(1)
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
Chuck
Colson had become the President's personal 'hit man'; his impresario
of 'hard ball' politics. I had been caught
in the middle of most of these, as complaints thundered in about
'Wildman' Colson either crashing arrogantly; or sneaking silently,
through political empires supposedly controlled by White House staffers
such as Domestic Counselor John Ehrlichman or Cabinet Officers such
as Attorney General John Mitchell. Colson cared not who complained.
Nixon, he said, was his only boss. And Nixon was behind him all
the way on projects ranging from his long-dreamed-of hope of catching
Senator Teddy Kennedy in bed with a woman not his wife, to more
serious struggles such as the I.T.T. anti-trust 'scandal'.
Colson had
signed up an ex-C.I.A, agent named Howard Hunt to work for him and
thereafter became very secretive about his exploits in the name
of Nixon. Years later I heard of such wild schemes as the proposed
fire bombing of a politically liberal foundation (Brookings) in
order to retrieve a document Nixon wanted; feeding LSD to an anti-Nixon
commentator (Jack Anderson) before he went on television; and breaking
into the offices of a newspaperman (Hank Greenspun) who was supposed
to have documents from Howard Hughes that revealed certain secrets
about Nixon.
But Colson's
'black' projects were so widely rumoured around the White House
that I believe almost every White House staffer thought of his name
the minute they heard the news of Watergate.
(2)
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
For years Nixon
had been trying to track down proof that Larry O'Brien was on Howard
Hughes's payroll as a lobbyist at the same time that he was Chairman,
of the Democratic National Committee. This could be hot ammunition
to discredit O'Brien, Nixon believed. What had O'Brien done in exchange
for Hughes's money (reportedly, a huge $180,000-a-year retainer)?
A wiretap on O'Brien's telephone and a bug in his office could obtain
the proof Nixon wanted.
To take
such a risk as that burglary to gain that information was absurd,
I thought. But on matters pertaining to Hughes, Nixon sometimes
seemed to lose touch with reality. His indirect association with
this mystery man may have caused him, in his view, to lose two elections.
His brother
Don had been granted a $205,000 loan from Hughes in the 1950s when
Nixon was Vice-President. Jack Anderson had broken that story shortly
before the 1960 election, and Nixon felt his razor-thin defeat by
John Kennedy was partially due to that story.
Then; in
the 1962 California gubernatorial rare the loan had surfaced again,
this time in a Reporter magazine article by James Phelan
- and Governor Pat Brown could have credited his surprise victory
over Nixon to the repercussions of that story.
And yet,
even with this background,, at that very moment, unknown to me at
the time, $100,000 of Hughes's cash was resting in a safe deposit
box in Florida leased by Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo, Nixon's closest
personal friend.
Years later,
in 1976, I asked Nixon about that $100,000, which by then had been
the subject of vigorous investigation for years. The investigation
had finally petered out with no results. Rebozo explained that the
$100,000 was a campaign contribution, and the reason it never reached
the Campaign Committee was that an internecine war had broken out
in the Hughes empire; Rebozo said he was afraid the President would
be embarrassed by one side or another in the Hughes war if the campaign
contribution was revealed.
(3)
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
I was puzzled
when he (Nixon) told me, 'Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans
is tied to the Bay, of Pigs.'
After a
pause I said, 'The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this?'
But Nixon
merely said, 'Ehrlichman will know what I mean,' and dropped the
subject.
After our
staff meeting the next morning I accompanied Ehrlichman to his office
and gave him the President's message. Ehrlichman's eyebrows arched,
and he smiled. `Our brothers from Langley? He's suggesting I twist
or break a few arms?'
'I don't
know. All he told me was "Tell Ehrlichman this whole group
of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs".'
Ehrlichman
leaned back in his chair, tapping a pencil on the edge of his desk.
'All right,' he said, 'message accepted.'
'What are
you going to do about it?'
'Zero,'
said Ehrlichman. 'I want to stay out of this one.'
He was referring
to an unspoken feud between C.I.A. Director Richard Helms and Nixon..
The two were polar opposites in background: Helms, the aloof, aristocratic,
Eastern elitist; Nixon the poor boy (he never let you forget it)
from a small California town. Ehrlichman had found, himself in the
middle of this feud as far back as 1969, immediately after Nixon
assumed office. Nixon had called Ehrlichman into his office and
said he wanted all the facts and documents the CIA had on the Bay
of Pigs, a complete report on the whole project.
