The Evidence: Fitting the Pieces Together

Never in the 25-month history of the Watergate scandal had so much of the evidence been brought together in one place. The eight volumes of material released last week by the House Judiciary Committee assembled all the available bits and pieces of the Watergate mosaic: previously secret grand jury testimony furnished to the committee by Judge John Sirica, memos written by President Nixon and some of his high aides, Senate Watergate Committee testimony, tape recordings from the Oval Office, a presidential Dictabelt, and notes scrawled on legal-size pads in the President's irregular hand. The Judiciary Committee formed no conclusions and drew no verdicts. In a serious effort to be fair and impartial, it simply presented all the materials it had acquired.

The overwhelming weight of the evidence is against Nixon, though there is no single piece of new information that could conclusively decide the case. There is much ambiguity about specific words and actions of the President. But the broad pattern of motives and strategies suggested by the mass of material leaves little doubt about the major aim of the President: to protect him self and his aides from the flood of disclosures that began immediately after the Watergate break-in on June 17, 1972.

New evidence assembled by the committee confirms, and in many instances sharpens, the impressions given by already published material. The President and his men often judged possible actions for their publicity value, rarely for their potential in getting out the complete truth or bringing individuals to justice. Though the White House insists that the impeachment inquiry should be limited to the Watergate break-in and cover-up alone, the committee, beginning this week, will produce ten more volumes of information on other allegations against Nixon.

The President's defense on Watergate is contained in a separate 242-page volume, which the committee released together with last week's seven books of evidence. Prepared by Presidential Lawyer James St. Clair, it is the only portion of the massive document that attempts to draw specific conclusions. St. Clair cites Senate Watergate testimony by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell that the President had no knowledge of the burglary or the coverup. The defense counsel's main focus, however, is on the crucial $75,000 payment to E. Howard Hunt, one of the convicted Watergate conspirators. St. Clair argues that the transcript of the meeting that Nixon held with White House Counsel John Dean on March 21, 1973, "clearly demonstrates that the President recognizes that any blackmail and cover-up activities then in progress could not continue."

St. Clair's relatively slender volume of defense is overshadowed by the seven books of evidence (ranging from 271 to 687 pages). Part 1 of the Judiciary Committee document details the formation of the "sophisticated intelligence-gathering system" that eventually led to the Watergate break-in and bugging. A second volume deals with the initial attempt to limit the case to the seven original burglars and their accomplices, while keeping the scandal away from the White House. A third section of two volumes focuses on the hush-money payments to Hunt and the continued cover-up efforts. The three-volume fourth section contains material on activities after March 22, 1973, emphasizing the role of President Nixon--whether he launched an investigation or participated in the cover-up himself.

Herewith the major elements of the evidence:

The Immediate Cover Up

One of the more startling disclosures is that Nixon foresaw a need to conceal information about the Watergate affair just 13 days after the June 17 breakin. At a meeting with Haldeman and Mitchell, which was called to discuss Mitchell's resignation as Nixon's campaign director, this dialogue took place:

HALDEMAN: Well, there maybe is another facet. The longer you wait, the more risk each hour brings. You run the risk of more stuff, valid or invalid, surfacing on the Watergate caper--type of thing--

MITCHELL: You couldn't possibly do it if you got into a--

HALDEMAN:--the potential problem and then you are stuck--

PRESIDENT: Yes, that's the other thing, if something does come out, but we won't--we hope nothing will. It may not. But there is always the risk.

HALDEMAN: As of now there is no problem there. As of any moment in the future there is at least a potential problem.

PRESIDENT: Well, I'd cut the loss fast. I'd cut it fast. If we're going to do it I'd cut it fast.

It is possible that by "cut the loss" Nixon meant that Mitchell would have to resign. But in expressing his fear that some information might "come out," the President seemed already concerned that an open policy of complete disclosure would be fraught with danger--fully nine months before he claims he first became aware of the Watergate coverup.

Less than three weeks after the arrest of the Watergate wiretappers, the possibility of granting them Executive clemency was discussed by the President and Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman later recalled before a Watergate grand jury that he held a "very long, rambling conversation" with the President on or about July 4, 1972. Testified Ehrlichman: "We talked about the Watergate defendants, and I raised the point with the President that presidential pardons or something of that kind inevitably would be a question that he would have to confront." Ehrlichman added in his testimony that Nixon expressed the "firm view [that] he would never be in a position to grant a pardon or any form of clemency in this case." Despite Ehrlichman's report that Nixon rejected clemency, the conversation raises a sticky question for the White House: Why did Ehrlichman feel that the question of Executive clemency would "inevitably" come up over what was then being described by Nixon's spokesmen as a "third-rate burglary"?

