction, he told me the nation would surely crumble from within if the government failed to deal with the revolutionaries and anarchists who were bent on destroying it. He was incensed that the President’s orders could be blocked by Hoover merely because Hoover “wanted to ride out of the FBI on a white horse.” There was nothing really new about the plan, he assured me, for the FBI used to do those things regularly when Hoover was younger.

After Huston left, I sat back to study my predicament. I was suspicious of his arguments because he was trying so hard to sell them. He had a vested interest in finding anarchy at the doors. (In fact none of the dire predictions in his report ever came true.) But I was no expert in internal security, and I knew that my arguments on the merits of the plan would convince no one. The methods would never hold up legally, and I was sensitive to my personal risk if I were involved in the decision to use them. I would have preferred to let someone else handle this one, but Haldeman had selected me. Still, I wondered, how did Haldeman expect
me
to get J. Edgar Hoover to reverse himself?

After casting about for a few days, I decided that John Mitchell offered the only way out, and I arranged to see him on September 17. When I arrived at his office, he had just talked to the CIA representatives. To my relief, Mitchell said he had already made his decision. He was going to kill the plan somehow.

“John, the President loves all this stuff,” he said slowly, “but it just isn’t necessary.” As he searched out loud for some sort of compromise, I was grateful to him for assuming my burden. He would take the heat at the White House, not I. We decided to endorse the idea of an interagency Intelligence Evaluation Committee, a toothless version of the Huston Plan. It was, in effect, a study group. Mitchell assumed the task of persuading Hoover to join the IEC as a SOP to the White House. This took some doing, for Hoover had, in a fit of pique, cut off all communications with the other intelligence agencies. While Mitchell presented the IEC to Hoover as meaningless, I was to present it to the White House as a promising first step. True, I would say, it was not the Huston Plan, but it would at least get Hoover back in harness. My report was received without joy, but no wrath fell on me. The Huston Plan was laid to rest, and Huston himself soon left the White House in disgust.
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