Watergate Read online

  “You know,” he said, leaning toward her on his right, “it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Mitchell taking the blame, I mean.”

  “Why?” she asked, not even needing to whisper in the ballroom’s din.

  Nixon sighed. “Connally says, if people are told Mitchell knew, then they’ll believe Nixon knew. Because the two of them are too close for it to have been otherwise.”

  “And it will be the same with Haldeman, Dick. His going won’t satisfy these people either. They’re coming for you.”

  She might have said us, to make him feel less alone, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Besides, the starker the message the better.

  Ted Knap began his introduction of the president. Nixon, pushing away his bowl of soup, spoke softly to Ziegler. “I’m thinking about a Warren Commission kind of thing. Put both Ervin and Sirica on it. Let them compete to see who can leak the most and get the biggest fawning headlines.”

  “An interesting thought,” Ziegler whispered, hoarsely.

  “Liddy is the key to this, you know. If I could be seen pressuring him, maybe even going to the D.C. jail, telling him to talk—well, then it would be the president cracking the case.”

  Hiss was on the boss’s mind yet again, thought Ziegler, who prayed for Knap to finish. He realized that a visit to the District of Columbia Jail was no more beyond possibility than 1970’s middle-of-the-night trip to the Lincoln Memorial.

  To the press secretary’s relief, Knap picked up a sterling-silver globe, a copy of one made in eighteenth-century Williamsburg, and prepared to bestow it upon the president in recognition of the past year’s foreign-policy triumphs. The object, held aloft, received polite applause, which diminished to something even milder when Nixon rose to accept it.

  “I can’t give up Haldeman,” the president whispered to Pat before walking to the lectern. “He’s the only one who can handle Kissinger.”

  The first lady shook her head, imperceptibly, masking her disbelief while she applauded her husband and smiled toward the fifth and sixth rows of tables.

  As he took possession of the globe and posed for pictures with Knap, Nixon felt his anger rise against the sick, disproportionate thinking of the crowd that was giving him this gift. The actual globe could fall apart at any time, but moments ago this throng in front of him had no doubt whistled and hollered for the Post boys, all for saving the world from what was—truthfully—a third-rate burglary.

  “President Knap, distinguished guests, and friends: It is a privilege to be here at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. I suppose I should say it is an executive privilege.”

  Now that he had the bastards laughing, he would snooker them with a little solemnity: “In the past several months, two men who appeared at these annual dinners on a total of twelve separate occasions have passed away, and President Knap, with your permission I think it would be appropriate this evening for everyone to rise in a moment of silence in memory of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

  As everyone stood, he stole a glance at Pat, knowing he hadn’t gotten through to her with what he’d said about Haldeman.

  But it was time to get back to being a good sport. He offered the reseated crowd a little tribute to Ziegler’s patience and loyalty, setting up a joke that Buchanan had written. “I must say that you’ve really worked him over, ladies and gentlemen. This morning he came into the office a little early, and I said, ‘What time is it, Ron?’ And he said, ‘Could I put that on background?’ ”

  Time to steer things back to seriousness, to the big themes of “a lasting peace abroad and prosperity at home,” phrasing he could by now roll out with the rote ease of “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

  He kept things short, got them to stand and clap for the four returned POWs in the ballroom, and ended by flattering them with what they’d believe to be a quotation from one of their own: “Now that the burden of our nation’s longest war has at long last been lifted, I am coming to realize the truth of what David Lawrence, a charter member of this group fifty-nine years ago, said to me not long before his recent passing: “ ‘There is only one more difficult task than being president of this country when we are waging war, and that is to be president of the nation when it is waging peace.’ ”

  Stepping away from the lectern, he found himself smiling, genuinely amused to have put them into the position of not knowing whether they were applauding him or Lawrence; as a result, they couldn’t decide how far up to set the thermostat of their approval. Christ, he’d have to see half of them again tomorrow morning, the ones who were here from out of town, when they sat their fat asses down in the East Room for the worship service. What ever possessed Ziegler to think that invitation would be helpful?

