2. After a visit in July 1969 to Vietnam, where he was impressed by the troops, Nixon told Haldeman “never to let the hippie college-types in to see him again.” (HD, p. 77.)
3. The makeup had presumably been applied for the press conference the previous evening.
4. The report that Hutschnecker attended Nixon in Florida came from former lobbyist Robert Winter-Berger, who had known the doctor for several years. Hutschnecker later denied having made the visit, just as he also claimed he had treated Nixon only in his capacity as an internist. Today not much weight need be given to the doctor’s denial, which came during a congressional appearance in 1973, in which he described his contacts with Gerald Ford, then vice presidential nominee to replace Spiro Agnew. Nixon was still president at the time, though beleaguered by Watergate, and Hutschnecker probably deemed it judicious to protect their relationship. As reported in this chapter, Hutschnecker has since acknowledged that Nixon did secretly summon him to the White House just before his strange behavior during the Cambodia crisis. There is no special reason to doubt that he also consulted him in Florida the following week. Finally, it is clear from this author’s interviews with the doctor that his sessions with Nixon went beyond the normal treatments of an internist. (Winter-Berger on Florida: Winter-Berger, op. cit., p. 257; Hutschnecker denied: Hutschnecker testimony, Hearings, Committee on Rules and Administration, U.S. Senate, 93 Congress, 1st Session, on Nomination of Gerald Ford to be Vice President, Nov. 7, 1973, p. 194; secret summons: JA, p. 404, citing int. Hutschnecker, 1991.)
5. For the false story about an oil discovery, see p. 2.
6. Kissinger erroneously dates the hijacking as having occurred on a Saturday. In fact, it took place on Friday, August 29, the day of the Nixon party. (NYT Aug. 30, 1969.)
7. In his book White House Years Henry Kissinger described the episode as a major crisis. His analysis did not, however, have the cataclysmic overtones of the Nixon characterization. The “biggest problem” with Nixon’s posture, he wrote, “was to keep the courage from turning into recklessness and the firmness into bravado.” (Kissinger, White House Years, op. cit., p. 600.)
8. The late George Carver served as special assistant to three CIA directors and on Kissinger’s Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG), the National Security Council’s subcommittee for crisis management. His comments on the Nixon drinking episode are attributed to him by former intelligence official Barry Toll, who grew close to Carver during congressional probes of Vietnam POW and MIA issues. (Carver: Kissinger, White House Years, op. cit., p. 1182, and see p. 183 re: WSAG [NYT, June 30, 1994]; Toll: Statement of Barry Toll, June 14, 1992, Senate Select Committee on P.O.W. and M.I.A. Affairs, C.I.S. No. H.381-89.4, p. 94–; affidavit of Barry Toll, Aug. 2, 1994, provided to author.)
Chapter 28
1. Julie Nixon was soon to take up a teaching post at a school in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and staff members had complained she was receiving preferential treatment. The school to which she had been assigned was only four blocks from where she would be living, whereas other teachers had to drive miles to work. (NYT, May 28, 1971.)
2. This was Anthony Ulasewicz, veteran New York policeman and, like Caulfield, a former member of the New York City Police Department’s intelligence unit, the Bureau of Special Service and Investigation. Ehrlichman had hired him in April 1969 at a clandestine meeting at La Guardia Airport. Ulasewicz’s pay was handled by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal attorney. (Ulasewicz, op. cit., pp. 4–, 176–; NM, p. 14–.)
3. The former White House aide who described Nixon as “overjoyed” was Jeb Magruder. Magruder cannot have witnessed Nixon’s immediate response to the news, for he did not join the White House until three months after the accident. Neither the Haldeman diary, though, nor an account by William Safire, who spoke with Nixon soon after the news broke, reflects the sympathy Nixon claimed to have felt. The president’s immediate response was fascination and a resolve to “push hard” to take advantage of the tragedy. (“overjoyed”: Jeb Magruder, From Power to Peace, Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1978, p. 32; joined staff: R, Report, p. 14; Haldeman, Safire: HD, p. 72–; Safire, op. cit., p. 149–.)
