Nixon's Secret (37 page)

The two veteran Nixon aides watched apprehensively as Nixon and the new team around him reinvented the former vice president. They watched him roll through the primaries and were able to join the campaign on their own terms. They always intended to run things if the bid became viable and with a division of John Mitchell, serving as campaign manager, they did.

Haldeman, who was a senior executive at the J. Walter Thompson Agency in Los Angeles, had served as an advance man in Nixon’s 1960 campaign. He recruited Ehrlichman to do advance and political work. Ehrlichman actually spied on Nelson Rockefeller disguised as a driver in Rockefeller’s motorcade across North Dakota while the New York governor contemplated a challenge to Nixon for the 1960 nomination. “During the three days I was there I managed to pick up some good political information from friendly local people in Fargo and Bismarck,” said Ehrlichman. “The candidate for Lieutenant Governor, himself a delegate, told me everything he knew. Three days after Rocky left North Dakota and I returned to Seattle, Nixon’s regional campaign staff came to North Dakota to undo whatever Rockefellers visit might have gained him.”
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Haldeman managed Nixon’s 1962 gubernatorial campaign and Ehrlichman again did advance work. After the bitter experience of 1962, both Haldeman and Ehrlichman wondered whether Nixon was through as a political force. Ehrlichman thought Nixon’s change in demeanor after a few cocktails was damaging and would affect his campaign:

I told Nixon that it seemed obvious that he would be running again in 1968 and that I would be asked again to help him. He responded that he had not yet decided what to do. I said that, all things being equal, he would have my support, but that I was very much troubled by his drinking. I was in no position to ask him to stop, nor would I even intrude that way into anyone’s personal life. But, I continued, I didn’t want to invest my time in a difficult presidential campaign that might well be lost because the candidate was not fully in control of himself. Nixon asked if I thought that was why he lost in 1960 or 1962; I said I didn’t think so, although his impulsive press conference after the election in California in 1962 was one episode of the kind I feared should he run again.

Nixon didn’t try to brush me off or change the subject, as I had anticipated he might. He said that if he decided to run he wanted my help. He felt it was not unreasonable of me to expect that he would keep himself in the best condition in the campaign. Everyone had the right to expect that at him. He thanked me for coming to talk to him about it. I understand his reply to an undertaking, quid pro quo. If he wanted me to work, then he would lay off the booze.

As far as I’m concerned, he kept that bargain during the 1968 campaign.
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Haldeman and Ehrlichman, having been badly burned in the 1962 effort, held back from rejoining the Nixon entourage, concerned about Nixon’s track record of self-management and hoarding decisions free of advice or input. They did not surface in Nixon’s 1968 campaign until the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.

The Nixon Nominator, a campaign newsletter dated June 1968, noted, “H.R. Bob Haldeman, Los Angeles advertising executive, civic and educational leader, is joining the Nixon campaign as Richard Nixon’s personal chief-of-staff. The announcement was made today by Nixon campaign manager, John N. Mitchell. A long-time political associate and friend of the former Vice President, Haldeman was his campaign tour manager in the presidential election of 1960.”

Haldeman arrived with his fellow Christian Scientist sidekick Ehrlichman, ending any sense of “openness” or “candor” in the Nixon entourage. “The bright young men” lost their access to the candidate as the campaign ended. “The Germans,” as Haldeman and Ehrlichman became known within the White House, and their scurrying squads of close-cropped, buttoned-up ex-advance men took over with Teutonic thoroughness.”
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Haldeman’s contemporaries remember him as cold, efficient, extremely organized, but fundamentally a gentleman. Ehrlichman did not fare as well in the estimation of his colleagues: “A sneaky son of a bitch,” Murray Chotiner later told me.

Abrasive, curt, highly organized, and extremely effective, Ehrlichman served as Tour Director for Nixon’s post-convention bid and then emerged as Nixon’s White House counsel. Later, he moved over to run the domestic policy as assistant to the president. In this job, Ehrlichman dominated domestic policy much in the way Henry Kissinger dominated foreign affairs, although Nixon also relied on Secretary of Labor George Schultz on domestic affairs. Every major domestic program was under the stiff, humorless, but ambitious Ehrlichman. Ideologically, Ehrlichman was a moderate who molded Nixon’s environmental policies as well as his restoration of the rights of Native Americans, not to mention federal revenue sharing, anti-drug programs, and welfare reform.

