The Case of the Doctored Transcripts

"I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else if it'll save it--save the plan. That's the whole point . . . We're going to protect our people, if we can."

Thus spoke Richard Nixon to some of his top aides on March 22, 1973, as he urged them not to cooperate with the many investigations of the Watergate scandal that were getting hotter. His words were tape-recorded, of course, like most conversations in the Oval Office. But this particular call for a continued cover-up was somehow omitted from a transcript of the March 22 meeting that the White House finally released --under duress--last April.

The President's instructions to his lieutenants* emerged now because the House Judiciary Committee made its own transcripts of eight White House tapes that were turned over to the committee by Federal Judge John Sirica. When the committee published this material last week, observers quickly discovered scores of discrepancies between the White House transcripts and the committee's versions.

Some stenographic errors were inevitable in so large a mass of material, but curiously, in practically every instance, the mistakes in the White House transcripts put the President in a better light than did the committee's corrected documents. To Nixon's critics on Capitol Hill, the many omissions and apparent misstatements in the White House version seemed nothing less than a clumsy effort to doctor the evidence, to cover up the original coverup. These revelations damaged the President and added impetus to the impeachment drive.

In addition to the release of the transcripts last week, the Judiciary Committee also published an extraordinary body of evidence concerning the Watergate case--eight volumes in all of more than 4,000 pages (see following story).

Unhelpful Witnesses. In the meantime, the committee moved ahead toward an impeachment vote, now expected by the end of the month. For a time last week it appeared that the vote might be delayed until mid-August, and a curious exchange of notes took place between House leaders sitting at, of all places, the President's table. While listening to a White House briefing from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, House Speaker Carl Albert slipped a piece of paper to Democratic House Leader Thomas ("Tip") O'Neill on which he observed that the Rodino committee was now running a month behind schedule. O'Neill quickly scribbled a reply: he had talked to Chairman Peter Rodino, and the committee would damned well vote soon.

The first four witnesses who testified before the committee in closed session last week had all been requested by the President's special counsel, James St. Clair. His aim has been to narrow the grounds for impeachment by maintaining to the committee that it must establish a direct link between Nixon and a criminal offense: in this case, the payment of hush money to Convicted Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt on March 21, 1973. Accordingly, he wanted the witnesses to declare that Nixon had not specifically ordered the payment of the $75,000 to Hunt. But no witness remembered the timing of the payment in such a way as to absolve Nixon of involvement in the incident.

The week's first witness was Frederick LaRue, onetime assistant to John Mitchell at the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, who said that he could not remember exactly when John Dean had telephoned him about paying Hunt. Another witness, William O. Bittman, former attorney for Hunt, was equally unilluminating.

Nailing Water. The third witness, former Attorney General John Mitchell, betrayed a failing memory of almost dismaying proportions. But he remembered precisely that H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, then the White House chief of staff, had not mentioned the payment of hush money when he telephoned Mitchell in Manhattan on March 21, 1973. It was for this reason that St. Clair had wanted Mitchell as a witness: to demonstrate that Haldeman had not passed on instructions from Nixon to see that Hunt was paid off.

Instead, said Mitchell, he had discussed the proposed payment with LaRue, who had asked Mitchell whether he thought the money should be paid. Mitchell said he replied that if the money was to be used for legal fees, he would advise LaRue to pay it.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed much impressed by Mitchell's testimony. "He has what I call a convenient memory, it's selective," declared Congressman George Danielson, a California Democrat. Trying to get information from Mitchell, he added, was "like trying to nail a drop of water to the wall." Republican M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia allowed that as a result of Mitchell's appearance, "the sum total of human knowledge is not changed a bit." Added Republican Tom Railsback of Illinois: "Mitchell personifies the stonewall."

Then came John Dean, the star of last summer's Watergate committee hearings. St. Clair had hoped to discredit Dean as a witness, since it was the former White House counsel's sharp memory that had formed the original scope of the case against the President. But not even the toughest cross-examination by St. Clair would shake Dean in his basic charges that Nixon knew of and participated in the cover-up before March 21. In fact, Dean also furnished some hitherto unknown details about life in the Oval Office. The President, said Dean, once vowed to remove one of his most respected Cabinet members, Treasury Secretary George Shultz, if Shultz did not cooperate with the White House plan to "punish" the 500 "enemies" on its list. "If George Shultz thinks he's some sort of candy-ass over this [the crackdown on 'enemies']," the President told Dean, "tell me and I'll get him out."

The last witness of the week was Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, who was in charge of the original Watergate investigation. Petersen testified that he had "never received any information which involved the President in any cover-up." He described how he had passed on to the President some confidential information concerning the progress of the investigation. But Petersen professed to feel that the President had acted "within his rights" when he broke his word to Petersen and repeated the confidential information to several White House aides who were under investigation.

