Nixon, Ziegler & Dean on Watergate scandal and Public relations strategy

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One or two developments.

John Dean issued this statement shortly, a short time ago you may have seen it.

Some may hope or think that I will become a scapegoat in my case.

Anyone who believes this does not know me.

That's the lead.

That's right.

And he's playing it out.

The White House counsel, Dean, said that he would not allow himself to become a scapegoat in this matter.

Now, the thing I would like to get advice from you on is whether or not I associate the White House with a statement.

I don't think I can.

And they will press me to do that.

I'm not worried about that.

From the standpoint of position, why don't you just say hello?

That's going to be a mistake.

Why don't you just say hello?

That's going to be a mistake.

He didn't tell you he was going to say that?

No, sir.

You think you should communicate with him?

I can't, but I wanted to talk with you first.

It's an interesting...

Yes, sir, we've talked about that.

That's why I raised it with you.

The Christopher Light piece in the New York Times today was moved by his former brother-in-law.

I do know that.

And the basic thrust of that is that White House counsel described as alone but confident as he prepares to face Senate and grand jury inquiries.

It goes on to say that Mr. Dean has intimated he can show his own innocence of wrongdoing and guide investigators to other members of the president's inner circle, i.e., all of them, probably means.

According to close friends of Mr. Dean, there never was a full written report to the press of which that's not disputed, which is certainly

Yes, sir.

We've never said it before.

On Mr. Dean's investigation, the same source said that Mr. Dean never met with Mr. Nixon to talk about the Watergate case until last month, shortly before the president came up on serious charges and started the new investigation he reported yesterday.

It's an interesting paragraph because it says, last month, shortly before the president came up on a series of new charges and stated the new investigation he reported yesterday.

which would have been about the 21st, wouldn't you say?

It was that report that led to the previous statements.

Okay, so I think the posture I should take, I do have a notification from Peterson that I should not comment.

Has he told you that?

Yes, sir.

I'm more or less asking, I don't know.

Right.

Because it might prejudice the judicial system.

But why don't you say, from the President's statement, there's no one who's going to be made a scapegoat.

No one's going to be made a scapegoat.

The President's statement was clear.

No one's going to be made a scapegoat.

The objective here is not to find the scapegoat.

The objective is to get to the bottom of this, not to find the scapegoat, but to find the truth.

Find the truth.

There will be total cooperation with the grand jury in achieving that objective.

There will continue to be total cooperation with the grand jury in achieving that objective.

Now, they will ask whether or not I will express confidence in Dean again or anything.

No comment.

Absolutely not.

I'm not going to comment on any individual at all.

I'm telling them I can't go beyond that.

I think that skates, hitting the skates a little bit, that's pretty good.

I can do that.

Do you think you ought to call Dean and tell him you're saying that and see what he said?

I would.

He'll say fine, great.

Why don't you call him now?

I don't want to refer to him.

No, no, no, no.

I can come and carry my office.

Just say that's what you plan to say.

No, no one of them.

We're just here to find you.

For this one, sir, would you, uh, reach your name for me, Kennedy, and I'll call you tomorrow, sir.

All right.

Uh, just hang on a minute.

I'll call you back.

Oh, yeah.

So you're staying.

No, I don't think so.

I'm going to...

Right.

Thank you for doing that.

I'm going to, as we discussed before, take the same position that I took yesterday.

One thing, if they ask me about the scapegoat thing, I'm going to say, and I've talked to the President about this, and he's authorized me to do it, is to say that our objective, based on the President's statement the other day, is not to find the scapegoats, it's to find the truth, and we're going to fully cooperate with the inquiry through the process.

And then go on to, you know, who...

Yeah, well, we, uh, first, uh, made the judgment ourselves, and, uh... All right, you doing all right?

You're in the office.

Okay.

Good job.

What'd you say?

I said good.

Come on.

Hell, if I didn't, what's, what's happened?

The reason this, this story broke on the end was not that any came out of the box.

No, that's true.

Okay, what else did you do?

Is that about the right position we're on for the day?

I think so, yes, for today.

I want to say a little something about the Jewish leader.

Now, you just confirmed that you met with him to let him know about this communication that the Soviets had formed this, that they were exempting the Jewish citizens from that.

The President gave assurance that he would continue to work in our control of

Okay, on this scene, Mr. President, there's two comments.

I don't know precisely everything involved there, but certainly your posture at this time is one

of finding new information as a result of being misled.

And I think we have to be very careful with our decisions not to allow events to shift us off of that posture.

Now, Dean, in my mind, as I said the other day, whatever card he plays,

cannot be credible if the position of his having misled and provided, if not misleading information, partial information which led to the fact of being misled is discredited.

Because the fact is that when he sat down with you on the 21st, your assessment of his report and your assessment of his inability to prepare a report at Camp David

Was that happening at Camp David on the 21st?

No.

He came and talked to you first on the 21st.

So that's the first time.

You sent him to Camp David to say, okay, John, put it down on paper.

Your motive for doing that was to find out what he was talking about.

Have him put it down if there is new information and further information.

But it was during this period from the 21st through the 17th that in your mind you drew the conclusion that

You had been misled, and therefore the statements you made, the statements the White House made, was based on incomplete information, and if John Dean is indicted or if he is charged with pre-buggy knowledge, indeed, you were basing your statements on invalid information provided to you as a result of Dean's assurances, your counsel, who had been

according to your awareness, very much involved in investigating where they're getting members of the White House staff or administration involved.