Attorney General Richard Kliendienst, who had served as Barry Goldwater’s Senate campaign manager and joined Nixon’s effort in 1968 as a deputy to John Mitchell, said Ehrlichman resented the swift rise of Mitchell.

Kleindienst recalled another confrontation with the terse and somewhat pompous Ehrlichman:

The best—or worst, as you will—example of our differences occurred during the week before the convention opened in Miami Beach. The Nixon hotel headquarters was the Doral. The top floors were set aside for the staff. The very top floor was reserved for the some sixty people in the delegate operation. Everybody who had business on the top floors was given a baldheaded eagle pin to wear for identification. Without a pin, no one was allowed on the top floors—no matter what.

To show off the proficiency of the Nixon organization, I invited Ray Bliss, the national Republican party chairman, and Senator Bellmon of Oklahoma, both longtime friends of mine, to come over for a tour. Bliss would be talking to everybody in town and I wanted to impress him.

They showed up at the receptionist’s desk in the hotel lobby at the appointed hour and asked to be escorted to my office, a room on the top floor.

‘I’m so sorry, gentlemen, but no one is allowed up there,’ the little girl with the pretty little Nixon hat sweetly informed them.

Bliss and Bellmon asked her to call me. I came down immediately.

‘Don’t worry, sweetie-pie, I’ll take them up myself.’

Things ceased being sweet when she announced to me, in the presence of my two distinguished guests, ‘Mr. Ehrlichman’s orders are that no one,
absolutely
no one, is permitted up there who doesn’t have the pin.’

‘Gentlemen, please wait here a minute. I’ll be right back!’

I entered Ehrlichman’s office with a little frustration, but nevertheless confident that the problem would be solved quickly. Not so. My nonpolitical associate firmly informed me there would be no exceptions.

‘John, old boy,’ I responded with some acerbity, ‘I’m going downstairs and I’m going to bring Bliss and Bellmon up to my floor. If you try to stop me, one or the other is going to be on the plane for either Arizona or Washington this afternoon.’ They came up with me. Perhaps, for the country’s sake, one of us should have gone home that day.
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The depth of Ehrlichman’s ambition and resentment of Mitchell, who he saw as a “newcomer” in Nixon’s entourage was demonstrated when Kleindienst’s nomination to succeed Mitchell as attorney general was pending Senate confirmation and the Arizonan’s prospects appeared bleak:

Not only did Ehrlichman not particularly care for John Mitchell or me (I remember now some cruel and demeaning statements Ehrlichman made to the president about Mitchell in the days immediately after John left the Committee to Reelect the President), but Ehrlichman, so I was informed, decided, as the Nixon presidency went on, that he wanted most of all to be attorney general. During my confirmation hearings for attorney general in 1972, when prospects were not too sanguine, my old friend Bob Mardian, then head of the Internal Security Division of the Department of Justice, was asked one day to step out of my office to take a call from the White House. The caller was Ehrlichman, who asked Bob if he would consent to be deputy when Ehrlichman was nominated as attorney general!
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Incredibly, Ehrlichman turned bitter, claiming, “Nixon lied to me about Watergate.” He later dumped his wife, took up with a younger Native American woman, and grew a beard. He never spoke to Nixon from the day he was fired. But don’t feel sorry for Ehrlichman: he ran the illegal break-in at the Los Angeles office of Dr. Fielding, the psychiatrist for Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers.

Former New York City cop John Caulfield recalled that Ehrlichman, a lawyer, approved the break-in at the psychiatrist’s office with the un-lawyerly admonishment, “Don’t get caught.” The group known as “the Plumbers” illegally broke into the doctor’s office with Ehrlichman’s approval.

On Caulfield’s recommendation, it was also Ehrlichman who recruited tough-talking, New York cop Anthony Ulasewicz. Ulasewicz performed more than ninety-three “investigations” at White House direction, first under Ehrlichman and later under White House counsel John W. Dean. It is significant that, while Lyndon Johnson generally left his snooping to the FBI and went to great lengths to establish some legal cover for the actions, the Nixon group established their own extra-legal intelligence gathering operations to operate outside government channels. The two gumshoes reported to Ehrlichman.

