Watergate: the cover-up begins

When individuals associated with Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign were arrested in the Watergate Office Building in the early hours of June 17 1972, the men around the President spent the next several days deciding how to respond. They were in a bind. Indeed, crimes had already been committed. The five men arrested in the attempt to bug the DNC offices, and the two men who led the team, Liddy and Hunt, would be convicted on charges related to the burglary and wiretapping. One of the charges John Mitchell would be convicted of was approving the wiretapping while still the Attorney General.

There was still a chance to prevent the scandal from becoming what it eventually ballooned into. The President and the people around him could’ve taken the political hit of having people associated with the campaign committing crimes in the name of political dirty tricks. The President could’ve been insulated from the men working for him. There was never any evidence that Nixon knew about the burglary before the fact. Others could’ve fallen on their swords.

But, with the election just five months away, that was the risk the President’s men did not want to take. They also knew that the burglary wasn’t the only operation the so-called Plumbers had been involved. The previous year the Plumbers broke into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

In An American Life, Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP), writes about the lack of discussion over whether to give birth to the maxim, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

My life changed that day. For the first time I realized, and I think we all realized, that we were involved in criminal activity, that if the truth became known we could all go to jail. During the spring, when Liddy was presenting his break-in plan, I should have been aware that it was illegal, but somehow it seemed acceptable, perhaps because we were discussing it in the office of the Attorney General of the United States. But at some point that Saturday morning I realized that this was not just hard-nosed politics, this was a crime that could destroy us all. The cover-up, this, was immediate and automatic; no one ever considered that there would not be a cover-up. It seemed inconceivable that with our political power we could not erase this mistake we had made.

At that point, LaRue (another deputy directory) was only marginally involved in the break-in conspiracy, in that he was aware of discussions of it, and Mardian (aide to Mitchell and counsel to CRP) was not to my knowledge involved at all. Either of them might have saved themselves great difficulty by walking away from the whole affair. That they did not was due to personal loyalty to Mitchell and political loyalty to the President. In all our discussions, there was a great deal said about “protecting the President.” We were trying to do that, certainly, but it was also true Mitchell and I hoped to save our own skins in the process. We were in so deep there seemed to be no turning back, no alternative but to plunge ahead, that is I wanted to go to the Justice Department and tell the prosecutors all I knew, I could probably walk away from the mess a free man. But that was never a serious consideration. My fellow conspirators were also my friends, and you didn’t save yourself at the expense of your friends.

The next day, Sunday, Magruder called White House Chief of Staff Haldeman, the man who had hired Magruder for the CRP. Magruder told him about the arrest.

We discussed the press statement we had drafted, but never released. McCord’s identity had by then become known, and we agree that a statement must be issued minimizing McCord’s ties with CRP. Later that day we issued a statement by Mitchell which stressed the fact that McCord was not technically and “employee” of CRP, since we contracted with his McCord Associates to handle security for CRP.

I told Haldeman of Mitchell’s plan to have Mardian return to Washington to take charge of the situation.

No, the President doesn’t trust Mardian,” Haldeman said. “You come back and take charge.”

It was a short talk. I gave him the facts and got my instructions. I spoke with the assumption that he knew about the break-in plan, and nothing he said indicated did not.

When I arrived at my office the next morning I stepped immediately into the double life I would live for the next ten months. On the one hand I spent much of the morning moving about our offices and reassuring CRP’s staff that nothing was wrong, that we had no idea what McCord had been up to, that the best thing was for everyone to get back to work.

The first person I talked to was Hugh Sloan, our treasurer. We knew by then that several thousand dollars in $100 bills had been found on the burglars. What we did not know, and I hoped Sloan could explain, was whether the money had come from CRP, and if so, is there was any way it could be traced to us. Sloan said the money found on the burglars was money he had given to Liddy, and that it could probably be traced to us.

In his own book, The Ends of Power, Haldeman gives his account of that conversation with Magruder.

Magruder has admitted that he didn’t tell me all the real facts about the break-in (such as his own involvement) in that telephone call because, he said, he assumed I knew them already. This is vintage Magruder softening of the truth. Magruder didn’t tell me all the facts because he was afraid to. It’s that simple. His people had been caught, a terrible mess could develop as a result, and he couldn’t face telling Nixon’s ferocious Chief of Staff what he had done.

I hung up as quickly as I could and tracked down John Ehrlichman by telephone to find the real story. I trusted John whom I had known since our college days. Now the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, John was known for three traits: a sarcastic wit, intelligence, and a love of intrigue. But he had never lied to me – and he didn’t now.

