Hastings Law Journal

Volume 51 | Issue 4 Article 2

1-2000

Watergate: What Was It?

John W. Dean III

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John W. Dean III, Watergate: What Was It?, 51 Hastings L.J. 609 (2000).
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 Watergate: What Was It?
by
JOHN W. DEAN, IH*

First, let me say it is certainly a pleasure to participate in what I

believe to be the first serious scholarly examination of the impact of
Watergate on the legal profession and the integrity of public service.
Certainly sufficient time has passed to take a hard look and reach
some conclusions about whether, in fact, Watergate made any
difference. I look forward to the insights and observations of the
distinguished panelists who have been assembled for this occasion.
Events not of my choosing have required me to spend
considerable time during the last nine years looking back at my
Watergate experience. As a result, I have now read testimony of
many others involved in Watergate that I had never looked at or been
aware of before; I have examined countless books and memoirs about
these events that I had purposefully avoided; and I have spent several
months (cumulatively) at the National Archives going through files
and presidential recordings from the Nixon White House, plus the
files of the Senate Watergate Committee and the Watergate Special
Prosecutor's Office.
In short, I know more about Watergate today than when I lived
through it. I suspect I could claim without serious contest to be the
world's foremost living authority on the subject, but I assure you that
I have no interest in the title. Suffice it to say, I believe my
credentials are in order to provide this symposium with information
about the underlying facts that bring us together, information that can
add to the foundation for these discussions.
Clearly, Watergate became something more than a hotel, office
and apartment complex alongside the Potomac River in Washington
DC when, on June 17, 1972, five men dressed in business suits and
wearing surgical gloves were arrested in the offices of the Democratic
National Committee ("DNC").1 The ensuing investigations, civil

* Former Counsel to the President, 1970-73. (Author's Note: This material follows
the order of the symposium program, and was the basis of extemporaneous remarks I
made during the symposium).
1. Word of the arrests, which occurred in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972,

[609]
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

lawsuits and criminal prosecutions-as well as the accompanying

controversy-have yet to end. 2 But it is fair to say that Watergate was
over by October 1975 when the Watergate Special Prosecution Force
filed its report, 3 and the subsequent events are merely related
aftershocks. So we look back with twenty-five years of perspective.
What was Watergate? The answer is not simple, and could take
any of several varying legal, ethical, moral, social, historical or
political perspectives. In a study of how Americans collectively
remember Watergate, the complexity of this event was noted:
What do we talk about when we talk about Watergate? There is no
agreement on what Watergate is. The interesting question becomes
how, not whether, we remember Watergate, which face or facet of
Watergate we recall
4
and why. Not surprisingly, this varies across
different groups.
I do not know how Watergate is remembered by the law
students, practicing and non-practicing attorneys, past and present
law professors, former and active prosecutors, and retired and sitting
judges participating in this symposium. Together we shall all discover
which faces or facets of Watergate are recalled and why. But I
thought I might be in a unique position to refresh recollections, and
share information I have recently acquired, while offering musings
relating to the subject of each of the panels.
For the first panel (on legal ethics) I will offer thoughts on how
so many lawyers got on the wrong side of the law during Watergate.
For the second panel (on investigating high level corruption), I look
briefly at the Independent Counsel Law, for during the Iran Contra
investigations of the Reagan and Bush presidencies, and more
recently during the Whitewater-Travelgate-Lewinsky investigations
of the Clinton presidency, many commentators and pundits said that

attracted immediate media attention. As the City Editor of the Washington Post later
wrote, by the time his reporter arrived at the Watergate that morning "[s]ome fifty
newspaper and television reporters and cameramen were outside the building." BARRY
SUSSMAN, THE GREAT COvER-UP: NIXON AND THE SCANDAL OF WATERGATE 59
(1992).
2. See, for example, Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505, 543 (4th Cir. 1999), which is one of
several libel lawsuits emanating from Watergate presently pending against Mr. Liddy (who
takes autobiographical credit for organizing and executing the Watergate break-ins), while
Ms. Wells was one of the persons overheard by the illegal "bugs" installed inside the
DNC. See also Nixon v. United States, No. CA 80-3227, (D.D.C. filed Dec. 17, 1980),
cited in Editorial, Inflating History, WASH. POST, Nov. 20, 1999, at A22. This lawsuit,
instituted by Richard Nixon to recover $213 million from the United States Government
for the purported taking of his tapes and papers, is pending in the United States District
Court for the District of Columbia and not without controversy.
3. U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE REPORT
(1975) [hereinafter WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE REPORT].
4. MICHAEL SCHUDSON, WATERGATE IN AMERICAN MEMORY: How WE
REMEMBER, FORGET, AND RECONSTRUCT THE PAST 16 (1992).
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

these inquiries needed a "Deep Throat" or a "John Dean." I think I

can provide information about both. And for the third panel (which
will provide other first-hand perspectives on Watergate) I will share
new information, material I recently found in the National Archives,
that shows that Richard Nixon was the direct catalyst for the
Watergate break-ins. Finally, for those who do not have first-hand
memories, nor opportunity to study these events, I will offer a
summary definition that I believe answers the question: What was
Watergate?