About six
months after that 1969 conversation, Ehrlichman had stopped in my
office. 'Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They
just dig in their heels and say the President can't have it. Period.
Imagine that! The Commander-in-Chief wants to see a document relating
to a military operation, and the spooks say he can't have it.'
'What is
it?'
'I don't
know, but from the way they're protecting it, it must be pure dynamite.'
I was angry
at the idea that Helms would tell the President he couldn't see
something. I said, 'Well, you remind Helms who's President. He's
not. In fact, Helms can damn well find himself out of a job in a
hurry.'
That's what
I thought! Helms was never fired, at least for four years. But then
Ehrlichman had said, 'Rest assured. The point will be made. In fact,
Helms is on his way over here right now. The President is going
to give him a direct order to turn over that document to me.'
Helms did
show up that afternoon and saw the President for a long secret conversation.
When Helms left, Ehrlichman returned to the Oval Office. The next
thing I knew Ehrlichman appeared in my office, dropped into a chair,
and just stared at me. He was more furious than I had ever seen
him; absolutely speechless, a rare phenomenon for our White House
phrase-makers. I said, 'What happened?'
'This is
what happened,' Ehrlichman said. 'The Mad Monk (Nixon) has just
told me I am now to forget all about that CIA document. In fact,
I am to cease and desist from trying to obtain it.'
When Senator
Howard Baker of the Evrin Committee later looked into the Nixon-Helms
relationship, he summed it up. 'Nixon and Helms have so much on
each other, neither of them can breathe.'
Apparently
Nixon knew more about the genesis of the Cuban invasion that led
to the Bay of Pigs than almost anyone. Recently, the man who was
President of Costa Rica at the time - dealing with Nixon while the
invasion was being prepared - stated that Nixon was the man who
originated the Cuban invasion. If this was true, Nixon never told
it to me.
In 1972 I did know that Nixon disliked the CIA Allen Dulles, the
CIA Director in 1960, had briefed Jack Kennedy about the forthcoming
Cuban invasion before a Kennedy-Nixon debate. Kennedy used this
top secret information in the debate, thereby placing Nixon on the
spot. Nixon felt he had to lie and even deny such an invasion was
in the works to protect the men who were training in secret. Dulles
later denied briefing Kennedy. This betrayal, added to Nixon's long-held
feeling that the agency was not adequately competent, led to his
distrust and dislike.
And now
that antipathy was to emerge again on June 23, 1972, when Nixon
would once again confront and pressure the CIA
This time
the CIA was ready. In fact, it was more than ready. It was ahead
of the game by months. Nixon would walk into what I now believe
was a trap.
(4)
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
So we had failed
in our one previous attempt to obtain CIA co-operation, and now
in Ehrlichman's office on June 23, 1972, the C.I.A. was stonewalling
me again: 'Not connected.' 'No way.' Then I played Nixon's trump
card. 'The President asked me to tell you this entire affair may
be connected to the Bay of Pigs, and if it opens up, the Bay of
Pigs may be blown....'
Turmoil
in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair leaning forward
and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have
no concern about the Bay of Pigs.'
Silence.
I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction.
Again I wondered, what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story?
Finally, I said, 'I'm just following my instructions, Dick. This
is what the President told me to relay to you.'
Helms was
settling back. 'All right,' he said.
(5)
Laurence Stern and Haynes Johnson, Washington
Post (1st May, 1973)
President Nixon,
after accepting the resignations of four of his closest aides, told
the American people last night that he accepted full responsibility
for the actions of his subordinates in the Watergate scandal.
"There
can be no whitewash at the White House," Mr. Nixon declared
in a special television address to the nation. He pledged to take
steps to purge the American political system of the kind of abuses
that emerged in the Watergate affair.
The President
took his case to the country some 10 hours after announcing that
he had accepted the resignations of his chief White House advisers,
H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General
Richard G. Kleindienst.
He also
announced that he had fired his counsel, John W. Dean III, who was
by the ironies of the political process a casualty of the very scandal
the President had charged him to investigate.