That question indeed occurred to an assistant special Watergate prosecutor, Richard Ben-Veniste. Logically, one Watergate defendant that the White House should have been worried about was G. Gordon Liddy, then a fairly high official of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Ehrlichman testified that he knew by June 20 that Liddy had headed the Watergate break-in team. Yet Ehrlichman told Ben-Veniste that he did not inform the President of Liddy's role.

Q. Now when was the first time that you were aware that the President was aware that Liddy had an involvement?

A. I don't know.

Q. Was the President aware of that by the Fourth of July ?

A. I haven't any idea.

Q. Was he aware of it before the 10th of July, based on your long and very complete discussions with him on the 6th 7th and 8th of July?

A. I don't know.

Then, moments later, Ben-Veniste asked incredulously:

Q. And are you testifying that you were aware of that and you had conversations with the President about the possibilities of Executive clemency for these people, and you just omitted to tell the President that the general counsel for the finance committee [Liddy] had admitted to Dean that it was his operation?

Nixon's Involvement Deepens

The most damaging material concerns the events of March 1973. President Nixon has repeatedly stated that it was only on March 21 that he first learned, from Dean, of the Watergate coverup. There are strong indications in the new evidence that the President discussed the cover-up at least eight days before March 21. More incriminating still is material showing that President Nixon perpetuated the cover-up rather than launching a complete investigation, as he has frequently claimed he did.

The Judiciary Committee's version of a March 13 conversation between Nixon and Dean shows clearly, as do the transcripts issued by the White House, that the President was then aware of perjury by Gordon Strachan, Haldeman's top aide. The President on that day also explicitly rejected the "hang-out road" -- meaning a complete disclosure.

The evidence shows that Nixon again discussed the Watergate cover-up with Dean on March 17. A committee subpoena for the tape of that conversation was rejected by the White House. But during a later talk between Nixon and Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler, a tape of which was obtained by the Judiciary Committee, Nixon recounted that on March 17 he ordered Dean to "cut off any disclosures that might implicate him in Watergate." The Judiciary Committee states: "The President said that [the former deputy campaign director] Jeb Magruder 'put the heat on, and [the former treasurer of Nixon's finance committee, Hugh] Sloan starts pissing on Haldeman.' " As the committee report summarizes the conversation: "The President said that 'we've got to cut that off. We can't have that go to Haldeman.' The President said that looking to the future there were problems and that Magruder could bring it right to Haldeman, and that could bring it to the White House, to the President. The President said that 'We've got to cut that back. That ought to be cut out.' "

The evidence also amplifies the record of the events of the fateful March 21. A statement made by the President on his Dictabelt machine just after his meeting with Dean and transcribed by the Judiciary Committee shows that he admired those of his aides who lied to investigating groups and had contempt for those who told the truth. He praised Gordon Strachan-- who at the time was stonewalling FBI investigators and Government prosecutors with denials that led later to his indictment for perjury. In Nixon's words, Strachan was "a real . . . courageous fellow through all this." By contrast, Nixon talked of Magruder, who was cooperating with prosecutors, as "a rather weak man, who had all the appearance of character, but who really lacks it when the, uh, chips are down."

Strangely, Nixon began the Dictabelt by saying that March 21 was "relatively uneventful." But he went on to recount his long conversation with Dean and made a possible damaging statement about one of the most crucial parts of the Watergate case, E. Howard Hunt's demand for money. Lawyer St. Clair has argued that, in his March 21 discussion of a payment to Hunt from campaign funds, Nixon meant only legal-support payments. But the President's Dictabelt indicates that this was not so. "Hunt," said the President, "needed a hundred and--thousand [sic] dollars or so to pay his lawyer and handle other things or he was going to have some things to say that would be very detrimental to Colson and Ehrlichman, et al. This is, uh, Dean recognizes as pure blackmail."

On the Dictabelt, Nixon placed much of the blame for the whole Watergate imbroglio on Charles Colson, who had recently resigned as White House special counsel. "Apparently what happened is that Colson, with Liddy and Hunt in his office, called Magruder and told him in February to get off his ass and start doing something about, uh, setting up some kind of an operation . . . Colson was always pushing terribly hard for action, and in this instance, uh, pushed so hard that, uh, Liddy et al following their natural inclinations, uh, went, uh, the extra step which got them into serious trouble."