I. How Did So Many Lawyers Get Involved on the Wrong

Side of the Law in Watergate?
During my second day of testimony before the Senate Watergate
Committee, on June 26, 1973, Senator Talmadge's attention focused
on a hand-written note I had made when talking with my attorney,
Charles Shaffer, several months earlier:
Senator Talmadge. Now, will you look at exhibit No. 34-17 (p.
1312) ... It is also an interesting document. As I recall your
testimony as you presented that yesterday, it is a list of all of the
people that you thought had violated the law and what the laws
may be that they violated, is that correct?
Mr. Dean. That is correct. * * * Maybe if I explain the whole list, it
would save some questions for you. * * * Now, beside several of
the names, after I did the list-just my first reaction was there
certainly are an awful lot of lawyers involved here. So I put a little
asterisk beside each lawyer, which was [sic] Mitchell, Strachan,
Ehrlichman, Dean, Mardian, O'Brien, Parkinson, Colson, Bittman,
and Kalmbach ...
Senator Talmadge. Any significance to the star? That they are all
lawyers?
Mr. Dean. No, that was just a reaction myself, the fact that how in
God's5 name could so many lawyers get involved in something like
this?
I had listed ten lawyers. The appraisal proved accurate (and
modest) for the grand jury would reach the same conclusion, adding
Gordon Liddy and Richard Nixon. 6 But far more than twelve

5. 3 HearingsBefore the Senate Select Comm. on Watergate, 93d Cong. 1053-54 (1973)
[hereinafter Senate Select Comm. Hearings].
6. The Watergate cover-up grand jury indicted the following six attorneys: former
Attorney General John N. Mitchell, former Counsel to the President and Assistant to the
President for Domestic Affairs John D. Ehrlichman, former Special Counsel to the
President Charles W. Colson, former Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security
Robert C. Mardian, former White House staff assistant and General Counsel to USIA
Gordon Strachan, and Committee to Re-elect the President attorney Kenneth W.
Parkinson; and named the following six attorneys as unindicted co-conspirators in the
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

attorneys were involved in what has come to be known as Watergate.

Attorneys Egil "Bud" Krogh and David Young were involved (along
with Ehrlichman and Liddy) in a conspiracy relating to a break-in at
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist office.7 Political trickster Donald
Segretti, a young attorney, plead guilty to distributing illegal
campaign literature. 8 Howard E. Reinecke, an attorney and 9former
Lieutenant Governor of California, was convicted of perjury. John
Connally, an attorney, former Governor of Texas and former
Secretary of the Treasury, was indicted but found not guilty of
accepting a bribe. 10 Edward L. Morgan, a former Associate Counsel
to the President and Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, plead guilty
to obstructing the IRS regarding the President's taxes (by back-dating
a gift of Vice Presidential papers)." Harry S. Dent, a former Special
Counsel to the President, plead guilty to violation of the Corrupt
Practices Act. 12 Frank DeMarco, the President's private tax attorney,
was indicted for tax fraud but found not guilty. 13 And Richard
Kleindienst, former Attorney4 General, plead guilty to lying to the
Senate about the ITT matter.
By my count (and my research was not exhaustive), not less than
21 lawyers found themselves on the wrong side of the law. How,
indeed, could this happen? While the facts differ in each case, I
believe there are three underlying rationales that help explain the
malfeasance by attorneys: an arrogant belief that the law did not
apply to them or that they could cheat and get away with it;
incompetence; and loyalty (and a varying confluence of these
situations). Examples, while incomplete, make the point.
A. Arrogance Toward the Law
The most ardent proponents of the position that lawbreaking by
a president (or his aides) is permissible are Richard Nixon and
Gordon Liddy. Nixon told interviewer David Frost that when a
President took actions, they were, by definition, legal. Although
Frost did not televise his full exchange with Nixon in which he delved

cover-up: William 0. Bittman (represented Howard Hunt), John W. Dean, III (White
House Counsel), Herbert W. Kalmbach (private counsel to the President and fundraiser),
G. Gordon Liddy (General Counsel, Finance Committee to Re-elect the President), Paul
O'Brien (private counsel for CRP), and President Richard Nixon.
7. See United States v. Ehrlichman, 546 F.2d 910 (D.C. Cir. 1976).
8. See WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE REPORT, supra note 3, at 256.
9. See id. at 258,260.
10. See id. at 260.
11. See itL at 262.
12. See id.
13. See id. at 263.
14. See id. at 162.
Apri 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

into the President's thinking, he later wrote about it:

I read Nixon the quote from his response to the Church committee.
"It's quite obvious that there are certain inherently governmental
activities which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the
interests of the nation's security, are lawful, but which, if
undertaken by private persons, are not." What, at root, did he have
in mind there? I wanted to know.
Again Nixon invoked the sacred memory of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln had argued, he said, that actions which otherwise would be
unconstitutional could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose
of preserving the Constitution and the nation.
"But there was no comparison, was there, between the situation
you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance." Thirteen
states were not seceding, for example...
"This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the War in
Vietnam as much as the Civil War 1tore 5 apart the nation when
Lincoln was President," Nixon replied.
Echoing the President's words, former Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy
reportedly still believes he had a license to ignore the law, both as a
junior member of the White House staff, and later as the general
counsel at the President's re-election committee. Liddy's posture vis-
A-vis others involved in Watergate is striking:
Liddy represents an extreme Watergate position. His ideas, as well
as his actions, are a straightforward challenge to the rule of law.
Liddy rejected its limits and denounced those who took it seriously.
If some of the others involved in Watergate were ad men and
ambitious politicians with a willingness to use Machiavellian tactics
to advance the cause of Nixon's reelection, Liddy was a
Nietzschean who approached politics as a terrorist would. The
others were drawn into the Watergate quagmire out of loyalty to
Nixon, but Liddy viewed the entire world as a power jungle where
only those who fought survived. While others would later regret
16 done but regretted
and repent, Liddy not only justified what he had
only that he was restrained from doing more.
Most would agree that the code of war adopted by Nixon, and
the creed of terrorists insisted upon by Liddy,17 have no place in a
government of laws. Justice Louis Brandeis (among many others)
rejected this ends-justify-the-means thinking long ago:

15. DAVID FROST, "I GAVE THEM A SWORD," BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE NIXON
INTERVIEWS 295 (1978).
16. RON CHRISTENSON, POLITICAL TRIALS: GORDIAN KNOTS IN THE LAW 88 (2d
ed. 1999).
17. For example, Liddy reports that he once envisioned killing columnist Jack
Anderson, Howard Hunt and yours truly. See G. GORDON LIDDY, WILL: THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF G. GORDON LIDDY 209-10 (Anderson), 309 (Hunt) and 335 (Dean)
(1997).
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

In a government of laws, existence of the government will be

imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our
Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or
for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is
contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds
contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto
himself; it invites anarchy.' 8
But the fact that during the Nixon Presidency there was a war being
fought in Vietnam, that secret deliberations of the commander in
chief were leaking to the media, did at times create difficult decisions
for the White House, particularly for those of us who were young
attorneys. It is all much clearer with hindsight than it was at the time.
Experience is a great teacher.
B. Incompetence
Bud Krogh, a staff attorney my age (then just thirty years old)
who started at the White House at the outset of the Nixon Presidency
working as an assistant to my predecessor John Ehrlichman, believes
in hindsight that no one is ever quite ready to work at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. Krogh says, "[m]y theory now is that upon
appointment to the White House staff the Peter Principle
immediately goes into effect. You've reached your level of
incompetence. The only suspense is whether you'll work out of your
incompetence while you're there."'19
Krogh is correct. While I felt very competent with the routine
work of the Counsel's office, when I received assignments relating to
those dark and foggy worlds where all Presidents regularly travel,
national security, I was often adrift without map or compass. Years
later I learned that Krogh was confused as well. Our confusion, if not
incompetence, changed history. Let me explain.
My first exposure to national security matters occurred when
White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman instructed me to review
the so-called Huston Plan,20 to see if I could do any better than White
House aide Tom Huston in getting it implemented. Tom Huston, an

18. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928).

19. Chuck Luce, The Mellowing of Egil Krogh, WASH. L. & POL. (June 1998).
20. President Nixon approved the so-called "Huston Plan," on July 14, 1970. In
submitting the plan to the President for approval, Huston acknowledged that the
procedures were illegal, but justified them because they were effective. Although FBI
Director Hoover objected to the plans to remove restraint on Federal agencies collecting
intelligence, Huston noted that the FBI had once used such techniques, which had never
been exposed. See HOUSE COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 93D CONG., REPORT ON THE
IMPEACHMENT OF RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 151-52
(1974) [hereinafter HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT]; SENATE SELECT COMM. ON
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ACrIVITIES, 93D CONG., WATERGATE INVESTIGATION, THE
FINAL REPORT 3-7 (1974) [hereinafter SENATE SELECT COMM. REPORT].
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

attorney and former Army intelligence officer, had worked with the
Directors of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Defense
Intelligence Agency to develop a plan to remove virtually all legal
restraints on the ability of these agencies to collect intelligence about
political dissidents and demonstrators. His plan was so highly
classified that even its classification was classified. My secretary and I
had to get a special national security clearances to even touch the
documents. 21
The findings justifying the plan suggested that the nation was
ready to implode from internal dissent. The potential for widespread
violence, much of it anticipated from college campuses and the anti-
Vietnam war movement, threatened the fabric of our society.
Bombings and explosions, rioting and violence, arson and gun battles
could endanger the law and order. It all but said a revolution was at
hand. To deal with this domestic dilemma, the President needed
better domestic intelligence, and to obtain it the CIA, NSA, and DIA
recommended the use of illegal surreptitious entries, electronic
surveillance, the opening of first class mail, and other such police
state tactics. Only FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover objected and,
according to related documents prepared by Huston, Hoover had
once authorized such illegal activities by the FBI but had grown
cautious as he grew older, fearing the political consequences of
exposure. 2
This material was literally breath-taking, the hottest papers I had
ever touched in my life. The potential scope of illegal activity by the
government was truly frightening. With little deliberation, and no
discussion, the President had approved the plan. Hoover, however,
was blocking its implementation. Why the President, or Haldeman,
thought I could get it implemented was never explained, other than I
was told that Tom Huston had offended Hoover. Haldeman invited
no further discussion; rather he wanted action. When I asked Huston
if he had a legal opinion supporting the legality of the plan, he
laughed. He said he was sure the general counsel of each of the
involved agencies had reviewed it, but no attorney could write such
an opinion. He was telling me it was illegal.
The only thing I knew to do with the Huston Plan was to go see