The dramatic
news of the dismantling of the White House command staff that served
Mr. Nixon through his first four years in the presidency was the
most devastating impact that the Watergate scandal has yet made
on the administration.
The President
immediately set into motion a major reshuffling of top administration
personnel to fill the slots of the Watergate causalities. Defense
Secretary Elliott L. Richardson was appointed to replace Kleindienst
and to take over responsibility for "uncovering the whole truth"
about the Watergate scandal.
He said
last night that he was giving Richardson "absolute authority"
in handling the Watergate investigation - including the authority
to appoint a special prosecutor to supervise the government's case.
As temporary
successor to Dean, the President chose his special consultant, Leonard
Garment. Mr. Nixon said Garment "will represent the White House
in all matters relating to the Watergate investigation and will
report directly to me."
Last night
Gordon Strachan, whose name has been linked to the Watergate case,
resigned as general counsel to the United States Information Agency.
The USIA said the former aide to Haldeman resigned "after learning
that persons with whom he had worked closely at the White House
had submitted their resignations. . ."
The immediate
reaction to yesterday's White House announcement was a mixture of
relief, especially among congressional Republicans, at the prospect
of internal housecleaning. But there was also some dismay at the
President's failure to appoint a special prosecutor for the Watergate
inquiry...
Besides
the resignations announced yesterday, at least five other high administration
or campaign officials have quit in the wake of revelations about
the Watergate: Mitchell, presidential appointments secretary Dwight
Chapin, special counsel to the president Charles W. Colson, deputy
campaign director Jeb Stuart Magruder and acting FBI Director L.
Patrick Gray III.
The massive
shake-up of the White House command and the ensuing personnel reshuffling
threw the administration into a state of disarray if not temporary
immobility.
It threatens
the federal government's largest single enterprise, the pentagon,
with a state of leaderlessness with Richardson's new assignment.
In the White House, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had been the twin pillars
of a management system in which they had been regarded as indispensable
to the President. Haldeman, particularly, was the ultimate traffic
controller and organizer of the flow of presidential business.
(6)
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)
Years later, former
C.B.S. correspondent Dan Schorr called me. He was seeking information
concerning the F.B.I. investigation Nixon had mounted against him
in August, 1971.
Schorr later
sent me his fascinating book Clearing the Air. In it I was
interested to find that evidence he had gleaned while investigating
the C.I.A. finally cleared up for me the mystery of the Bay of Pigs
connection in those dealings between Nixon and Helms. 'It's intriguing
when I put Schorr's facts together with mine. It seems that in all
of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring
to the Kennedy assassination.
(Interestingly,
an investigation of the Kennedy assassination was a project I suggested
when I first entered the White House. I had always been intrigued
with the conflicting theories of the assassination. Now I felt we
would be in a position to get all the facts. But Nixon turned me
down.)
According
to Schorr, as an outgrowth of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA made several
attempts on Fidel Castro's life. The Deputy Director of Plans at
the CIA at the time was a man named Richard Helms.
Unfortunately,
Castro knew of the assassination attempts all the time. On September
7, 1963, a few months before John Kennedy was assassinated, Castro
made a speech in which he was quoted, 'Let Kennedy and his brother
Robert take care of themselves, since they, too, can be the victims
of an attempt which will cause their death.'
After Kennedy
was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic cover-up. Many of the facts
about Oswald unavoidably pointed to a Cuban connection.
1. Oswald
had been arrested in New Orleans in August, 1963, while distributing
pro-Castro pamphlets.
2. On a
New Orleans radio programme he extolled Cuba and defended Castro.
3. Less
than two months before the assassination Oswald visited the Cuban
consulate in Mexico City and tried to obtain a visa.
In a chilling
parallel to their cover-up at Watergate, the CIA literally erased
any connection between. Kennedy's assassination and the CIA No mention
of the Castro assassination attempt was made to the Warren Commission
by CIA representatives. In fact, Counter-intelligence Chief James
Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed
the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission
investigators, such as these samples:
Q. Was Oswald
an agent of the C.I.A?
A. No.
Q. Does
the CIA have any evidence showing that a conspiracy existed to assassinate
Kennedy?