4. Future Watergate burglar Howard Hunt, hired by Ehrlichman at Colson’s suggestion in July 1971, was given Chappaquiddick as his first assignment. In 1974, in a pitch to a prospective publisher, Hunt claimed that “Mary Jo Kopechne was pantyless and braless when found” and that “Kennedy did not go down in the creek with Mary Jo in the car—she was passed out on back seat; Ted K. was in front seat with another girl . . . he was attempting to lay; they didn’t even know Mary Jo was in back seat of the Pontiac.” A modified version of this theory appeared in Hunt’s published book Undercover. Kopechne’s body was found with no panties under her slacks, but she was wearing a bra. There was speculation that a second woman had been in the car because a handbag belonging to another of the night’s partygoers, Rosemary Keough, had been recovered from the vehicle. Keough said she had left the handbag in the car after a shopping trip earlier in the day. (Hunt assignment: Hunt, Undercover, op. cit., p. 148–; underwear, second passenger?: ibid., p. 205, but especially Alfred Ulmer letter to William Colby, March 28, 1974, enclosing G. P. Putnam’s internal memo, Feb. 8, 1974, re: Privilege [New York: Dell, 1988], pp. 12, 283, 411 [re: underwear]; Keough, bag: ibid., pp. 8, 28, but see pp. 371, 384, and Nelson Thompson, The Dark Side of Camelot, Chicago: Playboy Press, 176, p. 132.)
5. Haldeman recalled Nixon’s ordering “24-hour surveillance,” and instructions to that effect went out on June 23, 1971. The surveillance was modified in the fall of the year, after Caulfield advised that coverage of that extent could not be kept secret. (Haldeman on order: Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit., p. 60; instructions: Gordon Strachan testimony, July 12, 1973, R, Statement of Information, Bk. VII, Pt. 2, p. 658–; John Caulfield testimony, March 16, 1974, ibid., p. 656–; modified: ibid., and John Dean testimony, June 25, 1973, ibid., p. 661.)
6. The current rumor was that Kennedy was involved with Amanda Burden, daughter of CBS chairman William Paley and former wife of a New York Democratic councilman. Nixon referred on the White House tapes to her recent weekend with Kennedy and another couple aboard a Kennedy boat. Several press articles linked Kennedy romantically with Burden at a time he was married to his first wife, Joan. (RN, rumor: WHT, Sept. 7, 11, 1972; AOP, pp. 133, 138; Burden: Dunleavy and Brennan, op. cit., p. 165–; Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys, London: Pan, 1984, p. 554.)
7. The private detective was Michael McMinoway, code-named by the Nixon people Sedan Chair II. The bumper sticker mischief was just one of the dirty tricks pulled by Donald Segretti, who had been hired by Chapin, Nixon’s close aide. (McMinoway: E, Final Report, p. 192–; E, Bk. 11, pp. 4480–, 4489–, 4493–; Segretti: E, Final Report, p. 160.)
8. The right-wing Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader published a letter from Florida from a “Paul Morrison” concerning a derisive comment Muskie had allegedly made about “Canucks,” a disparaging reference to French Canadians living in the United States. Morrison was never traced, and this was probably a dirty trick involving future Watergate burglars Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy. A later letter to the Union Leader told of two men in Florida having paid a man a thousand dollars to write the letter. The name Morrison was picked out of the phone book. The “Canucks” letter was dated February 17, 1972, and Hunt and Liddy had been in Florida the previous week. Separately, Ehrlichman quoted Hunt as confiding that he knew about the letter. Months later White House Deputy Communications Director Kenneth Clawson would be quoted by a Washington Post reporter as saying he had written the letter. There seems little doubt Nixon’s people were indeed behind the smear. (“Morrison” letter: facsimile Arthur Egan file, Box B343, NA; later letter: Bangor Daily News, Sept. 27, 1972, at E, Bk. 11, p. 4812–; Hunt, Liddy in Florida: E, Report, p. 165–; “generator”: John Ehrlichman testimony, July 27, 1973, R, Bk. IV, Pt. 1, p. 516; Clawson: Ben Bradlee, A Good Life, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, p.
335; NM, p. 163.)
9. With John Mitchell’s approval, ten thousand dollars were committed to a plan to persuade a sufficient number of registered voters away from Wallace to make him ineligible to qualify for the 1972 ballot. The scheme did not work. It later emerged that half the money wound up with the Southern California Nazi party. (NM, p. 149; Magruder, American Life, op. cit., p. 188–.)
10. For discussion of probable deception on the tapes, see chapter 26, p. 349; AOP, p. xx; WHT, May 11, 1973; AOP, p. 466; and Ehrlichman, op. cit., p. 371. For examples of document destruction, see Ehrlichman—on tampering by Plumber David Young—at Ehrlichman, op. cit., p. 370. Also, Gordon Liddy, on his own destruction of documents, at Liddy, op. cit., p. 340. And perhaps most important, on the shredding of papers after the Watergate break-in by Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan, at Haldeman’s request, see E, Bk. 6, pp. 2442, 2473–, 2490, Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit., p. 15.