  “First-rate, perfect,” said Richardson, as the president returned to his seat on the dais.

  Puffect, he pronounced it, irritating Nixon.

  “Did you like the Lawrence quotation?” the president asked his new defense secretary.

  “It hit exactly the right note,” answered Richardson.

  “I made it up.”

  Nixon took his wife’s hand, and the crowd stood up as the two of them got ready to depart. He said good night to Rogers, who told the president about a cheap shot the emcee had taken against Agnew, before adding one of his own, calling the vice president “your insurance policy.”

  “Well, that policy may have to be canceled,” Nixon responded. “Haldeman’s found out that our friend from Maryland has a few problems of his own that are being investigated.”

  Rogers looked puzzled.

  “Not Watergate,” said Nixon. “Something else entirely.” He rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers to indicate money.

  Rogers’s mouth opened slightly as he relinquished the president, who snapped off a salute to the POWs.

  The tablecloths looked like hundreds of whitecaps, but Nixon forced himself to step down into the sea of guests, far enough to kiss Mrs. L’s hand and shake Joe Alsop’s. He gave the writer’s elbow a small appreciative squeeze, thanks for his not having sat at one of the Post tables, even though Mrs. Graham’s paper remained the flagship purveyor of his column. Nixon felt particularly grateful for Alsop’s having recently written that the media should think twice about turning Richard Nixon, the only president they had, into a cripple on the world’s dangerous stage.

  “How’s Stew?” Nixon asked the columnist.

  “He’s got his ups and downs, Mr. President. He was at the Gridiron last month and feeling just fine. But he wasn’t strong enough to come out tonight.”

  “Just like Harold,” said Nixon, baffling Alsop with this reference to his own brother’s long illness. “It went on for ten years.”

  Alice Longworth, accepting a peck on the cheek from the first lady, experienced her own moment of confusion. It was Joe’s mention of the Gridiron dinner—weren’t they there now? But if they were, where was the Marine Band? And where were the white ties?

  She emerged from the daze within seconds, realizing with her usual detachment that some piece of arterial plaque must have clogged things in her noggin before getting flushed out of the way. She was perfectly lucid once more: she was at the other dinner, the one for the correspondents’ association, and there was Dick, receding toward the exit with his hand nowhere near the small of his wife’s back, as it ought to be.

  She noted Pat’s exceptional thinness, though she herself had weighed only ninety-two and one-half pounds the last time she’d been forced onto a scale. She might be making it to ninety-three tonight, if they’d served her one of Anna Maria’s veal chops instead of this chicken that had choked to death on its own paprika.

  “He’s got to give another Checkers speech,” said Joe, watching the president disappear.

  “What’s he going to say?” asked Alice. “That he’s keeping Haldeman the way he allowed the girls to keep the dog?”

  Elliot Richardson, having greeted the Boston Globe table, no
w approached Alsop and said hello. Alice listened with exasperation to their brief, maloccluded exchange, wondering why so many people in her own dying social class continued to speak in that maddening double-slur of alcohol and lockjaw.

  “Mrs. Longworth,” said Richardson, reluctantly. “How lovely to see you. So much has happened since Miami.”

  “I have never been to Miami,” she said, provoking his retreat.

  She sat down, and tugged on her cousin’s jacket to make him sit with her. “Joe, you need to update your advice.”

  “What advice do you mean?”

  “The advice you gave in that column supporting Dick, the one putting political hijinx like Watergate into perspective.”

  “You make perspective sound like spinach.”

  “You referred to that forged letter from the British ambassador during the campaign of 1888. Cleveland and Harrison. Whom do you think you’re writing for? Me?”

  “I thought you didn’t read the Post.”

  “I don’t. My granddaughter does.”

  “And her copy fell open on your breakfast tray.”

  “I don’t eat breakfast. No, Joanna read me that column, and your conclusion was wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “You say the press are trying to cripple Dick.”

  “And so they are.”