A. No.
And here's
what I find most interesting: Bill Sullivan, the FBI man that the
CIA called at the time, was Nixon's highest-ranking loyal friend
at the FBI (in the Watergate crisis, he would risk J. Edgar Hoover's
anger by taking the 1969 FBI wiretap transcripts ordered by Nixon
and delivering them to, Robert Mardian, a Mitchell crony, for safekeeping).
It's possible
that Nixon learned from Sullivan something about the earlier CIA
cover-up by Helms. And when Nixon said, 'It's likely to blow the
whole Bay of Pigs' he might have been reminding Helms, not so gently,
of the cover-up of the CIA assassination attempts on the hero of
the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro - a CIA operation that may have triggered
the Kennedy tragedy and which Helms desperately wanted to hide.
(7)
H.
R. Haldeman, The Ends
of Power (1978)
The Haldeman Theory
of the break-in is as follows: I believe Nixon told Colson to get
the goods on O'Brien's connection with Hughes at a time when both
of them were infuriated with O'Brien's success in using the I.T.T.
case against them.
I believe
Colson then passed the word to Hunt who conferred with Liddy who
decided the taps on O'Brien and Oliver, the other Hughes' phone,
would be their starting point.
I believe
the Democratic high command knew the break-in was going to take
place, and let it happen. They may even have planted the plainclothesman
who arrested the burglars.
I believe
that the C.I.A. monitored the Watergate burglars throughout. And
that the overwhelming evidence leads to the conclusion that the
break-in was deliberately sabotaged. (In this regard, it's interesting
to point out that every one of the Hunt-Liddy projects somehow failed,
from the interrogation of DeMotte, who was supposed to know all
about Ted Kennedy's secret love life and didn't, to Dita Beard,
to Ellsberg, to Watergate).
(8) Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of Richard Nixon (1991)
The 10:00 A.M., June 20, meeting was held in Ehrlichman's office the one in which he'd produced Admiral Welander's confession six months earlier-and was attended by Haldeman, Mitchell, Kleindienst, and Dean. The first subject, as always, was leaks. How had the information about McCord and Hunt gotten out? Kleindienst assured the men that it had not come from justice, but from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Dean maintained a deep silence, and the other men were completely in the dark about the events, so there wasn't much to discuss. Haldeman and Ehrlichman harbored doubts about Mitchell's role in the break-in, but, according to Haldeman's memoir, though the meeting produced no new information he was glad to see that Mitchell "looked better than I had seen him in days. He puffed on his pipe with that humorous glint in his eye that we all knew so well. I felt that was a good sign because Mitchell was now the Chairman of CRP, and should have been worried if there was a major crisis impending. Instead, he said, `I don't know anything about that foolishness at the DNC. I do know I didn't approve the stupid thing.' We believed him-and that lightened our mood considerably."
Dean left that meeting in the company of Kleindienst, and returned to justice with the attorney general. Kleindienst was furious about the break-in and about Liddy's approach to him at Burning Tree. Dean said nothing about his role in those events. When they reached the Justice building and the two men were joined by Henry Petersen, the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, Dean's motive for making the trip became clear: He wanted the FBI 302s, the investigative reports prepared by the field agents. Dean invoked Nixon's name to get them.
"The representation that he (Dean) made to me and to Mr. Petersen throughout was that he was doing this for the President of the United States and that he was reporting directly to the President," Kleindienst later testified. Kleindienst and Petersen quite properly refused to give up the 302s, which were raw data, and said they would only supply summaries of the data. The attorney general added that if the president wanted to see the reports, he would take them to Nixon himself. Dean left, empty-handed.
Meanwhile, back at the White House, Haldeman was reporting to Nixon what had happened in the ten o'clock meeting - but the exact particulars of that conversation will never be known, because that's the tape in which there is the infamous eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap. A new notion on how that gap came into being will be offered in a later chapter, but at this point in the narrative we can suggest some of what was covered in the meeting, based on the memoirs of both participants. According to both men, Nixon's main interest was in the Hunt-Colson connection. He had learned from Colson that Hunt had been involved in the Bay of Pigs operation, and that gave him an idea. As he remembered in RN, Nixon told Haldeman that the way to play the break-in was to say it had been a Cuban operation, perhaps designed ' to learn how the Democrats were going to view Castro in the coming election; that would stir the anti-Castro community in Miami "to start - a public bail fund for their arrested countrymen and make a big media issue out of it." This would damage the Democrats and at the same time turn the Watergate affair into something favorable to the White House.
