Nixon's Secret (92 page)

•     Says that Colson would have been indicted for his involvement with the Plumbers (p. 592), but later indicates (correctly) that Colson really was indicted in that case (p. 642). There is a further error regarding Colson’s plea, which was to having violated Ellsberg’s civil rights and not to obstruction of justice, as Dean claims (p. 644).

•     Says that Ehrlichman was indicted for perjury for his testimony before the Ervin Committee (p. 634), but this is not true, as later shown in indictment summary (p. 642).

•     There is a significantly mixed message on the background and meaning of the Smoking Gun tape, which is dismissed as totally misunderstood in the book’s beginning (pp. 55–56), yet described in great and damming detail toward the book’s end (pp. 548–582 and 645). It is not just that there is no coordination between these startlingly different descriptions of the same conversation, they appear to have been drafted by different people altogether.

•     There are equal conflicts and inconsistencies regarding Nixon’s reactions to Dean’s disclosure of Hunt’s blackmail demands, which were discussed above.

•     Dean claims (wrongly) to have hired Charles Shaffer, his criminal defense counsel on April 8. (p. 388). Earlier he said it was on or about March 28 (p. 359), which appears to be the better date. Regardless, Shaffer’s first meeting with the prosecutors on Dean’s behalf occurred on April 2.

•     There is a very strange sentence about Nixon’s demand that there be no cover-up as being its cause, which makes little sense:

Had Richard Nixon not encouraged his aides to collect political intelligence by any means fair or foul, or insisted from the moment of the arrests that there must be no cover-up, neither would have taken place. (p. 619)

III. Summary Observations

•     Many of Dean’s disclosures are already “old news” because of Nixon’s own reconstruction of this period in his
Memoirs
. Nixon and his researchers had access to many of these same tapes, but could not quote them directly under National Archives’ strictures. Regardless, the president’s 1978 admissions of what he knew and when he knew it are not all that dramatically different from Dean’s supposedly “new” discoveries some thirty-five years later.

•     Dean’s tape excerpts of what the president may have been told do not prove what he “knew”:

   What comes through loud and clear in Dean’s book is that President Nixon was assured of any number of contradictory versions of what had happened, throughout the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. As in many cases, the earliest reports were incomplete and misleading. In addition, as the scandal grew, everyone appears to have been less than forthright about their own particular actions.

   Busy or distracted people do not always remember what they have been told. Anyone who has been married is no doubt familiar with the accusation from one’s spouse, “But I told you that last week!” when they have absolutely no memory of such a statement.

•     It’s only human, but what Dean suggests is that each of the president’s aides consistently understated or diminished his own role as the scandal progressed. In essence, Dean’s book is a continuation of this same process—of his own personal exculpation and disavowal.

•     Another theme that seems consistent throughout Dean’s book is the president’s never-ending requests for some sort of written report. It is important to remember that the Nixon White House ran on paper, precisely because President Nixon vastly preferred to work from (and think about) written presentations. The National Security Council produced National Security Decision Memorandums (NSDMs) and National Security Study Memorandums (NSSMs); the Domestic Council produced a myriad of papers on domestic issues, and all presidential meetings and events were the subject of extensive reports submitted in advance. Unlike casual conversation, a written report has substance; it usually reflects a great deal of thought and consideration. It was Nixon’s habit to retreat to his hideaway office in the Old Executive Office Building most afternoons for study and reflection on important issues, almost always from written reports. It is no wonder that he kept asking for a written report on Watergate, but one was never produced in a timely fashion—and certainly never one produced by John Dean. It must have been exceptionally frustrating for the president.

•     While not a principal focus of the book, many feel the real explanation for how the cover-up got so out of hand is what is characterized as Dean’s “strategy of containment” (p. 279). Much of the enduring conflict over Watergate comes from differing testimony as to what Dean was reporting to Haldeman and Ehrlichman as the scandal unfolded. It is quite likely that they simply did not realize that Dean’s efforts to “contain the problem” involved a whole series of overtly criminal acts. Dean later claimed that this was very clear from his oral reports; Haldeman and Ehrlichman claimed otherwise. Nothing in Dean’s book really resolves this core issue, because there is no documentary evidence and their conversations were not recorded.

•     This vast difference in recollections is highlighted by Dean’s insistence that it was he who first leveled with the president, while Haldeman and Ehrlichman continued to keep the difficult facts to themselves. But Dean’s great claim to having done so is specifically and solely with regard to conveying the news regarding Hunt’s blackmail demands when he met with the president on March 21, 1973. Yet Dean had only learned of this demand two days before. He had been meeting or talking with the president virtually every day for almost a month. An equally valid argument on “who knew what” could be made that Haldeman and Ehrlichman did not level with the president because they, too, had been kept in the dark—by the one person working full time on containing the scandal: John Dean.

•     It also is important to remember in this regard that many of the key accusations against Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman (which figured so prominently at the cover-up trial) were not capable of objective proof and were vigorously denied by others:

   Magruder claimed that Mitchell had approved funding for the Liddy campaign intelligence plan at their March 30, 1972, meeting in Miami. Both other attendees, Mitchell and Fred LaRue (who was also a government witness) denied this—and Mitchell produced at trial some seven examples of where Magruder said it had been approved by people other than Mitchell.

   Dean claimed that Ehrlichman ordered Hunt out of the country on June 19, 1972. Both other attendees, Ehrlichman and Colson (who was also a government witness) denied this.

   Dean claimed that he had told Haldeman of Liddy’s plans following his February 4, 1972, meeting in Mitchell’s attorney general’s office. Haldeman didn’t recall this, but took Dean at his word. When no such meeting could be independently verified (by Haldeman’s extensive calendar or memories of his staff), Haldeman concluded the meeting had never occurred. When under oath in his law suit against St. Martin’s Press and confronted with these facts, Dean dissembled and said it might have been after the earlier Mitchell meeting. In this book, Dean provides a rather different explanation (see footnote 4 at p. 311).

   Dean testified that when he debriefed Liddy on June 19, 1972, right after the burglary arrests, and asked about White House knowledge, Liddy had responded that Gordon Strachan might have known. But he admitted under oath in those same depositions that he had told no one of Liddy’s comment for the year and a half before his trial testimony. In this book, however, he asserts that Liddy’s recollection of having said this is probably mistaken.

•     The implication throughout Dean’s book, however, is that the tapes that he has transcribed and excerpted prove that he had been telling the truth all along. One must continue to wonder, since it remains rather clear that President Nixon (as Dean has admitted) did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the Watergate scandal until very late in the game. Whether it was March 13 or March 17 or March 21 of 1973, is largely irrelevant in the great scheme of things. From that point on, once Dean had retained criminal defense counsel, fled to the prosecutors (and taken with him a series of devastatingly embarrassing documents on a number of unrelated issues), and perfected his side of the story, the president found himself without sufficient documentation, friends, or supporters to survive the onslaught.