Nixon phone call with Ehrlichman on Watergate and John Dean

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Mr. Ehrlichman's calling.

Thank you.

Hello.

Yes, sir.

Hi, John.

Just back.

Oh, yeah.

We went an hour and a quarter.

Very cordial, very friendly.

Irvin's attitude was very, very good.

What are you going to meet again?

We're going to meet again Wednesday.

He's agreed that any announcement that comes out of this meeting you may make or somebody may make in your behalf, he will say nothing to the press.

That's you.

I understand, but I was afraid that he would try and steal the ball.

But he's in a very good frame of mind.

We spent most of our time talking about John Dean.

I figured that, yeah.

And...

The way we resolved it is that Garment and Committee Council are to get together tomorrow and try and work out a system by which Dean's information can be taken without violating executive privilege.

Wouldn't have to appear up there.

Well, they're not saying that, and I'm not saying that he will, and we're sort of a Mexican standoff.

So the idea was that the staff would explore various devices like interrogatories and things of that kind.

and see if they could come to any sort of an understanding with Garment.

I'm sure they can't.

It was a way of keeping the issue alive until we get together again on Wednesday.

Ervin kept saying he doesn't want a confrontation.

He said that there are some very serious charges against Dean.

would involve him because I said you know the basis which we want to proceed here is that anybody that has a serious charge level against him will appear he said well that includes John Dean and I said well I don't understand that to be the case so then he unloaded on me a little bit on Dean and they have a witness who alleges that Dean tried to recruit him

For political espionage, they have another witness who claims that Dean showed FBI reports to Segretti.

That's not true.

But, you see, these are the kinds of things.

We know that that isn't true, John.

Dean told me it wasn't true.

Well, I suspect that it's hearsay twice removed.

Right, right.

So these are the kinds of things that hopefully Garment can comb out tomorrow and we can see if there's some way of getting at it.

What about the other things?

Well, the other things are sort of...

I mean, apart from his mood, did he give anything?

Oh, yeah.

He agrees in principle now that our scope will... Oh, yeah, scope was no problem.

He agreed with that out of hand, and we'll try and devise some language, which I'm going to write out.

The scope is Watergate and what else?

And political espionage and political financing.

Financing?

Yes, sir.

Well, I've got all these cash funds floating around.

They've got a lot of evidence.

Are they going to go into the Democratic stuff on that?

Yes, they are.

You told him that because they've had some cash funds too, haven't they?

And then Baker hung back afterward and said that the more of that kind of stuff that we could get for him, the better.

And he particularly, apparently you told him about bugging the airplane, and he really wants to hold that out until the very last and drop that on him right at the end.

Yeah, well, of course we can't.

We can only make that as an allegation, you know.

Everybody's going to deny it.

We'll have to work on that one, see if we can't develop some evidence of some kind.

Some of them backed off of that to an extent.

They all back off.

I see.

In any event, Irvin agrees in principle that our people will be called immediately after McCord gets off.

McCord is locked as the first witness.

When?

Right after the recess.

They will not start before the recess.

They're going to put McCord on first?

Right.

that he's agreed that ours will be called immediately?

Yes, sir.

That's good, isn't it?

Yes, that's very good.

And Baker was of a lot of help.

In fact, Baker was of enormous help all through this thing today.

The rules of evidence, we're going to try and draft some exclusionary rules of evidence that will keep hearsay out and will keep out the thing that Bob was concerned about, about conduit people testifying to things that were told to them.

They are not only agreeable, but enthusiastic about having Garment in attendance.

Do they know him?

Oh, yes.

And television, interestingly enough, is discretionary.

If a witness objects, then it will be in the discretion of the committee, but it is conceivable that any given witness could ask that the lights be turned off.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I don't know what we want to do on that one.

We just object to it.

I don't think we want to object to it for the ones they're talking about.

Now, the only witnesses that they're talking about from the White House are four.

Holloman, Colson, Dean, and Chapin.

That's the whole list.

Harry Dent has asked to appear because he thinks McCord used his name.

They tell me in point of fact that McCord never mentioned him.

So they do not intend to call...

Any White House people who have not been named by McCord?

How about Strawn?

No.

No?

They know about him, but they don't intend to call him.

No.

Maybe later.

Well, I said, I want your whole list.

They said, well, of course, something may turn up later.

And I said, yes, but I want everybody that you think you might remotely be interested in.

And those were the four they gave me.

Well, that's curious that they wouldn't have others.

But on Dean, you held tight on that, but that we just couldn't give on.

I was very tight on that.

Did Baker help you on that?

No, Baker did not help me.

He feels Dean should come.

And so he and Irvin ganged up on me on that one.

I hung very tough.

I said that I didn't think there was going to be any motion on that.

It was not a question of suppressing...

Any substantial information that related to Dean's own conduct, written interrogatories or affidavits or things of that kind, and then I got them into specific examples.

I said, now I know you're hung up, Senator, on this business of Dean sitting in with witnesses when they're interviewed by the FBI.

We'll give you the dates, the places, and the names of the witnesses on a piece of paper so you'll know exactly who those were.