This reaction was vintage Richard Nixon. Watergate would become simply another battle in his lifelong war with the Democrats. Floundering in ignorance as to how the affair had begun, and instead of attempting to solve the crime, Nixon was busy calculating how he might use it to strike at his enemies. Among the hallmarks of Nixon's personality were a penchant for turning away from facts and continual attempts to transform problems for himself into problems for his opposition...
Haldeman's June 23 meeting with the president ended at 11:39 A.M., and he immediately arranged a meeting between Walters, Helms, himself, and Ehrlichman for 1:30 p.m. Moments before that meeting, Haldeman poked his head in again to the Oval Office, and Nixon reemphasized the way to get the CIA to cooperate. Tell the CIA officials, Nixon instructed, "it's going to make the ... CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing, which we think would be very unfortunate for the CIA and for the country at this time, and for American foreign policy... I don't want them to get any ideas we're doing it because our concern is political." Haldeman answered that he understood that instruction.
Haldeman was once again impressed, he writes, by Nixon's brilliant instincts. "Dean had suggested a blatant political move by calling in the CIA-now Nixon showed how much more astute he was by throwing a national security blanket over the same suggestion."
At 1:30, in Ehrlichman's office, the four men sat down. All the participants knew that Helms disliked Nixon and the feeling was mutual. But now Nixon had been maneuvered into believing he had a need to use Helms and his agency. The director began the conversatior by surprising Haldeman with the news that he had already spoken t( Gray at the FBI and had told him that there was no CIA involvement, in the break-in and none of the suspects had worked for the Agency ic the last two years. After Helms's surprise, Haldeman then played what he called "Nixon's trump card," telling the CIA men that the entire affair might be linked to the Bay of Pigs.
"Turmoil in the room," Haldeman reported later in his book "Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting `The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.' "
Haldeman understood that Nixon had been right about mentioning, the old disaster, for Helms immediately calmed down and voiced some further objections to having Walters tell Gray to back off. Ehrlichman' remembrance of the meeting closely parallels Haldeman's. Just a important is the fact that neither man mentioned in his memoir telling the CIA chiefs that the reason for asking them to block the FBI was political; following Nixon's rather precise instructions, that notion was specifically kept out of the conversation.
At 2:20 P.M. Haldeman went back to the Oval Office and informed Nixon that "Helms kind of got the picture" and had promised, "`We'll be happy to be helpful, to ah-you know-and we'll handle everything you want.' " Haldeman then added: "Walters is gonna make the call to Gray." The CIA men agreed to help, Helms would later testify, only because they figured the president was privy to a CIA operation in Mexico that even the CIA director did not know about. "This possibility always had to exist," Helms said. "Nobody knows everything about everything."
Dean apparently had an idea about what was going on, for at 1:35 that afternoon-before Haldeman actually had had a chance to brief the president on the Helms meeting - Pat Gray got a call from Dean apprising him that Walters would be phoning for an appointment, and that Gray should see him that afternoon. Waiters' secretary called Gray twenty minutes later and scheduled a 2:30 p.m. meeting. Dean phoned Gray again at 2:19 p.m. to see if it was on, learned that it was, and asked Gray to call him when he'd seen Walters.
Once again, John Dean's testimony on these events is strikingly at odds with that of others. In his testimony to the Senate Watergate committee, before the committee was to hear from Gray about the Gray-Dean telephone conversations of June 23, Dean would first avoid revealing any knowledge of the Helms-Walters meeting. Then, when pressed by Senator Inouye, Dean claimed that he had "had no idea that Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman were going to meet with Mr. Helms and General Walters, that was unknown to me until I subsequently was so informed by Mr. Ehrlichman but not as to the substance of the meeting they had held."
Gray and Walters met at 2:34 p.m. at FBI headquarters, and, according to Gray's testimony before Congress, Walters "informed me that we were likely to uncover some CIA assets or sources if we continued our investigation into the Mexican money chain.... He also discussed with me the agency agreement under which the FBI and CIA have agreed not to uncover and expose each other's sources." Acting Director Gray had never read that agreement, but considered it logical, and told Walters that the matter would be handled "in a manner that would not hamper the CIA."