21. See JOHN DEAN, BLIND AMBITION: THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS 36 (1976). A
sanitized version of the "Huston Plan" document was placed in the record of the
proceedings of the Senate Watergate Committee. See 3 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,
supra note 5, at 1062, 1319-37 (Exhibits 35-41). The special clearance involved
background checking and a little ritual where two men from NSA came to the office to tell
us not to talk into lamps in foreign countries about the contents of the plan and to keep it
in a safe.
22. See 3 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 1321-30; CURT GENTRY, J.
EDGAR HOOVER: THE MAN AND THE SEcRETS 652-58 (1991).
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

my former boss, Attorney General John Mitchell, whom I knew to be

a reasonable man. Mitchell sat on one or more special committees of
the National Security Council. I explained the situation. He had
already heard from Hoover. I could talk with Mitchell and he to me.
Mitchell gave me his assessment of his former law partner's approval
of the plan. "The President loves all this stuff," Mitchell grunted, and
proceeded to tell me that the only real problem with domestic
intelligence gathering was the refusal of the FBI to cooperate with
other agencies. Accordingly, Mitchell instructed that I write a
memorandum for the record indicating that he would implement that
part of the plan calling for an inter-agency intelligence evaluation
committee, and as an accommodation to the President, we would call
this a first step in implementing the plan; later it could be decided if
any restraints needed to be removed.P In fact, none were ever
removed. At that time no one questioned Mitchell's judgment, not
even Richard Nixon.
Mitchell solved this national security problem, appropriately.
But I knew the rules of the White House did not permit me to go to
Mitchell unless the matter involved the Justice Department (as the
FBI did). When I was being hired, Haldeman had asked me if I was
able to give my allegiance to the President rather than John Mitchell.
I assured him I could. Soon I learned that, in the name of national
security, the President had ordered the wiretapping of newsmen and
members of the White House staff suspected of leaking information
to newsmen; Ehrlichman had instructed Jack Caulfield to wiretap
syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft, because the FBI was not willing to
do it; and Ehrlichman 24
had instructed the Secret Service to wiretap the
President's brother.
Other than the wiretaps handled by the FBI, which required a
written order of the Attorney General, I found the others had all
occurred outside of normal channels, which made them suspect.
Because none of this involved me, the deeds had been done, no one
was seeking my advice and I had learned about this activity by
accident, I simply asked Haldeman if I should concern myself with
these matters, and he said no. I did not have enough information to
know if they were legal or illegal, whether truly justified by national
security or unjustified like the Huston Plan.
My next encounter with national security was in July 1971. Not

23. See DEAN, supra note 21, at 36-38.

24. 7-1 Statement of Information: HearingsPursuantto H. Res. 803 Before the House
Comm. on the Judiciary, 93d Cong. 509 (1974) (testimony of John Caulfield before the
Senate Select Committee on Watergate, Mar. 16, 1974). See also FRED EMERY,
WATERGATE: THE CORRUPTION OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE FALL OF RICHARD
NIXON 13 (1994).
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

long after Daniel Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers (a detailed
and lengthy study of the origins of the war in Vietnam)25 to the
media, Jack Caulfield, who had worked for Ehrlichman but had been
assigned to my office, arrived one afternoon wide-eyed at my desk.
Special Counsel Charles W. Colson had requested that Caulfield
undertake a national security mission for him: fire bombing and
burglarizing the Brookings Institute. I told Caulfield to do absolutely
nothing.26 I caught the first courier flight to San Clemente, where
Ehrlichman was with the President doing business from the Western
White House. I thought this criminal activity was utterly idiotic-and
said so. Unruffled as always, Ehrlichman picked up the telephone
and told Colson to call it off. Not until the Nixon tapes came out
decades later did I learn that the President repeatedly called for this
illegal, not to mention ludicrous, action.27
After I had turned off the break-in at the Brookings Institute,
Bud Krogh and I had occasion to visit. Because we were friends, Bud
told me that my superiors thought that I was "a little old lady" about
national security matters. For this reason an assignment so secret that
Bud could not discuss it with me, which he implied I might otherwise
have been asked to handle, had been given to Bud, who was slightly
embarrassed by this fact. Today I know that my response to the
Brookings break-in disqualified me from any involvement with what