Surely you don't want Dean to come up there just to badger him about that.

What you want to elicit is the time and place and who was present.

We'll give you all that.

No problem.

What else do you want?

Well, he said he's accused of showing Segretti the FBI reports.

All right.

I said, why don't you give me an interrogatory?

I'll get you a denial under oath that he ever did such a thing.

Will that satisfy you?

Well, I don't know.

I'd like to cross-examine him on that.

You know, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Maybe we can let him cross-examine.

Well, that's one I just hang tight on and just say, do that at the, you know.

We don't need to spend that chip now.

That's right, yeah.

We can just hang on to this.

Now, they were very, very secretive about the way they got there tonight and so on, and they're keeping this thing all very hush-hush because they feel they've been badly burned by McCord.

badly burned by Weicker, and they were badly burned by their committee council going out and having his press conference.

And they both recognize that they're off on their left foot here.

So they are not anxious.

Why the hell are they putting McCord on as a first witness?

Well, they say they're trapped.

They say McCord has trapped them.

And he is threatening to have a press conference, and they don't want him to have a press conference.

They want to get him up before the committee first.

And I said, why don't you let him go ahead and have his press conference?

Well, then he'll say a lot of other irresponsible things, and he gets very extreme, and he gets way off base.

And I said, well, what you're saying is you don't have a very good witness.

No, we don't have a very good witness, but he's trapped us now, and we've got to put him on.

We've got to redeem him.

Yeah, now let me say, though, they put him on, whether or not it's a good witness or not.

Every one of those is a goddamn headline that smears somebody, and you can't catch up with it.

That's what I'm concerned about.

That's basically what I told him.

Yeah.

And then Irvin gave me a very pious, long assurance that he wanted to protect everybody and he was going to try and be a fair judge and without fear or favor and all this business, you know.

And I think he believes it.

Yeah, I think he's got a very exalted sense of himself that he's the fairest guy that ever came down the pike.

This may help us a bit.

I think it may, and I think Baker has a kind of relationship with him that will tend to keep him honest.

And when I brought up the business about the Democrats, why, Irvin chimed right in and said, just because I'm a Democrat, I'm not going to keep that out.

We've got to let all this come out.

He says, I'm very concerned about my own reputation and the reputation of this select committee.

It's my committee.

And he said, we're not going to favor one side over the other here.

from the Democrats.

The point we've got to do is to what Baker's got to realize is that he's got to ride hard on this disruption, and that is the sabotage.

Well, I stayed behind with Baker for about 10 minutes, and we talked about that.

Does he realize that's a goddamn good thing to hit?

Oh, absolutely.

And he wants some help in developing where the financial support for some of these disruptors came from and so on.

And so we'll have to turn some people loose to try and track that down.

I said, well, you can subpoena Henry Kimmelman and some of these McGovern people.

Don't worry.

He says, I've thought of that.

Apparently, he's got a big old Tennessee boy as the minority council who's made friends with Irvin.

I don't know what that's going to lead to, but everybody seems to think it'll help.

Take him in like Flynn.

We'll see.

Anyway, you're going to meet Wednesday.

Do you think you can resolve it Wednesday?

I believe so.

That'll be good.

I think so.

I'm going to go prepared with a memorandum.

And then we get it resolved for the... And we can put it out Thursday.

But then remember, you're to put it out, John.

Right.

I mean, I don't want to...

I'm not going to go walking out there.

I understand.

The more I think about this, that I've just got to stay one step removed from the goddamn thing.

Do you have any other views on it?

No, sir.

Not as of now.

I don't think it's anything you want to get involved in.

Because it's too messy, frankly.

It's too damn messy.

And then...

also said that he felt that it would be possible to isolate you from any contact with us as long as neither Bob nor I were involved.

And I said, well, there's no question about that, Howard.

I can assure you for my part that neither Bob nor I were involved, and I think you'll see when this is all done that there'd be no question about that.

Well, he said, if that's the case, then he said, I think the president's going to come out of this looking very good.

What the hell is the matter with that asshole Percy with the reach out this morning and yesterday and say that he called him in any way?

What the hell is that?

I mean, that's like saying if a fellow is guilty, then he should be hung.

Well, Percy is doing everything he can to move away from you.

He's getting as far away from the administration as he can get and still be a Republican.

And in order to...

He realizes that that's his track to the nomination.

Sure.

Sure, that we're never going to help him.

So what do we do then with him?

Are there a few things that you can do on him?

There'll be opportunities, I'm sure.

I don't have anything in Illinois.

In Illinois, you've got... Basically, you've got Percy, you've got Stevenson, you've got a Democratic governor.

Now, for Christ's sakes...

just cut the shit out of illinois i really would from now on i'll get to get back to those i'm going to talk to you tomorrow about the base closings i i don't i think on those five that you mentioned i'm not we're going to be a little more political than those indicated it sounds like a weinberger deal to me all right we can talk about that tomorrow john all right sir

Nixon phone call with Ehrlichman on Watergate and John Dean

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 10, 1973

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