Caulfield and Ehrilichman vetted Ulasewicz in May 1969 at LaGuardia Airport. He was told he would receive his orders from Caulfield with the understanding that they came from Ehrlichman and, initially, President Nixon. “You’ll be allowed no mistakes,” Ehrlichman told Ulasewicz. “There will be no support for you whatsoever from the White House if you’re exposed.”
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John Mitchell put a finer point on it, calling Ehrlichman “a conniving little SOB.”
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Veteran reporter Robert Novak recalled an eerie premonition from Patrick J. Hillings. “Hillings at age twenty-seven had won the congressional seat vacated by Nixon when he ran for the Senate. For the next eight years, Hillings was Nixon’s man in the House of Representatives. He ran for attorney general of California in 1958 but was defeated in the Republican primary by Caspar Weinberger. I took it for granted that Nixon’s election meant that Hillings, only forty-five in 1969, would be a top White House aide. Consequently, over dinner that Saturday night, I was surprised when Hillings informed me he would not be joining the Nixon administration.
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“Not a chance!” Pat told me. “Those teetotaling Christian Scientists don’t want any part of me, and I don’t want any part of them.”

“What Christian Scientists?” I asked.

“Haldeman and Ehrlichman,” he said, referring to two Nixon aides who had eclipsed him. I wasn’t aware of Bob Haldeman’s religion. I was barely aware of John Ehrlichman’s existence. Hillings’s subsequent remarks are emblazoned in memory. “I don’t trust a man who never takes a drink. It’s worse than that. I know Dick Nixon about as well as anybody in politics, and I know his weaknesses. The Christian Scientists will bring out the worst in him.”
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The arrival of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and their army of crew-cutted advertising men changed the atmosphere and tone of Nixon’s campaign. Gone was the access the bright, young men had to “the old man.” Now, all paper and appointments with Nixon flowed through Bob Haldeman. A Berlin Wall came down around Nixon and old advisors, new advisors, and political staff members were required to put everything in writing, routing all paper through Haldeman. John Mitchell could see and talk to Nixon any time he wanted, but for those on the writing and research, issues and political staff access became extremely limited. According to former Ohio State Attorney General and US Senator William Saxbe, who Nixon later named attorney general, “One of Nixon’s problems were that he surrounded himself with guys that had no involvement in a political campaign. I referred to Haldeman and Ehrlichman as Nazis when I was in the Senate; that is the way they operated.”
15
What Saxby meant was not that Haldeman and Ehrlichman had never been in campaigns, but that they had not handled political roles, they had only handled logistics. They were campaign mechanics.

In the words of Richard Whalen, the staffers had been reduced to “automatons in a cause completely without substance.”
16
Whalen showed up at the Republican National Convention and was told he had been demoted. He was denied entry to the eighteenth floor where Nixon stayed, and he could no longer discuss issues with the candidate face-to-face. “Go see John Ehrlichman,” Whalen was told.
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Ehrlichman was unknown to Whalen and upon introduction the stocky lawyer told him that he would look into the dilemma and to return the next day. The following day, Ehrlichman told Whalen there had been no mistake, he would not be granted admittance to the eighteenth floor, and if he were needed, he would be summoned. Whalen did not take the news lightly:

“Just who the hell are you?” I asked. “I’ve never laid eyes on you or heard your name mentioned. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to take orders from you.” “Look,” he said, his own temper rising, “I’ve been with Nixon a long time, and I’ve seen writer and researcher types like you come and go. You’ll go where I say you go.”

“Fuck you,” I said, walking out.

The wounding reference to “writer and researcher types” hurt precisely because I knew it was true. The issues men who had put their brains and pens at Nixon’s disposal in former years had indeed come and gone without a trace. I decided to stand my ground.
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The Berlin Wall descended around Nixon. The candidate, who had been so accessible to the press through the primaries and convention, no longer submitted to interviews and would campaign with the revolutionary but repetitive use of television advertising. The emphasis of the campaign was no longer on the working press or making news. Nixon staged a masterful campaign but won in a three-way race with the same 46 percent of the vote he had in the polls from the very beginning.