  “They are not,” Alice said firmly, as the vast room around them began to empty itself. “They are trying to kill him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  APRIL 16, 1973, 8:40 A.M.

  4800 BLOCK OF FORT SUMNER DRIVE, BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  “The Gillespies have been aces,” declared Jeb Magruder, in praise of his neighbors. Fred LaRue had been allowed to pull into that family’s driveway, undetected by reporters staking out the Magruder house down the street, and Jeb, who’d been drinking coffee in the Gillespies’ kitchen almost since dawn, was now able to slip into the passenger seat of LaRue’s Chrysler. The older man had called late last night, asking for this talk.

  A few weeks ago, after McCord’s letter to Sirica went off like a cluster bomb, Jeb had been the one needing an ear, since he and everyone else knew that the perjury referred to in the letter was his own. He had shown up at Watergate West a couple of times to discuss developments and to express hope that things might—if Liddy didn’t talk—still somehow hold together.

  But two days ago he himself had finally spilled things to the U.S. Attorneys, and now he was hearing LaRue say, in his soft, undramatic way: “I saw Dean on Friday. I told him I’m going to the prosecutors.”

  Somehow the words still came as a shock, and during the long pause that followed, Magruder snuck a glance out the Chrysler’s rear window. In the street he saw a thick black cable belonging to one of the TV news outfits. It looked like a snake that had escaped from the Woodley Park Zoo.

  “Jeb,” said LaRue, “I love John Mitchell. And it’s damn near going to kill me to talk about him. But if I let this go any later, it’s going to be worse for me and just about everybody, maybe even for him.”

  Magruder nodded. “I met with Mitchell a week after McCord’s letter. He gave me two pieces of advice. The first was to get a lawyer, and the second was to not tell the lawyer the truth.”

  LaRue smiled, even as his head sank a little.

  “You know,” Magruder continued, “I gave some thought to suicide.” He conveyed this revelation in the same tone with which he might once have informed LaRue that he’d considered and rejected a direct-mail campaign for the CRP’s Kentucky operation. “The circumstances didn’t really make it appropriate.”

  It was the possibility of Mitchell’s suicide that remained much on LaRue’s mind, and he didn’t like hearing talk of that act from Jeb, in whose case it would seem plain stupid.

  “I also thought about skipping the country,” Magruder added. “I even had my assistant at Commerce research extradition treaties—who we’ve got them with and who we don’t.” He shook his head. “It was too complicated. And I decided I couldn’t do it to the kids, even if I managed to get them out with me and Gail.”

  It all sounded fantastical to LaRue, who had come here this morning to discuss the legal realities in front of them. “I just hired Fred Vinson, Jr., to be my lawyer,” he told Jeb. “You old enough to remember his daddy? Truman’s chief justice?”

  Magruder shook his head. The name sounded only vaguely familiar. “You know,” he said again, appearing to be off in his own world, “I really loved that Commerce job. It was supposed to be a waiting room for me until things cleared up and I looked confirmable again, but I think I had my happiest six weeks in Washington there.”

  “Things are not going to clear up, Jeb.”

  “Oh, I know that now. And here’s a funny thing: once you start telling him the truth, you’ll like Earl Silbert. He’s a stand-up guy. On Saturday, when I finally let everything out, I ended up apologizing to him for having lied so long.”

  LaRue felt his own mind beginning to wander as Jeb meandered along all these tangents. He remembered being in the CRP office last spring, trying to settle an argument between Jeb and Liddy, almost having to separate them physically. Why hadn’t he told Jeb to fire Liddy then and there? And down at Key Biscayne, when they got to the Gemstone memo in the stack of things to be considered, why hadn’t he told Mitchell in no uncertain terms to get rid of the goddamned idea, along with goddamned Liddy, once and for all? Mitchell had said, “We don’t have to decide that now,” and they had let it go, allowed things to drift—until they’d all washed up where they were now.