25. U.S. DEP'T OF DEFENSE, THE PENTAGON PAPERS: THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
HISTORY OF UNITED STATES DECISION MAKING ON VIETNAM (1971).
26. Caulfield, who spent much of 1970 after I arrived at the White House
unsuccessfully trying to land a senior law enforcement position in the Department of
Treasury, would testify before the Senate Watergate Committee that after transferring to
my office he ran out of work. "In the Spring of 1971, I began to notice that, for some
reason, the amount of investigative work handled by Mr. Ulasewicz through me had
diminished." 1 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 251. This occurred because
I had little use for investigative work.
27. See STANLEY L. KUTLER, ABUSE OF POWER: THE NEW NIXON TAPES 3 (June
17, 1971, The President, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger, 5:17 - 6:13 p.m., Oval
Office: "Goddamnit, get in [the Brookings Institute] and get those files. Blow the safe and
get it."), 6 (June 30, 1971, The President, Haldeman, Mitchell, Kissinger, Ziegler, and
Laird, 5:17 - 6:23 p.m., Oval Office: "They [the Brookings Institute] have lot of
material ....I want Brookings, I want them just to break in and take it out. Do you
understand? * * * You talk to [White House aide Howard] Hunt. I want the break-in.
Hell, they do that. You're to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in."), 8
(July 1, 1971, The President, Haldeman, and Kissinger, 8:45 - 9:52 a.m., Oval Office: "Did
they get the Brookings Institute raided last night? No. Get it done. I want it done. I want
the Brookings Institute's safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that makes it
somebody else ...."), 17 (July 2, 1971, The President, Haldeman, and Colson, 9:15 - 10:39
a.m., Oval Office: "Also, I really meant it when-I want to go in and crack that safe. Walk
in and get it.") (1997). When I told the President of my stopping this activity during a
March 21, 1973 conversation, unaware of his role, he said absolutely nothing. See id at
253.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

we now know as the Plumbers Unit, the leak investigators who

believed they were above the law, an operation that would become
the incubator for the Watergate break-ins and cover-up.
In early September 1971 Krogh found himself as confused as I
had been about national security. We did not talk about it then; I
wish we had for I believe we would have done the right thing.28
Krogh and I have talked about it since, and at length again recently.
Krogh is the first to admit that he now knows that national security
did not justify any type of covert search whatsoever of Daniel
Ellsberg's medical records. At the time, Krogh rationalized the
President's desire for information about Ellsberg, concern about
whether Ellsberg was providing information to the Russians, and the
FBI's lack of interest in the investigation as justifying approval of
Gordon Liddy's plans to surreptitiously look at Ellsberg's medical
records. As Krogh has said, "I, myself, did not know specifically what
was going to happen, other than they were going to go into the office
covertly and photograph documents." 29 Thus, Krogh did not know
that Liddy would break in and trash the office while finding
absolutely nothing. This event, however, would haunt the Nixon
White House.
After the arrests at the Watergate on June 17, 1972, I learned
that Liddy had used the same men to break into the DNC who had
been involved in the California break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's
office. At the time I reported this to Ehrlichman I suspected, but was
not sure, that Liddy's California break-in had been undertaken with
Ehrlichman's approval. In fact, Ehrlichman had approved the covert
operation.3 0 Notwithstanding a conspiracy conviction (along with two
counts of perjury), Ehrlichman claimed to his last day that he had no 31
idea that Liddy was going to proceed in an illegal manner.
Nonetheless, when it was learned that Liddy had used the same men
in the Ellsberg break-in, and in the Watergate, the fact that those men
were in jail after being arrested in the DNC inexorably intertwined
these activities.
After the arrests at the Watergate my incompetence became a
factor: confusion about national security and inexperience with the

28. Unrelated to any of these events, of which I knew nothing, in September, 1971, I
tried to resign. I told Haldeman I had always planned to leave government after five years;
that my experience had been more rewarding than planned; and I wanted to give him
ample time to select a new counsel. But Haldeman would not accept my resignation,
telling me that I owed it to the President to stay through the November 1972 election.
Under the circumstances, I felt I could not leave.
29. Luce, supra note 19.
30. See United States v. Ehrlichman, 546 F.2d 910,915 (D.C. Cir. 1976).
31. Bud Krogh told me that John Ehrlichman believed that Liddy was going to obtain
the information through legal means.
April2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