The initiative is very much the result of the statement put out the other day in our camp, on our side, in terms of meeting this problem, exemplified by comments by others.

Simplified even by, well, Bill Sapphire, in his column that they said, made the same point.

Is he right?

Yeah, right.

The post-editorial, even in a roundabout way today, made the point.

I don't know what that means, except they did point out that you are moving to not permit the presidency to be hampered by...

Right.

this process so you see the problem around the effect saying uh dean's dean's line is a pretty rough line in a sense that's what he i talked to peterson this morning and uh

I think you should say that, I had a hard report, Mr. Peterson.

No.

It might be better to say that later.

Say that later, yeah.

Have that in the background, it didn't matter.

Okay, I get to say it later, I get to say it.

It's a daily report, Mr. Peterson, on the further developments of this corporation.

Dean's line, Ron, or whatever his word is, that he was just a messenger boy,

that he was an agent in the factory.

That's why he's here in the community.

They will not get him in the community unless they can get corroborative evidence to nail somebody else higher up.

They don't have that yet.

He's obviously fired and told them they're going.

And I ask today a question that's close, but I ask really cold, dirty, what would Paul, for example, would that help you in getting Dean?

Would it help Paul at all?

Would it help Dean in itself?

Desire for immunity.

He said, no.

So, the problem there is that, I suppose, that that is a being, is now with his friends and so forth, basically, he's obviously desperate.

So I suppose he'll say, well, he was not.

allowed to make his report to the president and so forth, which is not true, of course, but he could at any time.

He did report to, you know, an attorney.

He did, actually.

Which is natural.

He reported to you, too, didn't he?

For example, you made those statements.

Did you call Dean?

Of course.

I received all of my guidance from him.

You did?

Of course.

I mean, we talked about it, but only after I had discussed it with Dean.

And therefore, when I would update my press statement... You basically didn't.

Wasn't that based on a talk with you or something?

How was that?

That was based on a discussion.

The guidance went in, I think, from John Ehrlichman, but it was prepared for him, you know, through the Buchanan process, the binding.

Your statement that you made on the 29th and afterward was based upon the same information that I used.

It was based on information from the council to the president.

We asked the council a specific question.

Well, I was never...

What do you think he's trying to prove by saying he didn't have a horrible immigration report?

That he wasn't asked to do the report, that it wasn't his job to do the report?

No, I think what he's trying to say... That he didn't mislead?

No, I think what he's trying to say here is that he also had a part in putting into motion the investigation after the 21st.

He did?

Yes, sir.

I didn't correct you.

You're goddamn right you did.

He said...

Look, they're trying to, it's like, for example, hunting this bunch of kind of black males.

We just got to get this thing down.

And so I agree.

Well, but you could also, I understand, give him credit, but depending on the game he's playing now, you could have also at that point, which you did, based on what he said to you, questioned why in the hell

Are you sitting down on the 21st after this process is going on?

Why am I finding out about now?

And immediately then proceeded to find out what on earth was happening in this place or wherever in the post-trial period or the post-arrest period.

He will also try to say that he tried to bring up things that he did as counsel prior to anything.

Watergate.

Because it would be, well, they'd probably be aware of what they did in the hunt business and all that kind of crap that they worked on in that period.

People became fresh out of that sort of thing.

How credible is it?

Well, it depends on what direction we go here.

I have a feeling that, uh... You think the direction should be the discrediting, the bigger run-up that you're taking on.

At some time.

Is that right?

That's my sense.

At least at this point, depending on what direction he goes.

You think he should be in a very rough direction?

Well, this statement today, clearly, in my hope that anyone's scapegoat doesn't know any of the true facts, clearly indicates he has a commitment to

the I was a messenger boy lie.

Now, in carrying that out, it's unlikely that he'll get into the other stuff, but he might only solidify the fact that he was a messenger.

I don't know the throw in that.

Yeah.

Well, I think you're going to find that the way you see it, I think we ought to take care of meeting John, Bob, or meeting Mr. Lawyer today.

You've got to think about it.

Nothing is going to control the day or tomorrow, the grand jury.

So you won't have anything to lean on.

It'll be all right.

So we're probably going to have to order.

I think we all need.

Yes, sir.

I mean, I think it would be very good for you to do that.

And absolutely, there is no need for you to do one thing in terms of news flow.

We can get the news going out .

On this, we just can't react to every damn little story that comes out around it.

That's correct.

I think, Mr. President, in this, the basic decision that we have to make is, are we going to get out in front of this

separate the presidency away from it at his initiative, or are we going to take the thing as it is?

Well, Bob and John, let's put it this way.

Bob, we're taking the fields and we have a stake for him, and John is on the ground with it.

He said, that's going to hurt very much, too.

And it's going to hurt people.

And I don't think he did that.

I said, why use it?

I said, John, Bob, I suppose that they bring out a lot of information later.

See, my point is that if they were to get out, maybe that would...

reduce some of the beam fire.

See my point?

Am I getting quiet?

Yes, sir.

All right.

On the other hand, Bob says that's going to be a quite an effect, you know, and so forth and so on.

At this point, I mean, it looks like at this early point that God, I was taken in by them, too.

Mm-hmm.

There's some merit to the very, awful lot of merit to that argument.

You see my point?

On the other hand, uh,

You stand there, sir.

Yes, sir.

Nixon, Ziegler & Dean on Watergate scandal and Public relations strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 19, 1973

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