Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (63 page)

Nixon wrote in his memoir that he “considered what Ellsberg had done to be despicable and contemptible—he had revealed government foreign policy secrets during wartime.” (Nixon names no important secrets and they have never truly been found. What was found was a lot of over-classified information from newspaper clippings to politically-embarrassing analysis material that should not have been classified Top Secret.) Nixon was repulsed that Ellsberg “was lionized in much of the media.” He wanted Ellsberg prosecuted and destroyed. Enter G. Gordon Liddy, whom Bud Krogh placed on the staff of the Plumber’s Unit.

For years, Gordon Liddy refused to testify or say anything about his activities at the Nixon White House. Not until he was under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the unaccounted-for money he received for his intelligence-gathering activities at the Nixon re-election campaign, and forced to either explain what he had done with all the money, or pay taxes on it, did he start talking. At the time, he was unemployed and needed to earn a living. (In 1977 the IRS filed a notice of a six-figure deficiency for his 1972 taxes. To prove to the Tax Court that he had not personally received any of the money he had been given for his intelligence gathering activities, Liddy had to reconstruct, as best he could, what he had done with the money. While he recalled spending $2,270 on prostitutes, and other details, in the end he could not explain $45,630 for which he remained liable.) It appears to me that since he was being forced to talk to the IRS, he decided to sell his autobiography
Will
(1980)—and he has never stopped talking. Liddy’s account, however, was written long after the events, eight to nine years later, and it is not likely that Liddy thought much about these matters during his four-plus years in prison, where he says he was primarily thinking about surviving.
4
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Nonetheless, it appears that Liddy tried to reconstruct events as best he could recall them in
Will
. Not surprisingly, just as he was unable to explain what he did with all the money, Liddy gets many dates and facts mixed up, but by writing
Will
he has at least enabled others to better understand his lunacy. With a fellow like Liddy working for Nixon, the fact that Nixon’s presidency fell apart should not be a surprise. No one describes Liddy better than Liddy, who boasts that it was he who:

• organized the Plumbers Unit, dubbing it ODESSA—the acronym for “Der Emerlingen Schutz Staffel Angehorigen,” the post-World War II network of former Nazis that smuggled former high-level Nazi officials, including many of the worst war criminals, to safety in places like South America.
  
• reported to his superiors in writing on August 2, 1971, not long after the unit was created, that the FBI was not aggressively investigating Ellsberg, and that the FBI was no longer conducting “clandestine operations,” and then cautioned that “any further discussions” of these activities “should be oral.”
  
• arranged for a special screening at the National Archives of Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Nazi propaganda film,
  Triumph of the Will
  , inviting select guests from the White House staff to the event. (I was not invited.)
  
• suggested that the Department of Justice wiretap the
  New York Times
  to learn more about how they received the Pentagon Papers from Ellsberg.
  
• encouraged his superiors to request that the CIA prepare a psychological profile of Ellsberg (notwithstanding the fact that the CIA is prohibited from engaging in such domestic activities), and when unhappy with the profile that had been prepared (which was based on information Liddy had assembled from the FBI investigation of Ellsberg), requested a second profile. (Liddy believed that Ellsberg had leaked the material to the Soviet Union, although there has never been any credible evidence whatsoever to support that claim. To the contrary, although a Soviet double agent said that the Russian Embassy had received a copy—before reading it in the
  New York Times
  —there is no evidence whatsoever that Ellsberg was connected to the Russians’ receipt of a copy, although this fact did not stop the Nixon White House from smearing him with the charge.)
  
• recommended (actually, he sold to his superiors) a scheme to burglarize Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in Beverly Hills, California. Liddy assured his superiors that such a covert action could be undertaken and could not be traced to the White House. However, he later acknowledged that although he was “forbidden to participate directly in the mission,” he broke his agreement with Krogh, and served as the lookout man for his team of burglars when they broke into the building to retrieve Ellsberg’s medical files. If the police had shown up, Liddy said his plan was to distract them by “fleeing ostentatiously to draw them off, confident I could elude them.” And if that did not work and “there were no other recourse,” he had his “knife, but use it I would, if I’d had to; I had given my word that I would protect [my men].” (The ludicrousness of this action is patent. Liddy’s belief that he could outrun policemen, their cars, and their dogs, and that all of them would follow him, rather than assume he was merely a lookout, defies common sense. Had the police come by, there would have been no Watergate. Rather, it would have been The Fielding Affair that might have brought down Nixon. And had Liddy killed a police officer, he would still be doing time. Most remarkably, the burglary was a fishing expedition, all risk and no possible reward, because, in fact, there were no Ellsberg files in Dr. Fielding’s office.)
  
• concocted a plan to drug Ellsberg with “a fast-acting psychedelic such as LSD-25,” when Ellsberg was scheduled to speak at a dinner at a Washington hotel, to “befuddle him, make him appear a near burnt-out drug case.”
  
• was ready to assassinate newspaper columnist Jack Anderson.
  
• hired thugs to physically attack anti-war demonstrators on Capitol Hill, during an Ellsberg speech.
  

This was the sorry state to which the Nixon White House fell after the leak of the Pentagon Papers. Nixon pounding on his desk, demanding a break-in at the Brookings Institute; Chuck Colson (or was it Jack Caulfield?) calling for a fire-bombing at the Brookings Institute; and placing a man on the White House staff with the mentality of Gordon Liddy. Bud Krogh later apologized to me for suggesting Liddy as the general counsel of Nixon’s reelection committee when I was trying to find someone to fill that post. Krogh told me the reason he had done so was that he and Ehrlichman had wanted to get Liddy out of the White House. They realized he was a disaster. Mistakenly, they thought that Liddy could cause no problems working at the reelection committee.