“We’re in a bit of a bind on this one, Bob,” he told me. “One of those Cubans had a check on his person signed by Howard Hunt.”

Hunt’s name alerted me. It was the link to Colson, the man I had first suspected. In fact, Hunt was Colson’s boy. If Colson was involved through Hunt, this could involve the Oval Office, too.

Haldeman then called Colson, and Colson said Liddy was using Hunt, but that he, Colson, was not working with Hunt. Haldeman then called the President and “found him as cool about the break-in has he had been before.”

Calm, cool, even amused. What an effort that facade must have cost him. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the “calm” Nixon that been frantically telephoning Chuck Colson himself about that “unimportant” break-in. Calm? At one point he was so upset he threw an ashtray across the room, according to Colson.

On June 20, Haldeman went into the Oval Office to talk to Nixon.

We spent the first part of that conversation on government and campaign business of no great importance or urgency. Then, with seemingly no increase in interest, we turned to the DNC break-in. The DNC discussion occupied only 18.5 minutes, after which we turned to other mundane and routine matters. The whole meeting lasted about an hour and a half.

Nevertheless, because that particular 18.5 minutes was subsequently erased, and only that particular 18.5 minutes, a great deal of interest naturally has arisen as to how we spent that short period and what we said to each other.

Haldeman said only that “I have no clear recollection” of what was discussed and that it is “possible there was something in that conversation that Nixon believed was so uniquely damaging that it had to be erased. Since the discovery of that gap, I’ve racked my brain trying to remember what was said on that June 20 morning.

To this day, it is not known how those 18.5 minutes were erased.

Three days later, a key meeting took place, again involving Haldeman and Nixon. First, a bit of background. J Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, had died the month before. Nixon had named Patrick Gray as Acting Directory. Mark Felt managed the day to day operations at the FBI. On the morning of June 23, John Dean called Haldeman. From Haldeman’s book,

“Bob, the DNC break-in is becoming a real problem. They’re out of control over at the Bureau. Gray doesn’t know what the hell to do, as usual.”

“What have they found so far?”

“They traced one check to a contributor named Ken Dahlberg. And apparently the money was laundered out of a Mexican bank, and the FBI has found the bank. If that’s true they’ll know who the depositors are today.”

Dean also said “I spoke to Mitchell, and he and I agree that the thing to do is for you to tell Walters (Deputy Directory of CIA) that we don’t know where that Mexican investigation is going to lead. Have him to talk to Gray and maybe the CIA can turn off the FBI down there in Mexico.”

(note: this check they are discussing involved a campaign contribution that somehow ended up in the bank account of a real estate firm owned by one of the burglars)

Haldeman writes, “I did something I shouldn’t have done. Dean had suggested I call Walters at the CIA. I knew Walters well.”

Haldeman then went to talk to Nixon, and in what became known as the “smoking gun”, Haldeman and Nixon discussed using the CIA to hinder the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate burglars, and potentially their involvement with the CRP and the White House.

Later that same day, Haldeman and Ehrlichman met with Walters and Helms of the CIA and asked them to essentially tell Gray at the FBI to steer clear.

In his book, Witness to Power, Ehrlichman recounts that meeting.

I sat in on Haldeman’s meeting with the CIA, cold. I’d been told to be there, but beyond that I had no idea what Haldeman intended to do. Haldeman told Vernon Walters and Richard Helms in effect that “the White House” would like the CIA to tell the FBI to keep away from the question of money flowing through Mexico to some of the Watergate burglars.

And so, before even a week had passed, the Rubicon was crossed. The White House was committed to hindering the investigation into the Watergate burglary and where the money that financed it had come from. The Plumbers had initially been formed to plug the “leaks” such as the Pentagon Papers. Ironically, as the White House tried to build a dam around the Watergate investigation, from the very beginning information was already leaking out to the press courtesy of Bob Woodward’s source, Deep Throat. The world would not learn until 2005 that Deep Throat was Mark Felt at the FBI. Woodward writes in All the President’s Men,

Woodward had a source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at CRP as well as at the White House. His identity was unknown to anyone else. He could be contacted only on very important occasions. Woodward had promised he would never identify him or his position to anyone.

The man’s position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive. He had never told Woodward anything that was incorrect. It was he who had advised Woodward on June 19 that Howard Hunt was definitely involved in Watergate.

In our next and final look back at Watergate, we’ll look at the run-up to the election, how hush money became an issue for the Watergate burglars, and how Watergate exploded in the months after the election.