Watergate, page 36
Everyone was in position. The government’s three prosecutors—Silbert, Glanzer, and Campbell—sat on Judge Sirica’s left, opposite two tables filled with the defendants and their attorneys. Sketch artists crowded the galleries, trying to capture the drama of the grand room for newspaper readers and television viewers at home.
To start, Silbert spoke for more than an hour, outlining the case and the barest hints about the money trail—Sirica’s ears pricked up when the prosecutor stated the government could only account for about $50,000 of the $235,000 it had identified Liddy receiving from the campaign. (“[It] signaled to me that Earl Silbert and the prosecutors hadn’t yet found out the full story,” Sirica recalled.) Though Silbert laid out as evidence of wrongdoing a half-dozen other operations, including the placement of Thomas Gregory as a spy in Muskie’s campaign headquarters, the government’s ultimate theory remained that Liddy had been a rogue agent. “Liddy was the boss,” Silbert repeated multiple times, seemingly content to argue that somehow a widespread and expensive operation had unfolded entirely without official sanction or supervision beyond a mid-level staffer.
Confusingly, Silbert also argued that the Cubans and Hunt were at the DNC that night solely for the money Liddy offered; the burglary’s pay was a bizarre motive, and Sirica found himself frustrated already by the time he recessed the court for lunch. This trial, he thought, was a joke.
The afternoon provided a bit more drama; after opening statements from the lawyers representing McCord and the Cubans, Hunt’s lawyer made an announcement: Since his client’s efforts to negotiate had been thwarted, he instead was going to plead guilty to everything.
The next day, when Hunt stood before Sirica to plead guilty to all six charges facing him, the widower appeared fully broken. “He was a pathetic figure standing there, a former CIA agent, a man of some literary talent who had produced a small library of spy novels, the father of four children, and a resident of a posh Potomac suburb,” Sirica recalled. Speaking before the courthouse, a defeated and fatigued Hunt said, “Anything I may have done I did for what I believed to be in the best interests of my country.”
Friday morning, word reached Sirica that the Cubans wished to plead guilty too. The trial was recessed, and Sirica spent the rest of the day going back and forth with the Cubans and their attorneys.
These sudden changes of heart appeared all the more suspicious following back-to-back stories in the New York Times that weekend by Seymour Hersh, the reporter famous for his coverage of the My Lai massacre, alleging that the burglars were being paid “by persons as yet unnamed.”
The story had formed after Hersh cultivated Frank Sturgis as a source. He had heard the burglar, a former Marine and Cuban freedom fighter, had been circulating a possible book project in New York literary circles, and secured a dinner meeting at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami. After the meal, Sturgis asked to borrow Hersh’s rental car. Hersh agreed—if Sturgis told him the whole story. The result of the dinner and car loan was published on the Times front page. “One of the defendants, Frank A. Sturgis, acknowledged that payments continued after his arrest but also said that his funds had been sharply reduced the last few months,” the Times reported. “Another closely involved source said that payments to the four men now ranged from $400 a month up.”
It was a blockbuster scoop—one of the biggest of the entire scandal—but one that the Times as an institution seemed almost reluctant to publish. “[It was] a newspaper that hated to be beaten but didn’t really want to be first. It was scared to death of being the first on a controversial story that challenged the credibility of the government,” Hersh’s D.C. editor, Bill Kovach, recalled years later.II Despite the paper’s hesitation, it printed a second story on Monday, in which Hersh quoted a source saying that the burglars were under “great pressure” to plead guilty and that “a substantial promise of money had been made to the men” if they did so. The new details seemed to confirm TIME magazine’s weekend reporting that the burglars might be secretly paid $1,000 a month through their jail sentence if they stayed silent.III
With the payoff stories the talk of everyone in the courtroom, Sirica accepted the guilty pleas and tried to quiz the four Cuban defendants about their motives and the money involved. All of them dodged his questions; at one point, Barker told him that he received the money in the mail in a blank envelope. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe you,” the judge chided, but he soon surrendered. The burglars weren’t going to say anything.