criminal law. When I became the Counsel to the President in late

July, 1970, I was thirty-one years of age. Although I had worked for
the House Judiciary Committee, the Department of Justice, and a
criminal law reform commission, I was anything but a criminal lawyer.
It never occurred to me when accepting the White House position
that I needed practical experience in the criminal law. Today, I know
that at the Nixon White House it was essential that the Counsel to the
President be a highly experienced criminal lawyer. If I had had that
experience, my antenna might have been up, and I would have pulled
out the criminal code much sooner. Quite honestly, it never occurred
to me that we were obstructing justice, until I began reading the
annotations to Title 18 long after the fact. When I first told my
predecessor, John Ehrlichman, that I thought that the case, he
remarked, "I think you've got something putrid in your drinking
water out there in Alexandria where you live." He knew no more
about the criminal law than I did.
I have never really explained why I undertook many of the
actions I did during Watergate. When testifying, such explanations
are really not relevant and only sound self-serving. But in trying to
understand how I stepped across the line I have had to look at why I
acted as I did. What I have found is not justification for my actions
but rather evidence of my incompetence in understanding the
implications of my actions at the time. One example, I hope, will be
illustrative.
Richard Nixon was forced to resign on August 9, 1974 following
the release of the so-called "smoking gun" tapes, which are the
President's three recorded conversations with Bob Haldeman on June
23, 1972 about using the CIA to stop the FBI investigation. At the
time, this was said to evidence Nixon's obstruction of justice and
misuse of the CIA. What is often overlooked is that Nixon was acting
on the advice of counsel: both the Counsel to the President, me, and
his recently resigned Attorney General. Haldeman explained to the
President the basis for this suggestion:
Haldeman: Now, on the investigation, you know, the Democratic
break-in thing, we're back to the-in the, the problem area because
the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know
how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now
leading into some productive areas, because they've been able to
trace the money, not through the money itself, but through the
bank, you know, sources-the banker himself. And, and it goes in
some directions we don't want it to go. . . Mitchell came up with
yesterday, and John Dean analyzed very carefully last night and
concludes, concurs now with Mitchell's recommendation that the
only way to solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it... That
the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray
and just say, "Stay the hell out of this... this is ah, business here we
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

don't want you to go any further on it." ***

[later]
President: All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-
guess Mitchell and the rest.32
Haldeman, not an attorney, did not report everything in this
conversation with the President that I told him. But Haldeman knew
I had discussed the Watergate break-in investigation with Assistant
Attorney General Henry Petersen, who was the head of the Criminal
Division. Petersen had assured me that neither the United States
Attorney, nor the FBI, would investigate the two areas that
concerned the White House (and had nothing to do with the
Watergate break-in): national security and campaign finance law
violations. Petersen said that they did not have authority to
undertake such investigations. As the full conversation on June 23,
1972 shows, what concerned Haldeman was the revelation of
campaign contributors who wished to remain anonymous, and who
had been promised anonymity. During that first week following the
arrests at the DNC, we were trying to figure out what might lead back
to the Ellsberg break-in, which at that time was assumed to be a
national security operation. It was known that Gordon Liddy, and his
Plumbers colleague Howard Hunt, had been assisted by the CIA.
Thus, when John Mitchell and I discussed this on the preceding
evening, and he suggested that Haldeman talk to CIA Deputy
Director Walters, both Mitchell and I thought the CIA would have a
legitimate reason to request that the FBI not proceed. I had just
learned, and Mitchell had confirmed, that the CIA and FBI had a
formal agreement to stay out of each other's operations. Finally, I did
not believe (at that time) that anyone at the White House had
ordered the Watergate break-in. I personally had thrown cold water
on Liddy's outrageous plans for intelligence gathering in a meeting in
Attorney General John Mitchell's office, and Haldeman had
approved of my actions. It was with this knowledge and mindset that
I had given my thoughts to Haldeman.
Flawed thinking? Yes. Obstruction of justice? I think a good
criminal defense attorney could have protected Nixon from that
finding. Misuse of the CIA? After the CIA said that they were sure
they were not involved, yes. Before that time, no. Incompetence in
understanding national security and the criminal law, yes.
C. Loyalty
Today it is clear that Richard Nixon and his White House were

32. KUTLER, supranote 27, at 67, 68.

April 2000] WATERGATE: WCHAT WAS IT?

corrupt, dishonest and venal,33 but before Watergate that corruption

was difficult to discern, even by the most perceptive of those working
within the highly compartmentalized, and secretive, Nixon White
House. 34 For example, former Nixon speechwriter William Safire
(now a New York Times columnist) spent many years with Richard
Nixon both before and after he had been elected President. Yet
Safire would write that the Nixon of Watergate was not the man he
had known and worked with for years?35 There is no question that
many lawyers committed illegal acts out of loyalty to Richard Nixon,
and to a degree that can be 3said
6
of all who did so. Few, I suspect,
knew the true Richard Nixon.
Over the years I have concluded that those who were (and many
who remain) loyal to Nixon attached their allegiance to the man they
thought him to be, or the man they knew he could be, but not the
man he actually was. I cannot tell you how many Nixon loyalists I
have spoken with over the years who have avoided reading the
transcripts of his taped conversations. They do not want to see the
dark Nixon; this is not the Nixon they were loyal to, and they prefer
the image of their memory.
A close reading of the events that preceded Nixon's resignation
shows that, as the tapes were forced out of his close control, more and
more members of the immediate staff not only discovered that Nixon
had lied to them but a devastating portrait of their President
emerged, not a man they recognized, and not a President they could
be proud to serve. Like air coming out of a balloon, the spirits of the
White House staff went from fighting for his presidency to sympathy