11. Ellsberg had never been Kissinger’s student. There is no evidence that he shot at peasants in Vietnam or that he and his wife had sex in front of their children. He had years earlier taken part in experiments with LSD conducted at UCLA and, according to a friend, “got stoned” on occasion after returning from Vietnam. About the same time, by his own account, he had responded to a newspaper ad inviting people to attend “an orgy.” He had been married twice, first to the daughter of a marine colonel and—in 1970—to Patricia Marx, daughter of toy manufacturer Louis Marx. (Never student: Rudenstine, op. cit., p. 122; LSD: Investigations of Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information, Aug. 9, 1971, p. 12, in J. Edgar Hoover to Haldeman, Aug. 10, 1971, NA; “got stoned,” “orgy”: Harper’s, October 1973.)
12. Kissinger has argued he knew when not to follow Nixon’s commands, see p. 369–. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other aides have claimed much the same. “I have an uneasy feeling,” Nixon himself said in a memo to Haldeman in 1969, “that many of the items that I sent out for action are disregarded when any staff member reaches the conclusion that it is unreasonable or unattainable. . . . I respect this kind of judgement.” (Haldeman: Haldeman with DiMona, op. cit., pp. xxi, 58; Ehrlichman: Ehrlichman in Miller Center, eds., op. cit., p. 128; Ehrlichman cited in Wicker, op. cit., p. 530 and fn. same page; other aides: Safire, op. cit., p. 112–; Hillings, op. cit., p. 121; ints. John Sears, William Rhatigan; “many of the items”: RN to Haldeman memo, June 16, 1969, cited at JA, p. 414.)
13. The operative who testified about being given the fire-bombing suggestion was John Caulfield. Colson, for his part, said he did not recall making it, that it may have been only a joke. Caulfield’s colleague Ulaswicz remembered reconnoitering Brookings in the fall. The operatives who worked up a variant on the scheme were future Watergate burglars Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt. (Caulfield: E, Bk. 22, p. 10359; Colson: Colson testimony in U.S. v. John Mitchell, Dec. 5, 1974, NA; Ulasewicz: Ulasewicz, op. cit., pp. 233, 249; Liddy, Hunt: Liddy, op. cit., p. 236–; Lane, op. cit., p. 202, but see Hunt denial, E, Bk. 9, p. 37891.)
14. See p. 141 and Note 10 for Chapter 13.
15. Writing of another episode, Hunt’s role in the scandal over the allegation that ITT traded a contribution to the Republican cause for an antitrust settlement, Nixon stated: “I later learned the man’s name: E. Howard Hunt.” The ITT episode occurred in March 1972, some seven months after, as the tapes show, he discussed Hunt in detail with Colson. (MEM, p. 582.)
16. John Dean would later recall Krogh’s telling him “he had received his orders right out of the Oval Office.” In interviews with the author, Krogh said he thought Dean had misinterpreted this. What he meant to say was that Nixon authorized his work but not specifically a break-in. (Dean: John Dean testimony, E, Bk. 3, p. 1007.)
17. Ehrlichman was obviously referring to the attempt to obtain Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s files, abandoned after the failed break-in. By shielding the president from the details once the operation had gone wrong, he may have been using the “deniability” ploy. A similar example would be the policy CIA officials followed when discussing Castro’s removal with Eisenhower and Kennedy. They reportedly avoided discussing assassination plots, once the principle was established, so that the presidents could legitimately deny involvement. This Ehrlichman exchange does not mean that Nixon might not earlier have approved the assignment. As discussed later, Ehrlichman surmised that he did do so—through Colson.
18. After being released from prison in 1974, Krogh visited Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, and apologized in person for the break-in of his office. Then he drove to San Clemente to see Nixon, who had resigned less than a week earlier. In the course of their conversation Nixon asked: “Did I know about that [the office break-in] in advance?” Krogh replied that he had no information that Nixon had been aware of it. “If you had come to me,” Nixon responded, “I would have approved it.” (Ints. Egil Krogh.)
19. Ehrilichman said the two aides were Frank Gannon and Diane Sawyer, former White House staffers who stayed on after the resignation to help with Nixon’s memoirs.
20. The original “skeletal operations plan” to get “derogatory information” on Ellsberg came to Colson in the form of a memo from Howard Hunt. One scheme specifically mentioned was to “Obtain Ellsberg’s files from his psychiatric analyst.” It was Colson whom Ehrlichman asked for a “game plan” on how, if the operation was successful, the resulting information could best be used. During Watergate, on the White House tapes, Nixon said flatly: “I never talked to Colson about Ellsberg.” This was not true, as several 1971 taped exchanges show. (“Plan”: Howard Hunt to Charles Colson, July 28, 1971, E, Bk. 9, p. 3886; “game plan”: John Ehrlichman to Charles Colson, Aug. 27, 1971, E, Bk. 6, p. 2651; “I never talked”: WHT, March 27, 1973; AOP, p. 265; 1971 exchanges: WHT, RN-Colson conversations, June 29, July 2, Sept. 18, and see Aug. 12, 1971, AOP, pp. 6, 15, 34, 27.)