So it was that by the start of the first full week of the trial, just two of the seven defendants remained: McCord and Liddy. Whereas Sirica had hoped that the public trial might force the conspiracy behind the burglary into view, the combination of Silbert’s limited theory of the case, the New York Times reporting, and the guilty pleas made clear that not only would this not be a venue for truth, but that the cover-up was actually both still strong and ongoing.
* * *
The sudden guilty pleas and hush money revelations came even as the White House continued its high-stakes back-channeling to keep the conspirators silent. The Saturday night before the trial began, Liddy had received a phone call at home. “Gordon, I think you’ll recognize my voice,” John Dean had said, without further identifying himself, and proceeded to lay out how much the White House needed Liddy’s silence—both at the trial and amid Bud Krogh’s looming confirmation hearing. “I want to assure you; everyone’s going to be taken care of,” Dean promised. “First you’ll receive living expenses of $30,000 per annum. Second, you’ll receive a pardon within two years. Three, we’ll see to it you’re sent to Danbury prison [a relatively comfortable minimum-security facility in Connecticut]; and fourth, your legal fees will be paid.”IV
“You said ‘pardon,’ ” Liddy sought to clarify. “You know the difference between a pardon and a commutation?”
“I do,” the White House counsel responded, “and it’s a ‘pardon.’ ”
Liddy promised he’d stay quiet, but took notes from the conversation and immediately handed them over to his lawyer.
On Monday afternoon, as the trial began, Nixon had stewed with Colson about the ongoing problems: “God damn hush money, uh, how are we going to [unintelligible] how do we get this stuff?” (The exchange, not released until years later, indicated he may have known about the money being paid to the burglars far earlier than he let on.) He and Colson debated how cleanly and quickly they could get clemency for Hunt, appealing to Americans’ sympathy for his lifetime of service to the CIA, the death of his wife, and the need for him to help stay at home and care for a disabled child. “We’ll build that son of a bitch up like nobody’s business,” Nixon ordered.
Over the days ahead, though, it became clearer that the walls around the burglars might crumble. The first crack appeared when McCord approached Bernard Barker and said that he was unwilling to be a scapegoat. He wanted Barker to cooperate with prosecutors alongside him. “This is too big for someone like me,” Barker said, advocating silence. “When something is this big, leave it alone.” But McCord couldn’t. The former CIA officer appeared to genuinely believe the work he was doing for the reelection campaign was authorized and protected by the president himself. “Jimmy was not prepared for things to go wrong; the appearance of power caused these people to think that they had connections and would not have problems, so they broke down,” Barker later explained.
Before long, word of McCord’s plan reached Dean, who in turn called Jack Caulfield, the former White House investigator who had begun a new job as the head of criminal enforcement for the Treasury Department’s alcohol, tobacco, and firearms bureau just days before the trial started.
Over a public pay phone line, Dean asked Caulfield to pass along an oblique three-part message to the Watergate burglar: A year is[n’t] a long time; your wife and family will be taken care of; you will be rehabilitated with employment when this is all over. Caulfield, now one of the nation’s most senior federal law enforcement officials, balked; this was a dangerous and inappropriate request. Dean settled on using Tony Ulasewicz as the anonymous cutout instead. Ulasewicz called McCord and reported back that the burglar had seemed satisfied with the message; a day later, McCord asked to see Caulfield in person back in Washington.
Through Ulasewicz, they made plans to meet at an overlook on the George Washington Parkway across from D.C. in Virginia. It was below freezing as an angry McCord slipped into the passenger seat of Caulfield’s car. “I have always followed the rule that if one goes, all who are involved must go,” Caulfield recalled him saying. “People who I am sure are involved are sitting outside with their families.” Why should they be free if he wasn’t? “I can take care of my family; I don’t need any jobs,” McCord told Caulfield. “I want my freedom.”
Caulfield felt a wave of disgust and regret wash over him. He and McCord had been friendly, and had even talked at one point about going into business together after the election. It was partially on Caulfield’s recommendation that McCord had become involved with the GOP at all. He told his former colleague that he thought the message from the White House was sincere. McCord asked who had given Caulfield the message; he only said it was the “highest level of the White House.”