33. Let there be no mistake about the meaning of the word corrupt, which the
synonyms in The Random House College Dictionary make clear: "A corrupt politician is
one originally honest who has succumbed to temptation and begun questionable practices.
A dishonest politician is one lacking native integrity and thoroughly untrustworthy. A
venal politician is one so debased that he frankly sells his patronage." THE RANDOM
HOUSE COLLEGE DICTIONARY 302 (1972).
34. For example, as Egil Krogh, the attorney who set up the "Plumbers" operation,
has stated:
The White House staff was very compartmentalized. A lot of things Kissinger
was doing were run on a completely separate track with the president. Some of
the things Ehrlichman was doing, neither Haldeman nor Kissinger knew about,
nor their respective staffs. While we all ate in the White House mess together,
and we all were personal friends, there was an unwritten code that the stuff you
worked on you didn't talk about, particularly when the plumbers were set up.
That was impressed with utmost secrecy.
Luce, supra note 19.
35. See WILLIAM SAFIRE, BEFORE THE FALL: AN INSIDE VIEW OF THE PRE-
WATERGATE WHITE HOUSE 13 (1975).
36. Loyalty should also be viewed in the context of peer pressure and "groupthink."
See, e.g., IRVING J. JANIS, GROUTHINK: PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF POLICY
DECISIONS AND FIASCOES (1982).
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

for his family. Richard Nixon, never a quitter, was forced to quit not
because he had lost his support on Capitol Hill, but because he had
lost his support at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Clearly the House of
Representatives would have impeached him. But he was not without
37
defenses in the Senate had he chosen to go to trial.
Without impugning the purported loyalty of anyone specifically,
it also must be said that loyalty to a President has its rewards and it
can inure to the benefit of those who remain loyal. To cut to the
quick, and I do not believe I am a cynic in saying it, a President can
buy loyalty because he can so well reward it; Richard Nixon did buy
loyalty because he rewarded it. More than loyalty, thus, was involved
in the corruption of so many attorneys. It is doubtful that many of
those who committed wrongs out of loyalty would have done it for
the reason of loyalty alone. Lawyers are not known to be lemmings.
A President, however, can attract more than ordinary loyalty
because of the commanding aura of his high office. Again, Bud
Krogh described it well. "Nixon, to me, was much larger than life.
He was a huge, almost mythic being when I first went to work there. I
guess the word is awe, both from him and his office. ' 38 It will be
noted that Krogh said this occurred when he "first" went to the White
House. Doubtless all Presidents, like Nixon, realize the impact that
their great office can have on others, and use it effectively.
Familiarity, however, can breed contempt even for a President. That
is what happened to me. It happened to others in varying degrees as
well, like Krogh, who today is certainly less than "awed" and
recognizes that Richard Nixon had a "Darth Vader side. '39
Surely some of the loyalty that Nixon commanded, and would
receive from attorneys (not to mention others) who found themselves
in trouble was what could be described as "blind loyalty." Some
simply never doubted the propriety of the activity because it was in
service of the President, or at his direct request. For example, Acting
FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, a long-time Nixon loyalist, testified
during his confirmation hearings that he never questioned the
President, or his aides, about activities relating to the Watergate

37. In this paper I have pointed out but one of many examples, with the so-called
"smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, where the true facts are not always consistent with
the historical assumptions. There is no question in my mind that if Nixon had had broader
staff support he could have defended himself against many of the charges of the Articles
of Impeachment reported out of the House Judiciary Committee. Most glaring was the
failure of the Impeachment Inquiry to charge Nixon with conspiracy to obstruct justice,
the crime that he indisputably committed. However, a conspiracy to obstruct justice was
expressly excluded from the Articles of Impeachment. See Appendix, infra.
38. Luce, supra note 19.
39. 1&
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

investigation because he presumed nothing out of the ordinary. 4°

In short, the many lawyers who broke the law during Watergate
did so for all the reasons that lawyers should be the first to recognize:
arrogance about the law, incompetence in the law and misplaced
loyalty. I can say that with authority (and shame) because I am one
of them. The study of ethics will not solve the problem, but it will
provide a sensitivity training, alerting practitioners to the pitfalls, and
reinforcing the code of a profession that serves only one master: the
rule of law itself. Ethics training can prevent incompetence and
loyalty from ever justifying what occurred during Watergate, so
lawyers recognize the mistakes before they make them. Ethics
instruction is meaningless, however, for those so arrogant to believe
they know when the law applies to them, and when it does not.
If Watergate's only legacy is the widespread teaching of ethics in
law schools, and it raises the antenna of future government attorneys,
good will have come from the mistakes we made. We wrote the book
on what not to do. It may be worth studying.

