The Presidential Transcripts – The Washington Post, et. al., 1974 ★★½

Watergate in Real Time

The Watergate scandal reshaped American politics, destroyed one of the 20^th century’s most dynamic leaders, and defined an era of cynicism and paranoia. What was it like going down?

Unlike most scandals, people can hear and read this one for themselves, thanks to President Richard Nixon’s hidden tape machines. After a Senate investigating committee subpoenaed the tapes, The Washington Post, which had been covering Watergate since it was just a third-rate burglary, wasted no time printing a 693-page paperback that contained key Nixon meetings when Watergate was under discussion.

What did the President know, and when did he know it? That famous question seemed Quixotic when asked by Senator Howard Baker. Now it was possible to get answers. Not complete answers; not all the recorded meetings were yet available. But these selected transcripts, all but one from early 1973, reveal minute-by-minute just what was being said.

Take for example Nixon’s reaction to a low-level operative named Donald Segretti, hired by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President to perform assorted “dirty tricks” on Democrats. Segretti is often cited as a key participant in the larger wrongdoings associated with Watergate. In a February 28, 1973 conference with his counsel, John Dean, Nixon vents frustration at the thought of hiring Segretti:

Nixon: [Expletive deleted] He was such a dumb figure, I don’t see how our boys could have gone for him. But nevertheless, they did. It was really juvenile! But, nevertheless, what the hell did he do? What in the [characterization deleted] did he do? Shouldn’t we be trying to get intelligence? Weren’t they trying to get intelligence from us?

Richard Nixon in the Oval Office at around the time he had secret recording equipment installed there. Such recorders were used by two prior presidents, and initially removed by Nixon. Later he changed his mind. Photo by Don Carl Stehhen from http://time.com/4775033/national-archives-richard-nixon-library-tweet-james-comey/.

The Presidential Transcripts was first published in May, 1974. Nixon would resign that August. The book didn’t offer what came to be known as “the smoking gun,” but gave hints of Nixon’s culpability.

The biggest one found in the book came in a March 21, 1973 meeting with Dean and Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, about getting money to E. Howard Hunt, one of the men implicated in the burglary of National Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. It is explained to Nixon that Hunt is a desperate man who needs money for his legal defense. Other defendants, Dean adds, need money, too:

Nixon: How much money would you need?

Dean: I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.

Nixon: We could get that. On the money, if you need the money you could get that. You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done.

That alone was enough to damn Nixon in the eyes of many. Nixon’s own defense was that burglars need support, too. They were acting outside of their instructions, in some cases contrary to them, but even so, were innocent until proven guilty and acted the way they had out of misguided loyalty, not turpitude.

It is possible to read The Presidential Transcripts and agree. Throughout its pages, Nixon reacts with surprise at revelations from staff regarding whether anyone in the White House knew about the Watergate burglary beforehand, who signed off on Segretti’s operations, and whether members of his re-election committee were being told to clam up.

On March 17, Dean tells Nixon of another illegal operation, this one apparently approved by Nixon’s domestic-affairs chief John Ehrlichman, to break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. [Ellsberg was the source of the Pentagon Papers, which revealed sordid, previously-unknown details about U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War.]:

Nixon: What in the world – what in the name of God was Ehrlichman having something [unintelligible] in the Ellsberg [unintelligible]?

Dean: They were trying to – this was a part of an operation that – in connection with the Pentagon papers. They were – the whole thing – they wanted to get Ellsberg’s psychiatric records for some reason. I don’t know.

Nixon: This is the first I ever heard of this.

Was Nixon really so unaware? Or was he playing to a microphone only he knew was there, recording everything?

Context and inflection are two things largely missing from The Presidential Transcripts. Both are missed. The book includes a few articles from The Washington Post detailing the struggle to obtain and release the transcripts. In one, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spotlight the million-dollar exchange Nixon had with Dean as evidence of Nixon lying. Also included is a White House report pointing out just how much the Transcripts buttress Nixon’s claim to have been an innocent bystander, rather than active co-conspirator.

Otherwise what you get here is raw, verbatim conversation, with only vulgarities and the occasional unflattering “characterization” deleted. Reading them en masse, it is easy to see not only Nixon but others like Haldeman and Ehrlichman as victims of an avalanche they could neither comprehend nor control.

H. R. Haldeman, at left, with John Ehrlichman around the time of their resignations on April 30, 1973. Two weeks earlier, the Transcripts reveal Ehrlichman telling Nixon however Watergate turns out, "we're damaged goods." Both wound up doing prison time for their part in the larger Watergate cover-up. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/262053272043045850/.

Haldeman seems stolid, stiff, at times self-pitying. “We are so [adjective deleted] square that we get caught at everything,” he exclaims at the same meeting where Nixon tells Dean he can get that million dollars. Ehrlichman appears sharper, at times quite decent. He alone seemed to have the right instincts, at least at times.