The evidence confirms that Colson did urge Magruder to speak with Hunt and Liddy, who at the time were promoting the Watergate break-in plan. But if the President was aware of Colson's involvement, he seemed anxious to keep others from finding out. A week after Nixon made the Dictabelt, according to evidence revealed in the Judiciary Committee's volumes, Nixon instructed Ehrlichman to inform Richard Kleindienst, then the Attorney General, that "neither Dean nor Haldeman nor Colson nor I nor anybody in the White House had any prior knowledge of this burglary." On March 30, nine days after the President recorded his suspicions of Colson, Ziegler told reporters: "As we have said before, no one in the White House had any involvement or prior knowledge of the Watergate event, and I repeat that statement again today."

Ziegler was asked about that pronouncement by a Watergate grand jury last Feb. 12. His testimony included:

Q. Did the President tell you to make that statement in March?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. So the President didn't tell you what he had learned on March 21st [from John Dean] prior to your making the March 30th statement?

A. No, he didn't.

Cover -Up of the Cover-Up

After the March 21 meeting with Dean, the President and his top aides spent weeks huddled in strategy sessions, looking for ways to limit damaging disclosures about Watergate while trying to give the appearance of exhaustively examining the case. A 15-minute portion of a March 22 meeting of Nixon, Mitchell and Dean was entirely left out of the White House transcripts. The Judiciary Committee transcript of that portion of the meeting depicts the President in a cover-up frame of mind.

PRESIDENT:. . . I was going to say, uh, uh, John Dean is, uh, (unintelligible) got--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 God damn thing the way it went, and so forth. But, in my view, uh, some of it will come out; we will survive it. That's the way it is. That's the way you've got to look at it.

Significantly, when John Dean claimed before the Ervin committee that Nixon praised his efforts to contain the Watergate affair, the White House denied that Nixon had done so. The transcript, however, clearly shows the President complimenting Dean on his work. In the March 22 conversation, the President seems still to be looking for a way to "put the fires out" without making a full disclosure:

DEAN: We were within a few miles months ago, but, uh, we're--

PRESIDENT: The point is, get the God damn thing over with.

DEAN: That's right.

PRESIDENT: That's the thing to do. That's the other thing I like about this. I'd like to get--But you really would draw the line on--But, I know, we can't make a complete cave and have the people go up there and testify. You would agree on that?

> The President stated in August 1973 that he ordered Ehrlichman to investigate the Watergate case after he learned that Dean was unable or unwilling to carry out his inquiry. Ehrlichman testified before the Senate Watergate committee that the orders came at a noon meeting on March 30. But a White House transcript for that meeting shows that, in the words of the committee report, "the only subject discussed was a statement to be issued by Ziegler at a press briefing." The President, Ehrlichman and Ziegler did discuss the possibility of going up before the grand jury but only as a public relations device.

> One of the President's handwritten notes shows that he fretted over the $350,000 shelled out by Frederick LaRue, a former re-election committee aide, to the Watergate conspirators. "What will LaRue say he got the 350 for?" wrote the President on April 15, 1973--the day when Nixon was told by Prosecutor Henry Petersen that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were guilty of cover-up activities. The exact meaning of Nixon's note is unclear. But apparently he was not thinking that telling the simple truth would be the best course for LaRue.

Previously undisclosed evidence reveals a seamy, desperate attempt to pin the blame for the break-in on a couple of vulnerable faithful servants of the President. The White House tried to use Mitchell and Magruder to protect the President and his top aides. The method: secretly tape separate conversations with Mitchell and Magruder and then turn their words against them.

On April 13,1973, while Magruder was cooperating with the prosecutors, he was called by Lawrence Higby, an aide to Haldeman. According to a transcript of the tape, Higby charged Magruder with leaking information to two reporters. Magruder retorted that that was "just ridiculous," but he went on to implicate both himself and Mitchell: "I've committed perjury so many times now that I'm, uh, you know, I'm, uh, I've got probably a hundred years on perjury alone." Then he talked about his decision to "make a clean breast of things." He added: "Of course, he [Mitchell] will be upset with me because I obviously will implicate John Mitchell." Finally Higby extracted from Magruder exactly whom his testimony would implicate: Dean, Strachan and Mitchell--but not Haldeman and not the President.

