Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (55 page)

Charlie had barely begun to speak when the judge interrupted him testily. The motion was soon denied. Charlie eased back helplessly.

“Mr. Dean, will you step up here,” Sirica commanded. I walked forward. “I ask you, Mr. Dean, if you wish to make a statement. I will listen to anything you have to say.” He gazed at me sternly.

I had thought about my final words for weeks, written long drafts, rehearsed mentally, and had finally decided that there was nothing I could add that would make any difference. I knew that my sentence was already typed neatly on the paper in the judge’s hand.

I felt my knees tremble, but I was surprised to hear my voice sounding quite even and natural. “Your honor, I’ve just a few words as I stand here at the mercy of the court. The only thing I would ask for is your compassion and understanding.” Okay, John, that’s enough begging. Now tell him you know you’re a criminal. “I came in here last October nineteenth and admitted my guilt. I have done wrong. I realize the wrong I have done. What bothers me most is I was involved in corruption of government and misuse of high office. Realizing to say I’m sorry is really not enough, I have tried for about the last eighteen months to do everything I can to right the wrongs.” I stopped. End it. The judge is in a hurry. “And regardless of how this court judges me, I will continue on the same course. Thank you.”

Sirica put his glasses on and began reading from the paper in front of him. “In Criminal Case Number 886-73, the court sentences the defendant to be incarcerated for a period of not less than one year nor more than four years in an institution to be...”

Reporters fell over each other running for the doors, and it seemed to me that I heard each comment, each footstep, each piece of shuffled paper. It was as if someone else were being sentenced. Numbers: one and four. I must hear the rest of what Sirica had to say. Maybe he would suspend sentence. But the judge had stopped because of the din. The clerk rapped loudly with his fist on the side of the jury box and called for order.

Sirica continued, “The court will recommend that the defendant serve his sentence in a federal minimum-security institution such as Allenwood
, Pennsylvania; Danbury, Connecticut; or Lompoc, which I understand is in Southern California; or in some similar institution...

“As I indicated,” Judge Sirica said as he took off his glasses, “the court will grant the defendant until September third, Tuesday, September third, to get his personal affairs in order, at which time he will surrender himself to the United States marshal...”

The judge left the bench, and the courtroom emptied as if there were an air raid. A deputy marshal led me and Charlie through a back door. Charlie asked if I could use a telephone to call my wife. I felt the way I had once after crashing in a small airplane—my mind was racing to figure out what was happening, not realizing that I was in shock.

I collapsed into a chair. “Wait a minute, Charlie. I can’t call Mo yet.” I was absorbing Sirica’s words. “He threw the book at me! The most he could have given me was five years, and he gave me four. Why’d he do that?”

“I don’t understand it,” Charlie said, over and over. He paced the room. “This is my fault, John. I should never have let you plead to Sirica. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t understand.” Charlie was as shaken by the sentence as if it were his own.

“How can he do that?” I asked plaintively. “I figured I’d get something like Krogh—six to eighteen months, maybe a year at the most. He hit me harder than Magruder. Even Colson didn’t get the sentence I got. It can’t be, Charlie.”

“You’ve got to be realistic, John,” he said. “You’ve got to realize that you’re going to be in jail for a year or two years or maybe three. We’ve got to be realistic.”

“I can’t tell Mo that, Charlie. It would kill her.”

He stopped pacing, and we exchanged desperate looks. “Listen,” Charlie said, “we’ve got ninety days from today to file a motion for reduction of sentence. Maybe the bastard will reconsider. He knows you’re the key witness in the cover-up trial.”

With this thread of hope, I called Mo. I misdialed our home number twice. Neither my hands nor my head was working. Finally I got through.

“Sweetheart—”

“How could he do that?” Mo shrieked hysterically. She was sobbing, out of control. It was less than ten minutes since Sirica had pronounced sentence, but Mo had already heard the flash bulletin on the radio in California.