  LaRue’s best guess remained that Liddy had decided to go into the DNC all on his own, but to this day he had never asked Jeb how he thought the thing had actually happened. He wasn’t going to ask him now, either, not when it was so dangerous for anyone to know more than he already did.

  He volunteered some gossip instead: “Mitchell says the Old Man wouldn’t see him in person on Saturday. Since then he’s even stopped taking his calls.”

  “When did you talk to Mitchell?” asked Magruder.

  “Last night.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him since I went to Silbert with, you know, the truth. I wanted to call him this weekend, but I was scared Martha would pick up.”

  LaRue snorted. “Mitchell says the reporters are sendin’ her flowers and fruit baskets every half hour, tryin’ to get her to come downstairs and do interviews.”

  A scream penetrated the rolled-up windows of the Chrysler.

  “You get away from my child!” shrieked Magruder’s pretty, well-brought-up wife. “If you have something to say, you come to me! Don’t you ever come near my children!”

  Both men turned in their seats, and LaRue saw Gail Magruder in the middle of the road, shoving a blonde he recognized as Lesley Stahl from CBS. The Magruders’ boy, Whitney, was soon free to continue walking to school.

  “Shit,” said Jeb, “I ought to be out there.”

  “She looks like she’s handling it pretty well on her own,” observed LaRue. He wondered, though, how she would do when the reporters were gone and Jeb, along with himself and the rest of them, was off in prison.

  An hour later LaRue was downtown, sitting on his usual stool in the waffle shop across from Ford’s Theatre, eating a second breakfast and trying to stir himself toward action. Even after a third cup of coffee, he lingered, and once he left the little eatery he strolled along the streets by the National Archives, becoming curious about whether his rubber gloves and Tony Ulasewicz’s coin dispenser might achieve eternal rest in that building.

  It was ten minutes past noon when he called Fred Vinson, Jr., at his office several blocks away, and another half hour went by before the two of them were sitting in front of a team of shirtsleeved lawyers headed by Earl Silbert, who looked like one of those Jews hauled before HUAC twenty years before, with glasses thicker and goofier than LaRue’s own.

  “So, Mr. LaRue, you’ve decided you may have something you need to tell us.”
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  “Yes,” he murmured. Sensing that Silbert was a stand-up guy, he felt glad that, unlike Jeb, he didn’t have any courtroom perjury to apologize for. He cleared his throat and began responding to questions on several particular subjects:

  About being out in California, for the fundraising gala, on the morning after the burglary: “I told Mr. Mitchell about the call Magruder had just gotten from Liddy. That was the one where Liddy said Jeb had better get to a secure phone at the nearby NASA base. I told Liddy I thought a pay phone would be okay.”

  About the meeting two days after the burglary, in the former attorney general’s apartment: “Mr. Mitchell thought—we all did—that this sounded like one of Colson’s shows.” To LaRue’s way of thinking, it still did, but there had never been that much to connect Colson to it.

  About his own meeting with Liddy, a day after that, in his own Watergate West apartment: “Yes, he mentioned the other attempted burglary, the one of Mr. Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.”

  About how, on June 29, he’d devised a set of code names with the president’s personal attorney: “Mr. Kalmbach told me this would be a highly secret operation. He said we needed to conduct our business over pay phones, and that we’d both call ourselves Bradford.”

  And, finally, about Key Biscayne on March 30, 1972: “Magruder handed a paper to Mitchell. Mitchell read it and asked me what I thought about it, and I told him it wasn’t worth the risk. To the best of my recollection, Mitchell responded by saying something like, ‘Well, we don’t have to decide this right now.’ ”

  The questioning went on for hours. Every so often a new shirtsleeved lawyer would come into the room and take the place of another. Eventually, LaRue stopped looking over to Vinson before answering each question. His attorney just kept nodding, indicating that he should keep talking, should let them pump him like some old oil well that might still have another thousand gallons pooled at the bottom. LaRue realized he had entered the backwards, flip-sided world of plea bargaining, where the more you confessed to, the less you’d wind up being guilty of.