Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (61 page)

I remembered Greenspun, a Las Vegas
newspaper publisher who, like Larry O’Brien, had had business dealings with Robert Maheu
, the deposed chief of Howard Hughes
’s Las Vegas
empire. Jeb had testified that Mitchell had raised the potential danger of Greenspun at the February 4 meeting with Liddy, but I didn’t remember it. Perhaps he mentioned it when I wasn’t there.

Chuck had more. “You remember when Bennett came over to the White House in January of ‘seventy-two all worked up about Clifford Irving
’s book on Howard Hughes
?”

“Sure,” I answered. “He came to see me. He wanted me to have the Justice Department investigate Irving
. I passed, but I remember that Haldeman wanted to find out what was in the Irving
manuscript. And somebody from the White House got a copy from the publisher. Why the hell do you think there was all that frenzy over a bogus autobiography?”

“Well, I can only speculate,” said Chuck. “Everyone figured Maheu
might have supplied Irving
with information one way or another. And Maheu
had supplied the one hundred thousand of Hughes
money to Nixon through Bebe Rebozo
. The way I see it, Haldeman was worried about that coming out. Another messy Hughes
scandal.”

“If that’s true, Chuck, I’ll tell you Haldeman may have been just as worried it might come out through O’Brien. I had a few meetings with Bennett when the President wanted to find out about O’Brien’s retainer from the Hughes
people. Bennett expressed no love for O’Brien. He said O’Brien probably knew everything about Hughes
that Maheu
did.” Chuck’s eyebrows went up at this news. I went on. “You think Bennett might have suggested to Hunt that they bug O’Brien?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck sighed. “I’m supposed to be the White House expert on Hunt and Bennett, and I don’t know. You can twist your head into a pretzel with this stuff. But I think Bennett sure would have reason to go after O’Brien—for the Hughes
people, to curry favor with us, or even for the CIA. Who knows? But I’m sure he had a lot of influence over Hunt, even though they didn’t seem to like each other particularly.”

“Incredible. What a mess!” I laughed. “I can see why you’ve started your ministry.”

“Well, religion is complicated, too.” He smiled. “But let me give you another brain squeezer. Do you have any idea why it was Spencer Oliver
’s phone in the DNC that wound up getting bugged? That’s why I asked Jeb.”

“No, I don’t know. I assumed it was a comic error.”

“Maybe so. But did you know Spencer Oliver was once planning to go into business with Bennett at the Mullen Company
? Or that his father worked for Bennett at the Mullen Company on the Howard Hughes
account? Or that Hunt says Spencer Oliver worked for the CIA?” (Which Oliver denies vehemently.)

“No, I didn’t. But what does it add up to?”

“You tell me,” Chuck suggested. “Maybe one can overcomplicate things. Maybe the Sino-Soviet split started because Mao Tse-Tung just got sick of Russian vodka one day. I don’t know. But it looks suspicious to me. It’s incredible. Millions of dollars have been spent investigating Watergate. A President has been forced out of office. Dozens of lives have been ruined. We’re sitting in the can. And still nobody can explain why they bugged the place to begin with. It’s unbelievable to me that Bob Bennett has waltzed through this thing. He’s got the answers to a lot of unanswered questions.”

We had reached a dead end. “A lot of people have gone through this mess untouched besides Bennett,” I observed. “Just look at Paul O’Brien. Hell, Ken Parkinson was only in the cover-up up to his ankles. O’Brien was in up to his knees. Paul got a walk. Ken got indicted. I’m happy for Paul, but everything is backwards.”

“How come Paul never got indicted?” Chuck asked.

“Because Silbert and Glanzer gave him immunity early on. Neal told me it was just another example of how they blew it. He says as soon as Paul got immunized his memory went bad. They’ve never even used him as a witness.”

“I wonder if Bennett’s been immunized,” Chuck said.

“I don’t think so. I think I’d have heard.”

“I tell you, John,” Chuck went on. “I turned into something of a CIA freak on Watergate for a while, you know, and I still think there’s something there. I haven’t figured out how, it all adds up, but I know one thing: the people with CIA connections sure did better than the rest of us. Paul O’Brien’s an old CIA man, and he walked. David Young
was Kissinger’s CIA liaison, and he ran off to England when he got immunity. Bennett worked for the CIA, and he ran back to Hughes
. And Dick Helms
skated through the whole thing somehow. Maybe those guys just knew how to play the game better than we did.”

“Maybe so,” I allowed. “I tell you what. I’ll ask our Mafia friend Joey what he thinks of CIA people in his business.”

Chuck laughed. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Old Joey’s been telling me he lost all faith in Nixon when he didn’t destroy the tapes. He says Nixon is a weak leader and a bad criminal. He thinks the two are the same.”

“Well, I agree with him in a way,” Chuck replied. “I still don’t know why he didn’t burn those things early.”

“Well, I think he loved having the tapes at first, Chuck. He thought he could use them selectively to prove his case. And by the time he found out he couldn’t, he would have been impeached if he’d destroyed them. And a lot of people would have had to go to jail to let him do it. A lot of them would have been in contempt of court, because Sirica had made them responsible for procedure in handling the tapes.”

“Well, maybe so,” Chuck mused. “But it doesn’t make sense. I think Bob Bennett must have told Nixon to hang on to them. How’s that?” We laughed.