Another subject that fascinated the committee was the latest, 19-minute tape gap, mentioned last week by a Watergate prosecutor in Judge Sirica's court. The White House explained that, during a conversation between Nixon and John Ehrlichman in the Oval Office on March 20, 1973, the recording machine had run out of tape. Skeptics noted that March 20 had been a Tuesday--a workday when the machines were ordinarily carefully monitored by the Secret Service.

This week, as the hearings end, the committee will begin publishing massive additional evidence on the non-Watergate charges against the President: testimony concerning the milk industry contributions, the ITT antitrust settlement, the Ellsberg break-in and other matters. But nothing in this material is likely to be as potentially damaging to the President's cause as the transcripts released last week.

Too Late for the Hang-Out. The differences between the White House and Judiciary Committee transcripts were fascinating, and at times crucial. In the March 22, 1973, conversation, for instance, the White House version quoted Nixon as saying Mitchell favored a flexible strategy "in order to get off the cover-up line"; in the committee version, it was "in order to get on with the cover-up plan."

In a March 13 conversation, according to both versions, Nixon asked Dean whether it was still possible to make full disclosure of the facts: "Is it too late to, to, frankly, go the hangout road?" In the committee version--and only that version --the President quickly answered his own question: "Yes, it is." Then he added, in the committee version: "The hang-out road's going to have to be rejected. I, some, I understand it was rejected." This exchange took place eight days before the famous date of March 21, on which Nixon has steadfastly maintained he first learned of the Watergate coverup. Yet by March 13, according to the new evidence, the President had come to believe that he no longer had the option of simply telling the truth.

On the same day, according to both versions, Dean told Nixon that Gordon Strachan, an aide to Haldeman, had already lied twice to federal investigators. In the White House version, Dean told Nixon: "He can go in and stonewall and say, I don't know anything about what you are talking about.' He has already done it twice, you know, in interviews." The Judiciary version is only slightly but subtly different. Dean says, "He'll go in and stonewall it...he has already done it twice, as you know . . ." Then, in the Judiciary version, when Dean remarks to Nixon that he does not believe that John Mitchell knew about the Watergate bugging, Nixon replies incredulously, "You kidding?" (That rejoinder was omitted from the White House version.)

On March 21, Nixon and Dean discussed Hunt's demands for $120,000. In the White House version, Nixon asks Dean, "Your major guy to keep under control is Hunt." In the Judiciary version, this is a flat statement: "Your major guy to keep under control is Hunt." And when, in the same version, Dean reflects, "He knows so much," the President adds ominously, "about a lot of other things." (This, again, is omitted from the White House version.)

Then, as the already well publicized discussion of the payment to Hunt continued, Nixon, according to the White House text, asked: "Would you agree that that's the prime thing, that you damn well better get that done." In the committee version, the President says: "Would you agree then that that's a buy-time thing, you better damn well get that done, but fast?"

In the White House version, Nixon said of Hunt: "His price is pretty high, but at least we can buy time on that." In the Judiciary version, it becomes: "His price is pretty high, but at least, uh, we should, we should buy the time on that, uh, as I pointed out to John." When Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman mentioned that Hunt also wanted to get a pardon, Nixon, in the Judiciary version, replies: "I know ... I mean he's got to get that by Christmas time." The White House version also included this remark, but attributed it to John Dean rather than to the President.

The same day, as he reflected on the amount of money that Dean estimated might be required by the original Watergate defendants, Nixon, according to the White House version, observed: "It sounds like a lot of money, a million dollars. Let my [sic] say, that I think we could get that. I know money is hard to raise." But in the Judiciary version his words are sharper: "Let me say that I think you could get that in cash, and I know money is hard, but there are ways."

One of the more eye-opening passages in the Judiciary Committee's version is a 15-minute conversation that does not appear at all in the White House transcripts. It was omitted, Press Secretary Ron Ziegler explained with a straight face last week, because "in our judgment it was of dubious relevance." This incredible assertion was echoed by St. Clair. It contains this comment by the President on March 22,1973: "John Dean . . . put the fires out, almost got the damn thing nailed down till past the election and so forth. We all know what it is. Embarrassing goddamn thing the way it went, and so forth."

The excised passage also contains the President's instruction to his staff that they strive to block the investigation by stonewalling or by invoking the Fifth Amendment, if necessary. The line is reminiscent of a suggestion that the President offered on March 21, 1973, when his aides were discussing the possibility of appearing before a federal grand jury: "But you can say, 'I don't remember.' " (In the Judiciary Committee version: "Just be damned sure you say, 'I don't . . . remember.' ")

Did the White House really believe that by quietly altering --or just not hearing--the taped evidence, it could delude the army of investigators now poring over every detail of the Watergate case? That is hard to believe. But the responsibility for the petty cover-up is less ambiguous. Last week Ron Ziegler reaffirmed that it was Richard Nixon himself who had made the final decision on what material would be released. As the President declared on April 29, when he finally surrendered the transcripts (rather than the tapes) to the Judiciary Committee, "I have spent many hours of my own time personally reviewing these materials and personally deciding questions of relevancy."

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