“Wait a minute,” I begged. “Wait a minute.” Then I raised my voice to try to get through louder than her crying. Conversation was impossible. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve got ninety days to file a motion to reduce sentence, and Charlie is optimistic...”

“Oh my God, John! How can he do that?”

It was useless to talk. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart,” I shouted. “I’ll talk to you about it when I get home.” I hung up. Charlie was looking away.

Deputy Marshal Bud McPherson
, still in charge of protecting me, came into the office. He expressed sympathy and warned that an army of reporters was hunting me down. We left Charlie and fled down Judge Sirica’s back elevator into the basement garage. Bud drove out at top speed, almost running over a camera crew, and we headed toward Virginia to hide until it was time for my flight to California. Within blocks of the courthouse, Bud realized we were being followed by two men on motorcycles. They were press scouts, equipped with radios. Bud tried to lose them as he sped toward the U.S. marshal’s office in Alexandria. He parked the car conspicuously on the street, and we ran into the office. We hoped to duck out the back into another car before the scouts could summon the other reporters.

CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl
’s car screeched to a halt near the scouts just as we were leaving. The Alexandria deputies delayed her, and we made our escape.

The chase distracted me from thinking about my sentence. We holed up in Pete Kinsey
’s house and plotted how to get out of Washington without being caught at the airport. We couldn’t take our scheduled flight from Dulles Airport, because reporters would be covering all direct flights to California. Bud booked passage on a flight from National Airport to Chicago, with connections to California. I was ticketed under the alias “John West,” and, with some stealth, we made our way undetected to National. A half-dozen reporters waited all evening at Dulles and then raised hell with airline officials who they believed had boarded me secretly.

August 8, 1974

With jail approaching, it was time to put some things in order. I worked on our family finances, made out a new will, and had four wisdom teeth removed. Pumped full of painkiller, my cheeks swollen and blue, I watched Richard Nixon’s resignation speech on television. Through most of the speech I felt pangs of sympathy for him, which I fought to suppress because I thought they were vestiges of my old loyalty. By the time he had finished, my pity had given way to dismay. He never admitted a damn thing, I thought. He went out with a campaign speech. Oh, well, I thought, at least he’s consistent, but why? Why is he taking Watergate with him?

I went to sleep trying to figure it out. The cover-up had been a stupid error. Lying about it had been deadly for him. It was over now. He’d been caught in his lies, so why didn’t he confess? Was he really far wiser and shrewder than most would give him credit for? Would history say he’d been unfairly forced from office? Was he planting seeds of doubt? Or did he fear prosecution and jail?

I didn’t know, but I found comfort in the fact that he himself had caused his demise. Not I.

Late August 1974

“You’re not going to like this,” said Charlie uneasily. He was calling from Washington. “The prosecutors want you back here to start getting ready to testify in the cover-up trial. They want to ask you a few thousand questions.”

I was livid. “Goddammit, you tell them to go to hell! Those bastards haven’t done a damn thing to help me, and I’ve busted my ass helping them. I can’t believe their nerve, Charlie. Here I am staring at four years in prison, and I’m not about to give them my last few days of freedom.”

“As your attorney, I advise you to calm down,” Charlie quipped, trying to take the sting out for me. “Listen, you’ve got to realize they can do anything they want to you. Start thinking of yourself as a prisoner. You have to. And what a prisoner worries about is when he will get out, not when he goes in. Let’s face it, John. Those prosecutors are going to make a recommendation to Sirica on your motion to reduce, and you can’t afford not to cooperate with them.”

“Charlie, I know all that stuff as well as you do,” I retorted irritably. “But I’m tired of sucking up to people. Don’t those bastards know I’m going to jail? I can’t keep churning this Watergate crap out. I’m tired of turning my head on and off like a light bulb.”

“I tell you what,” Charlie sighed. “I’ll call Neal and play the violin for him, but I don’t think it will do any good.”