December 24, 1974

Holabird
was astir on Christmas Eve. Our top hit man was baking cookies and bread; he had learned the skill in another prison. A multimillionaire heroin dealer from South America was in charge of preparing a turkey dinner for about two thirds of the principals. A spirited and talented Italian crew of Mafia men was busy preparing a lasagna feast for the others, who planned to eat a separate Italian Christmas dinner in the ping-pong room, which they had decorated by draping sheets over the table and the holes in the walls. I helped decorate the tree in the main dining area, picking up an extra chore when one of the Latin heroin traffickers couldn’t read the instructions on how to put up the cardboard angels. When everything was ready, I went up to my room.

“You ain’t going to read all night, are you, Dean?” Vinny said as he stuck his head into my room.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Grump, Tom, and me is going to work out in about an hour. It don’t make no difference this is Christmas Eve, unless you’re going to Mass tonight?”

“I’m not going anywhere. The old man turned down the request Chuck and I put in to go to church. What time you going to start?”

“At eleven. Remember, you got to keep your body in shape when you’re in the can.” We had been lifting weights together for several weeks.

“Okay. See you at eleven.”

The four of us stripped down for the workout. Grump, a hit man, was small, wiry, and quiet. Tom, another hit man, was enormous. He had a “MOTHER” tattoo on his chest. Having learned to be a hairdresser in another prison, he wore his hair long, immaculate, and fluffy. Vinny and I did most of the talking, between groans and the clanking of weights.

“You guys in your business have a lot of trouble with your contracts, don’t you, Dean?” he asked.

“Not always,” I said. “Besides, that’s how we lawyers make our money. Except I’m not a lawyer anymore.”

“Lotsa trouble, lotsa trouble,” he said. “You guys have to go to court and mess around and pussyfoot with the fucking judges all the time. We’ve got a better system. I just send a guy like Grump over to see a gentleman I’ve got a contract with, and if he don’t come to terms Grump breaks his back. I tell you, it works.”

“Terrific,” I said with a smile.

“Not cut out for that kind of efficiency, are you? Let me ask you something, if you don’t mind. You look a little wet behind the ears to be the President’s lawyer. How’d you get there so young? Your old man put in the fix?”

“No. I just kissed a lot of ass, Vinny. A lot of it.”

“I’ll bet you did.” He grinned. “So did I.”

Late December 1974

“Hi, Hank, how’s the Special Prosecutor?” I asked cheerily as Henry Ruth
ambled into the conference room to get his brown lunch bag out of the drawer.

“Wonderful,” he replied dryly. “I’m just pulling for Neal to get that trial over so we can start thinking about shutting down our operation.”

“What are you going to do when you’re out of here, Hank?”

“I tell you,” he sighed with a wry smile, “what I’m going to do is go out and make American Express ads. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“What do you mean?” I laughed.

“You know, like the guy who does Bugs Bunny’s voice or that other guy. What’s his name? Miller
. The one who ran for Vice-President with Goldwater
. I’m going to go on TV and say, ‘You may not remember me, but I’m the Watergate Special Prosecutor.’ Then I’ll hold up my American Express card and say, ‘I used American Express all through Watergate, because nobody knew who I was. And they still don’t know who I am.’” He sighed again and walked out with his lunch.

“You know, John, I really don’t want to see any of those defendants go to jail. It’s not going to do a damn bit of good for any of those guys,” Neal said reflectively. We’d been talking about the trial; it was almost over.

“You surprise me, Jim. I thought you were itching for us all to do a stretch—as deterrent.”

“Hell, no. The worst part of being a prosecutor for me is a case like this, where I don’t really want the guys to go to jail. That’s why I like defending guilty men. It’s not right sometimes. There’s nobody the government can’t nail if it really goes after him. Shit, they could get me within a year if they wanted to.”

January 1, 1975

Weekends seemed particularly long when Mo was in California and I had no visitor. I was spending New Year’s Day reading a book, Somerset Maugham
’s
The Summing Up
, poring over it, escaping my loneliness. There was a knock at the door. It was Vinny.

“Hey, listen, I thought you might like a little of this,” he said, lifting his sweater shirt so that I could see the pint of vodka tucked into his pants. “You know, a little cheer for the New Year.”

“No, thanks. It’s a little early in the day for me,” I said. The last thing in the world I needed was to break some prison rule. Even a sip to convince him I was okay was a risk I was not about to take. Vinny was really offering his friendship, which I appreciated. “Where the hell did you get that?” I asked to be friendly.

“My old lady snuck it in. If ya’d like a cocktail, come on down to the room later. My old lady thinks you’re a hell of a guy. She’d get her rocks off shooting the shit with you.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a bunch of letters I’ve got to write this afternoon. So maybe I’ll take a rain check.” I would have enjoyed the visit, but I was afraid to get involved with the drinking.

“Sure. Just wanted you to know you were welcome, since your old lady ain’t here.”

He left. I went back to my book. Only a few minutes passed before there was another knock.

“It’s me again,” he said.

I opened the door.

“Hey, I just heard on the radio that the jury found Mitchell and those other guys guilty.
8
*
Their ball game is over. You think they’ll put Mitchell in here? I’d love to talk to that bastard. I’ve got some friends he’s sent up that’d like to do more than talk to him. His ass is in big trouble in the slammer. I’m not sure he’ll ever come out.”

“It’ll be a long time before Mitchell’s ever put in jail, Vinny. He’s got years of appeals. Maybe Ford will pardon him. It wouldn’t surprise me, particularly if he loses the election. Anyway, if Mitchell goes to jail they’ll make special arrangements for him, I’m sure. The Bureau
of Prisons knows Mitchell’s going to be in trouble.”