As the conversation ended, McCord left Caulfield with a final message: Twice in September and October, he had called foreign embassies in Washington—telephone numbers he knew were wiretapped by U.S. intelligence—and explained to attachés that he was a figure in the Watergate trial and wanted a visa to travel.V Similar illegal wiretaps had helped sink Ellsberg’s prosecution; if the government and his lawyers could plot a motion to dismiss the case over the intercepted telephone, he could walk away free.
The next morning, a Saturday, Caulfield met with Dean at the White House to explain that McCord seemed more interested in freedom than clemency, and relayed McCord’s threat. Then Dean, seemingly off-kilter, surprised Caulfield, hinting that the case had spiraled into a very sensitive area and might do real damage to the president—the offer of clemency, he stressed, was genuine and came from the highest level. Caulfield knew from his own time in Dean’s office that the reference probably meant at least Ehrlichman, if not Haldeman or even higher.
Caulfield arranged to meet McCord again Sunday night at the same overlook. It was warmer, and two men walked together down a path toward the Potomac. They spoke for only ten or fifteen minutes, and McCord still wasn’t satisfied. When Caulfield called Dean that night to report no progress, Dean was clearly frustrated. There wasn’t going to be anything done with the embassy wiretaps, he said. This was all in McCord’s hands now.
* * *
With the opening days’ initial crowds dissipated, the trial picked back up in Sirica’s normal second-floor courtroom the week of January 15. The prosecutors began in earnest, calling Thomas Gregory and Baldwin to tell their stories about CREEP’s odd capers. Baldwin’s appearance on the stand prompted perhaps the sole interruption of the trial’s steady march, eliciting an exchange all but forgotten by history and even mostly overlooked and misunderstood at the time: As Baldwin started to testify to his activities in the listening post, Charles Morgan—a civil rights lawyer representing DNC official Spencer Oliver and others—moved to suppress any discussion of the contents of the conversations that Baldwin overheard.
The reaction stemmed from a lunch when Silbert had explained to Morgan and an associate that he intended to show how the burglary was linked to efforts to blackmail Oliver. Morgan wanted to keep any mention of his client or the overheard telephone calls from appearing at trial, so he and Sirica worked out a procedure in advance that allowed him, despite the fact that he wasn’t otherwise involved in the criminal trial, to lodge the objection to Baldwin’s testimony—effectively speaking from the courtroom audience. Sirica, as planned, denied the request, but suspended the trial so that an appeals court could immediately hear Morgan’s argument; the appeals court agreed with Morgan, locking away any details of tapped conversations, which remain sealed to this day. With the motion went the last—and potentially only—chance to know whether, in fact, the burglary and wiretapping plot had included a sexual motive.
At the end of the week, the court—and the nation—paused to watch Nixon’s inauguration. The sequestered jury watched the parade on television from a private room in the courthouse that Sirica arranged. It was a day of triumph for the president; the Washington Post’s twenty-two-page special section, “The Nixon Years,” did not mention Watergate once. The inaugural director was none other than Jeb Stuart Magruder himself.
To mark the occasion, Nixon gave each member of his cabinet and his top aides an inscribed four-year desk calendar, with each day counting down to the end of his second term on January 20, 1975. His inscription read, “Every moment of history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. The Presidential term which begins today consists of 1,461 days—no more and no less. Each can be a day of strengthening and renewal for America; each can add depth and dimension to the American experience. The 1,461 days which lie ahead are but a short interval in the flowing stream of history. Let us live them to the hilt, working each day to achieve these goals.”
The calendars would soon be useless. Nixon had just 566 days left in his presidency.
* * *
The trial’s third week focused on officials from the Committee to Re-Elect the President: Robert Odle, the campaign’s head of administration, as well as Herbert Porter, Magruder, and Sloan. The trial produced almost nothing of drama; prosecutors asked all the right questions, and campaign officials gave all the right, innocent answers. Liddy, who knew more about what had transpired than just about anyone in the courtroom, amused himself with rating the prosecutors’ responses to various witnesses. “[Silbert] swallowed the perjury of Jeb Magruder whole but wouldn’t believe poor Hugh Sloan who was doing his best to tell the truth,” he recalled.