“Thanks. Give it a try. Tell him I’ll have a lot of time to work on my testimony as soon as they send me up the river,” I closed bitterly.

It didn’t work, and I returned to Washington early.

August 29, 1974

“How do you feel, Brother Dean?” Neal drawled when I arrived at his office, which was filled with cigar smoke.

“Okay, I guess, under the circumstances,” I said, trying to suppress my resentment. It was the first time I had seen Neal since the sentencing. I didn’t trust him, and he knew it. And we had a long way to go together.

“For what it’s worth, I want you to know I think Sirica hit you too hard,” he said, seeking to warm me up. I nodded my agreement warily. “We wrote an eighteen-page letter for you and filled it with all kinds of facts about how you cooperated with this office and how vital you’ve been to the case. We only sent a one-page letter on Magruder. But the judge didn’t seem to get the message.”

I nodded again. “I can’t figure it out, Jim. I guess either Sirica just doesn’t like me or maybe he believes all that crap the White House put out about how I invented the cover-up and ran it single-handed.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. He gave you a hefty sentence because he wants to make you a credible witness. I tell you, I think Charlie’s going to be in good shape when he files a motion to reduce. He’s just got to wait awhile.”

I felt a glimmer of appreciation for having been given this hope, but I was still too uncertain of Neat to show any gratitude. He seemed to notice my withdrawal, and a long, uncomfortable pause ensued, during which he lit a fresh cigar.

“John, you and I’ve got to understand each other,” he said finally. “You’re going to be my witness on the stand. I’ve got to get you ready, and you’ve got to get me ready. You’re going to be the first witness for the government. Boom—right out of the box pops ole John Dean.

“You’ll lay out the whole case for us, and the tapes and the other witnesses will come in to corroborate your testimony. You’re it, Big John.”

I smiled at the flattery and remained silent. Neal seemed to be regrouping for another charge, when Larry Iason walked in. He was one of Neal’s staff lawyers with whom I’d become friendly. When he expressed his regrets about my sentence, I knew he meant it.

I saw Jeb Magruder strolling down the hall. He was in from Allenwood
Prison for trial preparation, and he gave me a thumbs-up sign and a weak smile as he passed by. Iason left, and Neal resumed his courtship.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “Sirica hurt us too when he stuck you.” Neal shook his head sadly, took the cigar from his mouth and contemplated the chewed end. “He really hurt us.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said my sentence would make me a credible witness.”

“Well, it’s a long story. A very long story. We’ve got to get to work now.” Neal didn’t want to tell me what was on his mind, he was caught up in his own thoughts. He started pacing around his office, lawyer style. “Hell, I’ll tell you why,” he blurted. “Why shouldn’t I? Bill Hundley
, Mitchell’s lawyer, was in here feeling out a guilty plea for his man when you were sentenced. I think I could have gotten Mitchell to plead if Sirica hadn’t hit you so hard. I could feel it. But when you got one-to-four, they figured they’d get worse. So they decided to take their chance with a trial.”

“Interesting. I had no idea Mitchell might do that,” I commented with understatement. I was surprised both by the revelation and by Neal’s candor. After a pause I said, “I saw Jeb out in the hall just now. How’s he taking prison?”

Neal looked disgusted. “I’ll be honest with you. He’s a crybaby. All he does is bitch, bitch, bitch. I don’t like him very well. Any man who slants his testimony to satisfy a prosecutor is weak, and I don’t have much respect for your friend Jeb.”

I had already known that Jeb’s testimony had vexed the prosecutors; Jill Vollner
had complained often about his eagerness to tailor his story to the prosecutors’ needs. But I was struck again by Neal’s frankness. His judgment was harsh but understandable, and it seemed to come more from disappointment than from malice. This guy doesn’t pull his punches, I thought. He’s a pro who thinks about sending people to jail the way I used to think about sending off a memo. I was beginning to see why Charlie and Neal were such good friends: they both acted out a flinty, free-swinging role, but there was much more underneath it. Neal was winning me over.