21. The other Nixon attorney was Len Garment.
22. The author of the study was Robert Fink, who had worked with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Senator Abourezk inserted the results in the Congressional Record (vol. 120, No. 153, Oct. 9, 1974, “The Unsolved Break-ins”).
Chapter 29
1. Nixon’s personal attorney, Herbert Kalmbach, held money remaining from the 1968 campaign, plus other sums, until passing them to the reelection campaign treasurer in early 1972. He testified that it amounted at that time to $915,000. (Kalmbach testimony: E, Bk. 17, p. 7580.)
2. Khashoggi; see p. 282–.
3. Nixon later called it a “hypocritical myth” that his administration “sold” ambassadorships. It is true that he was not the first president to give the London embassy to a rich supporter—vide Roosevelt’s appointment of Joseph Kennedy—but the White House tape passage cited demol-ishes his claim. (“myth”: Nixon, Arena, op. cit., p. 32–, and see Fortune, June 1970.)
4. Nixon seriously considered dropping Vice President Agnew for the second term, hoping to replace him with John Connally, whom the president saw as his “logical successor.” (AMII, p. 457, July 20, 1971, entry; HD, CD.)
5. This was the controversial donation that would eventually lead to CREEP fund-raiser Stans and John Mitchell being indicted for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. They were acquitted in 1974, while the indictment against Vesco for the same matter remains outstanding today. (Schoenebaum, op. cit., p. 445.)
6. Curtis Counts double-dated with Nixon and Pat when they were courting. See p. 31.
7. The author interviewed one of the agents, the late John Daley, while researching two previous books, and his widow kindly made his papers available for this project.
8. Leads included information brought to the Watergate Special Prosecution Force that Teamsters official Salvatore Briguglio raised five hundred thousand dollars as a bribe to obtain a pardon for Hoffa, which was allegedly delivered in a Las Vegas restaurant. Mob associate and convicted racketeer Allen Dorfman had a receipt, purportedly signed by John Mitchell, for one hundred thousand dollars. A “financial diary,??
? handed over to authorities in 1979 by reputed mob hit man Gerald Denomo, contained an entry that appeared to reflect a bribe to Nixon involving Dorfman and Fitzsimmons. It read: “Fitz OK. Al Dorfman Chi OK. Tony Pro [mob-ster and Teamsters official Provenzano] OK. ($500.-to C.C. (equals) Nix OK.)” “$500” has been taken to indicate five hundred thousand dollars. The Arizona Republic reported that law enforcement officials thought the diary implicated Nixon and key aides, including Colson, in the Hoffa deal. A Nixon spokesman denied it, and Colson dismissed it as a “discredited story.” Another mob hit man, Charles Allen, claimed that he and another man delivered a briefcase containing forty thousand dollars to John Mitchell on Hoffa’s behalf. (Briguglio: William Lynch to Charles Ruff, Aug. 9, 1976, WSPF, NA; Moldea, op. cit., p. 397; Dorfman: Friedman and Schwarz, op. cit., p. 131; Scheim, op. cit., p. 301; Denomo: AP, San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 16, [?]1979; Provenzano: Scheim, op. cit., p. 30; Allen: WP, Feb. 13, 1980.)
9. A front-page story in the Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader, published at the height of Watergate, alleged that funding for the burglars’ operations came in part from “gambling interests in Las Vegas” and the Teamsters. Liddy, the article claimed, had visited Nevada twice and had picked up $250,000. Hunt reportedly later flew to Vegas to collect an additional $150,000. The Leader article was retracted after Murray Chotiner sued over references in it to him. Liddy apparently made two visits to Las Vegas in early 1972. Hunt knew Liddy had been to the city but denied having been there himself. Both Hunt and Liddy and their accomplice James McCord said the interest there was the safe of Las Vegas newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun, supposedly because he had information on Senator Muskie. (Union Leader: Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader, Apr. 27, 1973; Hunt: int. Howard Hunt; Hunt testimony, E, Bk. 9, p. 3686, E, Bk. 20, p. 9345; Hunt, Undercover, op. cit., p. 193–; McCord: James McCord testimony, E, Bk. 1, p. 204; WHT, Apr. 13, 1973; AOP, p. 312.)