This was just what Higby and Haldeman wanted. The next evening, Ehrlichman told the President: "He [Higby] tape recorded this thing. Higby handled it so well that Magruder has closed all his doors now with this tape."

PRESIDENT: What good will that do, John?

EHRLICHMAN: Sir, it beats the socks off him if he ever gets off the reservation.

"Can you use the tape?" the President wanted to know. After some discussion, Haldeman said that, according to Washington, D.C., law, they could.

Also on April 14 Ehrlichman, at Nixon's request, taped a conversation with Mitchell. The apparent purpose: to get Mitchell to admit that he had approved the Watergate break-in and engineered the original coverup, and thus take the heat off the White House. Mitchell took a commercial flight to Washington that afternoon. Ehrlichman quickly ushered him into his office without giving him a chance to see the President. Also, Ehrlichman pulled a chair close to his desk so that Mitchell would be close to the hidden microphone.

Nixon, Ehrlichman said, would get the credit if Mitchell would only confess his guilt to the U.S. Attorney. But Mitchell proved to be too shrewd to say anything that would incriminate himself. According to a transcript of his conversation, he denied his own guilt and accused the White House of responsibility. "Well let me tell you where I stand," he told Ehrlichman. "Uh, there is no way that I'm going to do anything except staying where I am because I'm too far, uh, far out. Uh, the fact of the matter is that, uh, I got euchred into this thing, when I say, by not paying attention to what those bastards were doing, and uh, well, you know how far back this goes . . . this . . . whole genesis of this thing was over here--as you're perfectly aware."

That put Ehrlichman, who knew the meeting was being recorded, on the immediate defensive. "No, I didn't know that," he replied.

Some Light On the Origins

The Judiciary Committee evidence shed a bit of light on the origins of Watergate by recounting some of the practices, power relationships and internal rivalries in the Nixon political camp during the months before the break-in and coverup. What is clear is that the White House kept the tightest control over even the smallest details of President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign.

The control was exercised by Haldeman. He gave his orders to Strachan, his liaison at the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, who is currently under indictment for covering up the Watergate burglary. A lot of ordinary and extraordinary campaign decisions were made through a long series of "Political Matter" memos that Haldeman got from Strachan; Haldeman indicated a preferred course of action in specific situations by placing the initial H next to an alternative.

In the memo dated Dec. 2,1971, with which the evidence begins, Strachan mentioned that "the Attorney General [Mitchell] discussed with John Dean the need to develop a political intelligence capability. Sandwedge [a previously considered plan] has been scrapped." In a memo four days later, Haldeman approved a pay raise, from $26,000 to $30,000, for Liddy, who had just shifted over from his job as an Ehrlichman aide to handle political intelligence and legal matters for the re-election committee. In these and later memos, Haldeman approved such trivia as the idea of starting a tabloid for the campaign to get news to the organization, and the request by Maurice Stans, the re-election committee's finance chief, for permission to eat in the White House mess. Haldeman accepted without comment the news that Political Adviser Harry Dent had counseled that President Nixon could break "without undue political flak" an unwritten promise to National Urban League Chief Whitney Young that the Veterans Administration would create $9 million worth of jobs for blacks. Dent had recommended, Strachan reported, that the funds be used instead for recruiting blacks "who can deliver for the President on Nov. 7, 1972."

Several memos deal with a sensitive topic--money. Both Haldeman and Strachan used the same slang as the underworld when discussing finances. Zeroes were dropped from large sums; cash is called "green." Wrote Strachan: "Of the 1.2 fund Kalmbach has a balance of 900 [meaning $900,000]-plus under his personal control." Strachan presented to Haldeman the recommendation of Stans, Dean and Herbert Kalmbach, the President's private lawyer and a major fund raiser, that "690" be put in legal committees and that "only the 230 green would be held under Kalmbach's personal control." Haldeman approved with his "H," and in a handwritten note at the bottom of the page told Strachan to "make it 350 green and hold for us."

No theme emerged from the evidence with more regularity than that of hear no evil. When Sloan, the treasurer of the re-election campaign, asked Stans about Liddy's request for $83,000, Stans replied: "I do not know what's going on in this campaign and I don't think you ought to try to know." And when Liddy, depressed because his plan for the burglary seemed to be getting no where, approached Dean early in 1972, Dean gave him a moral stiff-arm: "Well, Gordon, you recall that we're not going to talk about that."

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