On April 14, for example, Ehrlichman tells Nixon it is time to lean on John Mitchell, Nixon’s former Attorney General who ran the Committee to Re-Elect and signed off on several transgressions, including Watergate. Get Mitchell to testify, he urges, and stop the bleeding:

Ehrlichman: The purpose of this mission is to go up and to bring him to a focus on this: The jig is up. And the President strongly feels that the only way that this thing can end up being even a little net plus for the Administration and for the Presidency and to preserve some thread is for you to go in and voluntarily make a statement.

But Nixon’s staff had a huge problem: John Dean. He apparently knew too much, and saw how the wind was blowing. Crimes had been committed. Democrats in Congress and the media were making waves.

Dean emerges in The Presidential Transcripts as the Grima Wormtongue of Nixon’s men. Not only does he propose the million-dollar payoff, but he is recorded representing the Watergate matter as an outside issue that need not unduly bother the President. “I have tried all along to make sure that anything I passed to you myself didn’t cause you any personal problems,” he told Nixon on April 16. All the time, he knew what Nixon claimed he didn’t, that orders to break into the Watergate had been approved by Nixon staff, with Dean’s assent.

Some counsel.

John Dean at the White House when he was still counsel to Nixon. Three days before Nixon fired him, the Transcripts capture Nixon on April 27 complaining of how Dean misled him. "I will never, never understand John," Nixon said. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dean.  

At one point, when Watergate was still not getting major attention, it was proposed by Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman that Dean go off and write a full report to Congress on the Watergate issue. Dean, a keen sense of self-preservation clicking in, agreed to this but never followed through.

Back in February, Dean was still calling the Watergate allegations “junk” and notes with what seems insane optimism that the press was beginning to second-guess their instinct to play up the scandal. By March 20, a more sober Dean expresses hesitation about making that report to Congress.

Nixon: The other thing I was going to say just is this – just for your own thinking – I still want to see, though I guess you and Dick [Attorney General Richard Kleindienst] are still working on your letter [to congressional investigators] and all that sort of thing?

Dean: We are and we are coming to – the more we work on it the more questions we see.

Nixon: That you don’t want to answer, huh?

Dean: That begins problems by answering.

Nixon: And so you are coming up, then, with the idea of just a stonewall then? Is that –

Dean: That’s right.

Nixon: Is that what you come up with?

Dean: Stonewall, with lots of noises that we are always willing to cooperate, but no one is asking us for anything.

Nixon’s biggest problem revealed in The Presidential Transcripts was that he relied on Dean too long. Another big problem, that he knew of White House involvement in the Watergate burglary as early as June 23, 1972, just six days after the break-in, was revealed after its publication and would seal Nixon’s doom.

As to Watergate itself, the consensus view that Nixon did not agree to a burglary beforehand is largely validated in the pages of The Presidential Transcripts. Like many since, he asks what good such an operation could have served his reelection, as in a March 21 meeting:

Nixon: Why at that point in time I wonder? I am just trying to think. We had just finished the Moscow trip. The Democrats had just nominated [George] McGovern. I mean, [expletive deleted], what in the hell were these people doing? I can see their doing it earlier. I can see the pressures, but I don’t see why all the pressure was on then.

McGovern lost 49 states in the 1972 election; Nixon found himself with a national mandate after ending U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War and signing an arms-control agreement with the Soviet Union. But thanks in part to these transcripts, that second term Nixon won so handily would have to be served out by someone else.

August 9, 1974. Nixon says goodbye from the White House lawn. Image from https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/6abqmq/richard_nixon_waves_goodbye_as_he_boards_a/ 

The Presidential Transcripts is a laborious, at times boring read. Much of its content centers on discussions of what would be called a “modified limited hangout,” a phrase coined by Ehrlichman for getting ahead of the Watergate crisis by playing ball with investigators. At times, he and Nixon, and Haldeman, talk like they genuinely believe the truth might set them free, that it was all the obvious fault of wrong-headed subordinates. At other times, they sound more mercenary, aware of how those subordinates could sell them out, as Dean indeed did.

It’s easy to see why readers of The Presidential Transcripts had had enough of Nixon and his problems. Even if he was as in the dark about Watergate as the record indicates, his willingness to countenance the darkest inclinations of his subordinates is depressingly clear.

At a March 13 meeting, Dean tries to sell Nixon on hiring a disgraced ex-FBI official to set up a “domestic national security intelligence system.” It is harrowing reading, especially when Dean champions it as a worthy follow-up to the Huston Plan. The Huston Plan, an early Nixon initiative for harassing political opponents blocked by J. Edgar Hoover for its clear unconstitutionality, was Nixon’s lowest moment in office, lower even than Watergate.

I see why The Presidential Transcripts, so hot in 1974, is somewhat obscure now. The website OnTheIssues.org calls it “more of a reference book than an exciting read,” which sounds right to me. Its chief novelty may be the way it depicts a President so aghast at the idea of illegal wiretaps, all the while secretly recording himself and his subordinates for his own selfish purposes. Karma is an expletive deleted.