How to Rehearse for Deception

The problem before White House aides last October was how to respond to news reports that Dwight Chapin, then the President's appointments secretary, had hired Lawyer Donald Segretti and directed him in political sabotage. John Dean last week supplied the Ervin committee with a transcript of a "practice session" in which four officials coached Ronald Ziegler.

Impersonating both hostile reporters and Ziegler himself, John Ehrlichman, Chapin, Dean and Special Presidential Counsel Richard A. Moore alternately badgered Ziegler with expected questions and brainstormed lines of counterattack. Although the transcript does not always identify the speaker, most of the participants in the rehearsal urged that Ziegler discredit the stories as politically motivated. At one point, Chapin--the participant with the most at stake--struck the tone he thought Ziegler should take: "I am not going to dignify desperation politics."

Later, Ehrlichman (as Ziegler) challenged a roomful of imaginary reporters: "We just don't take as seriously as you do these campaign pranks. Some of you for your own purposes have blown these into something that is not there." The real Ziegler's cautious critique from the wings: "I don't think we can take on the press."

Another participant suggested a statement from the President saying, in part: "Dwight Chapin is one of the most able and most respected men on my staff. In my opinion, he made a mistake in encouraging pranks. However, this has occurred in my campaigns in the past and had no effect there. I am sure these pranks have had no effects here." That notion seemed to depict the President as a past victim of feckless capers. In any event, Ehrlichman hastily opposed the idea.

Ultimately, the group came up with three alternative responses. In the first, Ziegler was to say that the President was not obliged to answer charges that were "unsubstantiated," "unsupported" and "political in character." A second response called for an admission that Chapin had hired Segretti but had no subsequent responsibility for Segretti's activities. Third, Ziegler could say that the President refused comment on all "allegations of campaign tactics."

The transcript breaks off without noting a final decision, but Ziegler's subsequent responses to reporters' questions on the Chapin-Segretti relationship are a matter of record. He reiterated Chapin's claim that such stories were "fundamentally inaccurate," added that "at no time has anyone in the White House or this Administration condoned such activities as spying on individuals ... or sabotaging campaigns in an illegal way." He also said that the President was concerned about stories "based on hearsay, innuendo, guilt by association." Chapin finally resigned to take a job with an airline--after Ziegler had denied that he was under pressure to leave. That denial, according to Dean, was also inaccurate.

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