“Mr. Magruder, did you ever give Mr. Liddy any assignment concerning the Democratic National Committee?” Silbert said.
“No,” the deputy campaign director replied.
Sitting at his bench, Sirica grew ever more frustrated. The handsome, well-dressed campaign official in the witness box looked every bit the model of a respectable young executive—“smooth as silk,” he recalled—but he just couldn’t accept the logic. The campaign really expected everyone to believe that amid this highly efficient, tightly run campaign, they were just handing out gobs of cash with zero questions and zero accountability? “It didn’t make sense,” Sirica recalled. “I just didn’t believe these people. The whole case looked more and more like a big cover-up.”
Unsatisfied by Silbert’s prosecutorial efforts, Sirica started to intervene by questioning witnesses himself, without the jury present. From the start, Sirica had been more an activist and participant than many judges. His rulings through the fall, including the October gag order and the jailing of the Los Angeles Times bureau chief, had drawn widespread criticism that he was erratic. Similarly, his early behavior at trial drew unfavorable and uncharitable comparisons to the Illinois federal judge Julius Hoffman, who oversaw the trial of the antiwar protesters known as Chicago Seven and had been blasted for his unconcealed distaste for the defendants—yet as the Watergate trial progressed, America found itself as frustrated and puzzled by the trial as the judge was, and courtroom observers sensed an earnestness to Sirica’s desire for the truth. With each passing day, Sirica’s incredulity from the bench became not only palatable but welcomed.VI
“What was the purpose of turning over $199,000 to Liddy?” he asked Sloan on one such occasion.
“I have no idea,” Sloan replied.
On and on they went, question after question, forty-two in all, with the former CREEP treasurer providing no meaningful answers. Sirica had struck out.
On January 29, Silbert gave his closing argument, repeating his assertion to the jury that “[McCord] and Liddy were off on an enterprise of their own.” The defense, for their part, hardly offered much of one. Liddy and McCord seemed content to sit there and be made the scapegoats.
After hearing from sixty witnesses, it took the jury just ninety-eight minutes to reach a verdict. Both defendants, guilty on all counts. Liddy had expected nothing less; that morning, he’d kissed his wife goodbye as she dropped him at court. “Take it easy, kid,” he told her, expecting—accurately—he’d be in jail that evening.
Judge Sirica set bail at $100,000. “I am still not satisfied that all the pertinent facts that might be available”—he said as he handed down the order—“I say might be available—have been produced before an American jury.” He set a March 23 sentencing, already knowing the seven defendants would receive stiff prison terms. “I would frankly hope, not only as a judge but as a citizen of a great country and one of millions of Americans who are looking for certain answers, I would hope that the Senate committee gets to the bottom of what happened.”
With the trial over, John Dean began to worry about what would happen if more inquiries were opened. He dug out Hunt’s two Hermès notebooks from his safe and fed them into his office shredder. “Destroying the notebooks was only a small addition to a whole string of criminal acts I had committed, but it seemed to me to be a moment of high symbolism,” Dean said later. “[It] shredded the last of my feeble rationalizations that I was an agent rather than a participant—a lawyer defending guilty clients, rather than a conspirator.”VII
Dean was hardly the only one with an ominous mood. As the month’s events changed perceptions across the capital, Ehrlichman scribbled a note to Haldeman: “There is something rancid about the way things are going just now.”
I. A story related by Liddy in his memoir underscored the haste with which the jury was chosen: Most of the potential jurors were questioned en masse, as the individual questioning seemed to take too long, and in the trial’s second week Sirica learned that one of the selected jurors barely spoke English and, when questioned by Sirica, had to rely on the Cubans’ lawyer to translate to Spanish. Sirica was embarrassed to discover behind closed doors that he’d selected someone clearly unable to communicate in English, dismissed the juror, and sealed the record of the hearing to hide his own mistake.
