Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (6 page)

From
Scanlan’s Monthly
to the Huston Plan, I had survived two quick tests as different as the Marx Brothers and the Gestapo, and I had learned to expect anything in special assignments. But I also focused on my regular duties and was adjusting my instincts to what I saw daily in the White House. Before I hired my first assistant, I had formulated a plan of advancement. From three dozen resumes and a dozen interviews, I selected Fred F. Fielding, a successful young Philadelphia lawyer who resembles the actor George Hamilton. Fred is personable, poised, conservative in manner, and quite witty. I liked him from our first meeting. I knew Fred wanted to succeed at the White House as badly as I did, and I explained my ideas for doing it.

“Fred, I think we have to look at our office as a small law firm at the White House,” I began. “We have to build our practice like any other law firm. Our principal client, of course, is the President. But to convince the President we’re not just the only law office in town but the best, we’ve got to convince a lot of other people first. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the others who surround the President. Here’s how we can do it.”

Our conflict-of-interest duties were the key, I explained. The work was complicated and boring, but I had already sensed that it would produce new business. “It seems that when you really get to know a man’s personal financial situation,” I said, “and then candidly discuss his job here to determine if he has any conflicts, you can end up in his confidence if you play it right. And once you’re in his confidence, he sends you business. What we’ve got to do is service that business. First we go out and get it, and then we service it. When we get a question, we’ve got to fire back the right answer, fast.”

We proceeded on that course, and it worked. We put in long grueling hours, and word soon got around that the counsel’s office was eager to tackle anyone and everyone’s problems and do it discreetly. We gave advice on the divorce laws to staff members whose marriages had been ruined, and we answered questions about immigration law for the Filipino stewards who worked in the mess. Although our work was technical and legal, we discovered that we could use it to get a foothold in substantive areas. If we were alert in conflict-of-interest reviews and investigations, we would have a small say in Presidential appointments. As with any law firm, our influence depended largely on our reputation, and our reputation was good. We cultivated it with care.

Haldeman’s assignments always received priority, of course, and he fired questions at us regularly. A Presidential fact-finding committee had returned from Vietnam with two captured Chinese rifles for the President, and the Treasury Department wanted to disallow the gifts because they had been illegally imported. What could we do? After a crash study of the relevant law, we had no trouble persuading Treasury to classify the rifles as legal “war trophies” for the Commander in Chief. A corporation, said Haldeman, had upset the President by marketing a replica of the Presidential seal. Could anything be done? A few statutes cited on White House stationery made the company desist. Congress wanted the General Accounting Office to audit the White House budgets in which the redecorating expenses had been buried. Haldeman wanted to know if the audit could be blocked legally. We let the auditors in but assured Haldeman we could stall them for four years. Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy director of White House communications, wanted to make a mass mailing to Nixon supporters at government expense. Not legal, we said, but Magruder went ahead anyway. Henry Kissinger wanted to meet with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; would it violate the President’s principle of executive privilege for him to visit Capitol Hill? It was a close call, we said; we advised Kissinger to meet the senators on neutral ground at Blair House, the official guest mansion, to avoid precedent.

The staffers we helped recommended us to their bosses, and the bosses seemed satisfied with our work. It did not take long for Haldeman, who knew everything, to learn that business was booming at the counsel’s office. He gave his blessing, which meant that I was soon enjoying some of the coveted White House status symbols: a daily copy of the President’s news summary, a new twelve-line telephone in place of my two-line model, subscriptions to more magazines and newspapers than I wanted, an Army Signal Corps telephone in my home (on which I could call London faster than I could dial next door), and carte blanche to redecorate an impressive new office. The small law firm grew; within six months my professional staff was up to three lawyers, plus Caulfield. We enjoyed neither the power nor the spectacular growth of Chuck Colson’s office, but we became known as a steady ground-gainer.

By the beginning of 1971, the members of my staff were hopelessly overworked; but they were well organized, and business flowed in and out routinely. I left most of the standard casework to Fred and began scouting around for more important cases. It did not take long to notice that the counsel’s office could perform in intelligence work for the White House. We had already assumed the role in our conflict-of-interest investigations. And we had Jack Caulfield, who knew such waters. We advertised our office as the place where questions would be answered. I encouraged this new specialty, figuring that intelligence would be more valued by the policy-makers than would dry legal advice. All through 1971, my “warm-up” year, we were bombarded with intelligence requests. I learned a lot about some of the things my superiors were interested in.

Chuck Colson asked us to search the military records of some anti-war Vietnam veterans for unrespectable conduct. The counsel’s office checked the files but found no bombshells.

Haldeman sent us frequent questions about
Millhouse: A White
Comedy,
a satirical film based on the President’s “Checkers Speech” and other embarrassing events. Would it hurt us with the youth vote? Could we stop it? Caulfield acquired a dossier of FBI material on Emile de Antonio, the film’s creator. We planned to leak it if the movie became a hit or if the Democratic Party sponsored showings. Neither occurred.

Haldeman requested an investigation of “Richard M. Dixon,” the comedian who was seeking to capitalize on his striking resemblance to the President. Caulfield did a quick undercover investigation, but Haldeman lost interest when President Dixon faded.

Colson sent me a transcript of a telephone call he had had from William Lambert, a senior investigative reporter for
Life
Magazine, whose message was as complicated as it was wild and seamy. He said Teddy Ratenoff, an old informant of his, had gone to work as a freelance consultant for the Knapp Commission, which was then investigating police corruption in New York. Ratenoff, said Lambert, had just called to say he had penetrated a high-class prostitution operation and discovered “a lot of politicians mixed up in it, even at the White House.” Lambert told Colson that Ratenoff sounded menacing, as if he might peddle his information. My assignment: find out what Ratenoff knew and whether it was true.