Bud Krogh wrote in his book (co-authored with his son, Matthew Krogh)
Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices and Life Lessons from the White House
(2007) that “[t]he break-in and burglary of Dr. Fielding’s office was the seminal event in the chain of events that led to Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974.” Bud explained what too many do not understand:

…the burglary [at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office] set a precedent that two members of the Plumbers [referring to Liddy and Hunt] could rely on when planning and executing the Watergate break-in of 1972. They knew that under certain circumstances the White House staff would tolerate an illegal act to obtain information. Later, during the intensive Watergate investigations, a major reason for the cover-up by President Nixon and former members of his staff was to prevent investigators from discovering information about the 1971 crime. Extreme illegal acts were undertaken to prevent this discovery, including perjury, obstruction of justice, and the payment of hush money to the perpetrators of the 1971 crime to keep them from revealing it during the Watergate investigation. Several members of Nixon’s top staff [here, Krogh is referring to Haldeman and Ehrlichman] feared that discovery of the 1971 events would imperil them and the president himself. Former attorney general John Mitchell, when apprised in 1972 what had happened in 1971, accurately described the 1971 events as the White House “horrors.”

The Reason for the Break-ins at the Democratic National Committee

Notwithstanding overwhelming evidence, there remains confusion (for far too many) about why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was the target of Liddy’s intelligence-gathering operation after he joined the Nixon reelection campaign committee. Many wonder why anyone would undertake ventures as high-risk as two break-ins and bugging the DNC given the low potential gains, since the DNC had little, if any, information that might help Nixon win reelection in 1972. The answer is as simple as it is unsatisfying: It was folly (if not stupidity) and hubris.

What in fact occurred is traceable to the dark side of Richard Nixon, who became angry and upset when the Democrats rained on his parade following his historic trip to China, cutting short the political benefits emanating from his visit. They did this by claiming that the Nixon Administration had settled an antitrust case in exchange for a large campaign contribution. This negative news cut short the positive politics of Nixon’s China initiative. In fact, Nixon, who played hardball politics, set in motion the activities that culminated with the arrests of people working for his reelection committee at the DNC. This is not to say that the president ordered the break-in and bugging of the DNC, for he did not. Nor is it to say that he had advance knowledge of these actions, for he did not. And it is not to say that anyone at the White House was directly involved in these actions. It is to say, however, that it was the quest to get the very information that Nixon had wanted, and repeatedly requested, that resulted in bungled bugging and burglaries at the DNC. Set forth below is the clear evidence that leads me to this conclusion, most of it not available until long after I had written and published
Blind Ambition
.

Looking for Financial Dirt on the Democrats

As I reported (on pages 51-67), in early March 1972, the so-called ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) scandal erupted when syndicated columnist Jack Anderson published a memorandum written by Dita Bread, an ITT employee and lobbyist, claiming that ITT’s $400,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign for its convention in San Diego had influenced Nixon’s Justice Department in settling a major antitrust lawsuit against ITT. Anderson’s story was published the day after Nixon had returned from his triumphant visit to China. In fact, there had been no quid pro quo as the Anderson story suggested, but the Democrats—particularly DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien—were making great political gains with the charge and were successfully taking much of the luster off of Nixon’s China trip, supplanting it with a seedy front-page political corruption story. Few people were higher on Nixon’s enemies list than O’Brien, whom he believed was a puppet for one of his top enemies, Senator Edward Kennedy.

Jeb Magruder, in his autobiography,
An American Life: One Man’s Road To Watergate
(1974), explained what occurred that piqued White House interest in locating negative information as a means of countering the Democrats’ ITT attacks. Jeb reported that in early March, 1972, Nixon’s campaign “had a tip from Kevin Phillips, the conservative columnist, that the Democratic Party might be involved in a kickback scheme in connection with their convention. The report was that the Democrats would lease space to individual exhibitors and kick back part of the fee to the Democrats.” It is very likely that Kevin Phillips, who had once worked for John Mitchell (during the 1968 campaign, as well as after Mitchell became Attorney General), had spoken directly with Mitchell. Mitchell had great respect for Phillips and would not have lightly dismissed such a tip from him—nor would Haldeman or the President. While the evidence of Nixon’s reaction may be incomplete, I have found clear signposts, which show his direct orders to go after the Democrats, including:

March 5, 1972
: The President, returning to the White House from Key Biscayne on Air Force One, met with Haldeman, who made the following note: “Do some [checking] on where the Democratic money for Miami is coming from—re ITT Sheratons what contracts they have made.” (The Democrats were going to hold their convention in Miami.)

March 7, 1972
: Haldeman dictated an Action Memo, which was sent to Larry Higby, who added a handwritten inquiry to Haldeman: “Put Dean, Colson & Magruder to work on this? Dean in charge?” Haldeman responded with a handwritten answer: “OK - not by memo.” Haldeman further instructed Higby to get a response by March 10th.

March 7 or 8, 1972
: When Higby passed this assignment on to me (as I later testified), he did not place me in charge of anything. Rather, he informed me that Magruder and Colson were investigating to determine if the Democrats were running a “kickback scheme” of some sort in Miami, and Higby said that he had told Magruder to check with me to be certain there was, in fact, solid evidence of a kickback scheme before anyone leaked anything to the media.