Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (60 page)

“Maybe so,” said Tony. “But there’s no note, and there’s no collateral for any loan. It’s fishy as hell. Maybe I’ll go up to New York myself and see if I can dig up the rest of the story.”

“Okay,” Jim replied, seeming glad to put the issue off. “Let me know what you come up with.”

Later, out of curiosity, I asked Tony what became of his investigation. “Another unanswered question,” he said. “I had to drop it. I got stonewalled at the bank.”

Later in November 1974

“John, I really don’t think this is appropriate.” Henry Ruth
, replacement as Special Prosecutor, was frowning. “If the press got hold of this, they’d go crazy.” He threw a “JOHN DEAN” office name plate down on my desk and waited for an answer.
7
*

“Well, Hank,” I sputtered. I didn’t know whether to take his remark seriously. “I didn’t put that on the door. One of the secretaries did it as a joke. They think I’m almost one of the guys.”

“I know,” he said flatly. “But we can’t afford this kind of stuff. I’m already catching a lot of flak about the office you’ve got.”

“Okay, I understand.”

I knew there was some resentment that I had fared so well in the office shuffle at the Special Prosecutor’s K Street headquarters. When the Watergate trial team had moved down to the courthouse, I had been assigned Neal’s old office on the ninth floor—a corner location with lots of windows. Several of the lawyers consigned to the eighth floor cubbyholes had vied for it.

Soon I was in Jill Vollner
’s old windowless cubicle, which was decorated with poster pictures of windows. These posters sell well among Washington bureaucrats.

“John, let me ask you something personal,” said Larry Iason. “Is it true that your father-in-law was a senator and got you your job at the Judiciary Committee?”

“Larry, that’s one of those stories that’s been reprinted so often it’s taken as fact. It couldn’t be further from the truth. First of all, my first wife’s stepfather was a Democrat, so he wouldn’t be much help to me in getting a Republican staff job. Second, I never met the man in my life, and, third he was dead when I got the job. I got it by luck, like I got all my jobs.”

“You think I could be counsel to the President by the time I’m thirty-one with enough luck?” he asked.

“Okay, okay, it wasn’t all luck. There turned out to be some pretty good opportunities about that job with the Congress. Remember, the Republican Party
was ripped to shreds in the ‘sixty-four election just before I got to the Hill. And I was sitting with the Judiciary Committee looking at the politics. It looked to me like the Republicans had only two possible issues to make a comeback with: crime and defense. I didn’t know anything about defense, so I decided to become a crime expert. That’s how I wound up in the Justice Department, with the fancy title of Associate Deputy Attorney General. I was cranking out with assignments like a drill sergeant, that bullshit on Nixon’s crime policy before he was elected. And it was bullshit, too. We knew it. The Nixon campaign didn’t call for anything about crime problems that Ramsey Clark
wasn’t already doing under LBJ. We just made more noise about it.”

“So you rode in on the crime issue.”

“Right. In those days, only one thing was important. Getting ahead. Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

December 4, 1974

“You know, Hank, I sure do wish I could make old John Ehrlichman think we have him on tape.” Henry Ruth
had stopped in at the courthouse for a progress report on the trial, and Neal was in an expansive mood. “That’s what I did to poor old Jimmy Hoffa
at the Chattanooga trial,” he mused happily. “It was a hell of a sight.” Jim took out his cigar, and Henry and I settled back for a yarn. “That damn Hoffa
was a good liar. One of the best I’ve ever seen. Hell of a witness. But we did a job on him. I had an agent carry electronic equipment in and out of my office at the courthouse. Fancy stuff, with the wires hanging out all over the place. Every day for weeks. In and out. We tried to time it so he’d walk right past Hoffa
in the morning and again in the afternoon. He finally took the bait. One day he stopped his lawyer and got all excited. He pointed at the agent. ‘Goddammit,’ he yells. ‘See it! See it! I told you they were bugging me!’ After that he was no good as a witness. Shit, he went tighter than a drum. Lost his spark. That was nice. We outfoxed that old bastard. Kind of clandestine, you know,” he drawled, making “clandestine” rhyme with “wine.”

Hank Ruth
, who struck me as a mild-mannered legal scholar in the mold of Sam Dash, smiled and shook his head as Jim roared with laughter.

“I think I’ve got things under control down here,” Jim went on. “I’ve got all the defense lawyers figured out. Wilson
’s so old he makes mistakes, although I’ll bet he used to be one hell of a trial lawyer. And old Bill Frates
will never rescue Ehrlichman. He’s really something. The reporters call him ‘W. C. Fritos.’ He’s too much. Hundley
’s good, but there’s so much evidence against his man that all he can do is try to subtly stick it to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. God, I’d love to sit in on some of their strategy meetings. I think Mardian’s guy is the best, but I can handle him.”

“How about Sirica?” Hank inquired, glancing at me as if to say, “Watch this, Jim’s higher than a kite.”

“Well, I was worried about him at first,” Jim declared, “but now I’ve decided he’s a hell of a good judge. Yes, sir, he’s a good judge. And I don’t say that because he rules whenever I want him to rule. He reads all the homework we give him, and he relies on us to help him. What I do is let most things pass now, so when I do object to something he knows it’s important. He trusts us now, and he damn sure doesn’t want this case reversed because of him.”

Jim ran through why things were swinging to the government’s favor—expressions on the jurors’ faces, rulings, dramas, miscues by the defense, the overall “feel” of the courtroom.