I sent Caulfield to New York on that one. After huddling with some of his old colleagues there, he returned with a cloak-and-dagger report entitled “Interview with Special Agent XXX regarding Xaviera de Vres a.k.a. Hollander.” Special Agent XXX confirmed that Ratenoff worked for the Knapp Commission, providing bugging equipment and expertise. He had wired the lush business quarters of a madam named Xaviera Hollander (later a.k.a. the Happy Hooker) and had made tapes of famous clients “having intercourse and engaging in abnormal sexual practices.” Most of the clients appeared to be judges. Ratenoff had also managed to copy Ms. Hollander’s address book. But there was
another
address book, for sensitive political people, and it was not known whether Ratenoff had it. Special Agent XXX said Ratenoff had already entered into a financial arrangement with author Robin Moore to write a book about Hollander. Ratenoff was clearly on to something, but it was impossible to determine what he knew about White House people.

Caulfield and I decided the information cut such a wide swath there was little chance of its being put to political use. The only real danger might be political embarrassment to the White House, but even that seemed remote. Still, I decided to check around quietly to find out what kind of response I would get. It would be entertaining to drop hints of the information from Special Agent XXX, and it would also let people know that the counsel’s office had ears in hidden corners. I began asking the more adventurous men at the White House if they might have anything to fear from Xaviera Hollander’s address book. When I whispered my story to Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler, his face went white as a sheet. “I’ll deny it,” he said quickly. “I’ll deny it.” He turned and walked away. But over the next few weeks Ziegler kept up a steady stream of calls to me, asking for further developments. His tone was so urgent I could scarcely keep from laughing. There were no further developments, except that Ms. Hollander did quite well as a public figure.

The counsel’s office built up a reputation for such intelligence investigations—some juicy, many simply laborious—and we handled them while the ordinary legal work hummed along. I became the White House collecting point for antiwar intelligence reports, and I funneled information directly to the President during emergencies. In May of 1971, for instance, we expected as many as forty thousand antiwar demonstrators to come to Washington for what became known as “Mayday.” Shortly after the President announced his surprise military “incursion” into Laos, antiwar leaders had announced their intention to “close down the government” by blocking bridges, traffic intersections, and entrances to government buildings. Loosely organized radical groups were to divide up the key targets, armed mostly with their own bodies, some with rocks and trashcans to throw.

With the demonstration set for the morning of Monday, May 3, officials of the Administration mapped their opposing strategy in summit meetings the preceding weekend. Ehrlichman, Kleindienst, Police Chief Jerry Wilson, and several Pentagon generals led the sessions. I attended to hear the intelligence reports, as I had when I had monitored demonstrations for the Justice Department. There were detailed briefings on the precise transmission frequencies of the demonstrators’ walkie-talkies, which would be monitored, and general estimates of the percentage of drug users in the ranks. And there were constant updates on the intentions of the demonstrators, which was no great feat since the plans were printed in antiwar newspapers, complete with maps and arrows. Shortly before the battle, Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Mardian reported that the government knew the exact target areas of every antiwar group except one faction of Gay Liberation.

On Mayday, Ziegler issued a placid statement that the President anticipated a normal business day, but the President, in fact, wanted reports every half hour, and my office was responsible for gathering the intelligence. Direct lines had been installed between my phone and the command posts at the FBI, the Metropolitan Police, the Secret Service, and the Justice Department. When I picked up any of those lines, a special White House light flashed in the command post. My staff would call each command post for its latest word—what bridges were open, how much violence there was, how many people had been arrested, the general outlook. We would write a hurried report, fire it off to the President, and begin immediately on the next one. We were an information conduit only, making no decisions, but we got a great deal of attention.

Ehrlichman kept calling for information, and Colson popped in and out of the office with questions. Colson’s intrusions became so annoying that Fred Fielding finally suggested in jest that he send a crate of oranges to the demonstrators locked up in jail. Senator Edmund Muskie, his Presidential campaign already under way, had a custom of sending oranges to his volunteers. The idea was that Muskie would be identified with violent antiwar radicals.

“Yeah, Chuck, that’s a great idea,” I chimed in, laughing.

To our surprise, Colson stopped, looked around, and then smiled. “You’re right,” he said, “I’ll do it,” and he dashed out the door. A few hours later he strolled back in. “I sent the oranges,” he said proudly, “and I tipped off the press.”

There were high political stakes involved in the handling of the demonstration, but we were quite distant from the passions and fears as we monitored numbers and information. Distant enough to play war games. On Mayday, I did something I could never have hoped to do when I first became counsel. I asked for, and got, a military helicopter to fly me over the city for a firsthand view. At the last minute I asked Ehrlichman to go with me, and I considered it a coup when this powerful man accepted. Taking various assistants with us, we took off from the Ellipse, and the pilot banked and rolled in the air as we passed over knots of people on the ground. We saw burning cars in Georgetown, a confused maze of little figures running through the streets, and conclaves of demonstrators on university campuses. Flashing police lights and pitched rock battles blended into a general scene of chaos. Ehrlichman, busy with his home movie camera, said little on the flight. When we finally circled back to land at the Ellipse, the ground there was crisscrossed with demonstrators and with blue uniformed police giving chase. We could not land there, said the pilot, so Ehrlichman ordered him to set down on the south lawn of the White House. That pad was strictly reserved for the President, and Ehrlichman later smilingly said he had been chewed out by the First Lady.