Mid-December 1974

Larry Iason walked into his office, where I worked when Neal had me down at the courthouse, laid a big pile of documents on my desk, puffed out his cheeks, and blew a long, exasperated breath. “Look at all that stuff. That’s what Jim just gave me to finish by tomorrow. I tell you, I feel like Neal’s Higby. We’ve got a bunch of real egos on this trial team, and I get all the dirty work. I’m nothing but a, a, what do you call it?”

“A gopher,” I said gently.

“Yeah, a gopher.” He paused, and then exclaimed, “We’re like the White House. You ever think about that?”

“Well, yes, but don’t tell anybody. You’ve got power, ambitions, office shuffles, news summaries, and a tickler system. But at least your bosses temper you. That might keep you out of jail. Ours used to egg us on.”

Larry smiled. “That’s for sure!”

“I’m having a lot of trouble with Mardian,” said Vollner
wearily. “He still denies ever having seen the FBI reports, the 302s you testified he looked at in your office. Is there anything you can think of to help draw him out?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.” I went back over the details, and nothing helped. Then I had an idea. “How about fingerprints, Jill? Have you tried that?”

She was intrigued. “No, we haven’t checked them. You think he left any?”

“He must have. Mardian’s got a thumb as big as the palm of your hand. And I tell you, I can see him sitting in my office with those things, and he’d always lick his thumb before he’d turn the pages. You know how he moves when he’s excited. Slap. Lick. Slap. Lick. He must have left some big wet prints on there you can almost see with the naked eye.”

FBI agents handed me rubber gloves and a stack of the original Watergate FBI reports a foot high. I was uncomfortable, sensing that the agents must dislike me for the black eye my testimony had helped give the Bureau. My marshals sensed it, too. The agents let me choose only a few pages out of the thousands for lab tests. It was a hopeless task. Reduced to guesswork, I failed.

“Goddammit, Jill,” Jim roared. “You should have checked with me before you went off on a long shot like that! If Mardian’s lawyers get wind of it, they could try to use that piddly little test to make it look like he never touched the stuff.”

“I thought it was worth it,” she said, standing her ground.

December 16, 1974

The Special Prosecutor’s office sent a letter to the supervisor at Holabird
. I was finally allowed out of my room. No more guards posted at my door. No more restrictions on my conversations.

December 17-23, 1974

Chuck and I compared notes on the Watergate mysteries. We sat up late trading information, and we commented on how much better it felt to do so without worrying about protecting anyone.

“Chuck, why do you figure Liddy bugged the DNC instead of the Democratic candidates? It doesn’t make much sense. I sat in Mitchell’s office when Liddy gave us his show, and he only mentioned Larry O’Brien in passing as a target. I confess that Magruder once told me you were pushing for information on O’Brien because of the ITT
case, and I—”

“Magruder’s full of shit,” Chuck interrupted. “That bastard tests my Christian patience to the breaking point. I have to say special prayers to temper my feelings about that asshole. I’d like to hear him say that to my face.”

“Why don’t we ask Jeb to come over?” I suggested. “And I’ll ask him why the hell Liddy went after O’Brien. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a capital idea,” Chuck replied. “I’ve got some ideas of my own, but I’d like to hear Jeb’s explanation.”

I went down to Jeb’s room, thinking about Chuck’s remarks. I knew Chuck had been struggling with himself in an effort to be supportive of Jeb in prison. Jeb had become extremely depressed during the past few weeks. “He’s got the prison shuffle,” Chuck had told me, pointing out how Jeb barely lifted his head or feet as he walked the halls. “I’m worried about him, and remember, John, he’s only got a month or so on us in here. We could be shuffling around like that pretty soon, so we’ve all got to help each other.” I had no idea what Jeb would think of our probing, but he seemed to be anxious for conversation. I invited him back to Chuck’s room.

“Jeb, we’ve been trying to put some pieces together about why we’re here,” I began, “and one of the questions we can’t answer is why Larry O’Brien was targeted. I guess you and Mitchell agreed to that in Florida. But why O’Brien?”

Jeb froze. His pallid face flushed crimson. He tried to find words, but only stuttered. The question had more than caught him off guard. It had overwhelmed him. “Why do you want to know?” he asked haltingly.

“Just curiosity,” Chuck said.

“Well, it just seemed like a good idea,” Jeb said evasively.

“Well then, why was Spencer Oliver’s
phone bugged?” Chuck pressed. Chuck was implying that the testimony that Oliver, another official of the DNC, had been bugged by accident was not true, that there had been deeper motives.

Jeb looked at me. Then at Colson. “Why? Who wants to know?” he asked as his confusion turned to suspicion and headed toward anger.

“I don’t think we ought to talk about that stuff,” he said sharply. Jeb turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Chuck and me staring at each other in dismay.

Chuck broke our silence. “You know, I think I know why Jeb’s so damn depressed. I think he’s still holding back what he knows.”

“You think maybe Mitchell didn’t approve O’Brien as a target?”

“No. Well, I’m not sure. Maybe indirectly, or after the fact. I’ll tell you what I think happened. I don’t know exactly how it worked, but I’ve got good reason to believe that Bob Bennett was somehow involved in the decision to go after O’Brien.”

“Bennett? Why Bennett?”

“Have you read Howard Baker
’s minority report on Watergate?”

“No, I haven’t seen it,” I said, wondering where Chuck was heading.

“You should read it. It’s pretty good on the CIA angle in Watergate, and that includes Bennett. You’ll see for yourself the fine hand of Bob Bennett in Hunt’s activities. Like the plan to have Hunt and Liddy break in on Hank Greenspun
’s office out in Las Vegas
. Hunt was working with Bennett’s help and encouragement on that. He put them in touch with the Hughes
people, who wanted anything Greenspun had on Hughes
.”