H. Do You Need a Deep Throat or a John Dean to Effectively

Investigate Public Corruption in High Office?
Both during the Iran Contra investigations, and more recently
during the Whitewater-Travelgate-Lewinsky investigations,
commentary and editorials, on television and in print, asserted that
what the Independent Counsel needed was a Deep Throat or a John
Dean.41 The issue being raised, of course, was whether you can really
effectively investigate the highest office in the nation without inside
information. The short answer is no. The more fundamental question
is do you need an independent counsel law. Based on my experience

40. Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary on the Nomination of L.
PatrickGray III to be Director,FederalBureau of Investigation, 93d Cong. 57-58 (1974).
41. For discussions of the need for a "John Dean," see, for example, Letters to the
Editor, STAR TRIBUNE (Minneapolis), Sept. 6, 1996, at 20A ("What if either James
McDougal or his ex-wife Susan turns out to be Clinton's John Dean?"); Sara Fritz &
Ronald J. Ostrow, Whitewater Lacks a Star Witness, TIMES-PICAYUNE, July 24, 1995, at
A2 ("As the Senate Whitewater hearings opened last week, the cavernous hearing room
seemed haunted by memories of John Dean .... "); James Q. Wilson, Editorial, This Time
There Was No John Dean, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 15, 1999, at A17; Charles McCarry, Editorial,
Bill Clinton'sJohn Dean?, N.Y. TIMES, July 12, 1998, at 4-17. For discussions of the need
for a "Deep Throat," see, for example, Annie Groer & Ann Gerhart, The Reliable Source,
WASH. POST, April 1, 1999, at C3 (discussing Newsweek reporter Michael "Spikey"
Isikoff's take on his very own Deep Throat in his new book, "Uncovering Clinton");
Thomas Friedman, Absence of Loyalty, DENVER POST, Mar. 13, 1999, at B7 ("All I could
think was that while Woodward needed 'Deep Throat' to break the code of loyalty in the
Nixon administration, when it came to the Clinton administration he had 'Deep Chorus'
or 'Deep Choir'-half the White House wanted to talk about their boss.").
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

as a witness, I would say yes. Based on my knowledge of the

presidency, and the operation of the independent counsel law, I must
say no.
I watched the Independent Counsel law come into existence with
very mixed feelings. My own personal experience with a Department
of Justice under the influence of the White House told me such a law
was necessary. But watching the law operate has made me ask
whether such a law is really necessary. Let me explain.
A. Problems Confronting a Cooperating Witness
When I decided to go to the prosecutors, and force the issues
that would end the Watergate cover-up, there was not yet a special
prosecutor, let alone an Independent Counsel. Rather, the Watergate
investigation was being conducted by the United States Attorney's
Office in the District of Columbia. Because I understood how much I
had been able to learn about the activities of these prosecutors
through the Department of Justice (and without corrupting the
Department), I insisted that as a condition of my providing
information to the prosecutors they agree not to report it back to the
Department of Justice, because I knew it would end up at the White
House. The prosecutors agreed to this arrangement, but they soon
breached it.42 Fortunately, I had been proceeding slowly with them,
for I was not at all confident that a team of Assistant United States
Attorneys, regardless of how competent, could deal with Watergate.
Indeed, I had told them nothing about the President.
I did not view myself as a confidential informant. To the
contrary, I had told all those who I knew would be hurt by my
testimony exactly what I was doing. The White House was very
aware that I had hired a lawyer, and requested that he visit with the
prosecutors. I had told my friend Bud Krogh that I had had it with
the cover-up and was going to end it; I told Haldeman the
consequences of my testimony. I had explained to John Mitchell that
I knew no other way to end Watergate than to go to the grand jury,
and I had my attorney call the attorney of Jeb Magruder, a Mitchell
deputy also in trouble, to tell him that I was talking with the
prosecutors and the cover-up was over. My thought in coming
forward was not to pick a fight with the President of the United
States, along with Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell, but rather to
force the issues because I truly (and naively) believed that those men
would do the right thing, and that Watergate could largely be
resolved behind the closed door of the grand jury, swiftly. How
wrong I was.

42. See DEAN, supra note 21, at 252-53.

April 2001 WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

My worst fears happened. When the prosecutors reported my

information about Haldeman and Ehrlichman to the Justice
Department, Henry Petersen provided it to the President, who in turn
provided it to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. With this information
Haldeman and Ehrlichman quickly went to work dragging bushes, as
best they could, over their tracks; they refreshed recollections of
others to suit their needs, and secretly taped conversations to try to
gather evidence to refute what I had told the prosecutors. Rather
than using the opportunity to end the cover-up, and get himself in
front of it while he still could, Richard Nixon compounded his
problems, starting another phase of the conspiracy to obstruct justice.
When the prosecutors breached their agreement with me, I
stopped dealing with them, and refused to cooperate further, for I
realized that the only way to resolve Watergate was going to be
through the Senate Watergate Committee, and publicly. To this day,
these original Watergate prosecutors seem to believe that I turned
them down because they would not give me the deal my lawyer was
seeking, unaware that I had told my lawyer I was coming forward
with or without a deal. Had I continued to cooperate with the United
States Attorneys, Watergate would never have been resolved. In fact,
I was forced to distance myself from the United States Attorney's
Office because I was convinced that the President was still receiving
all of the relevant information he needed to perpetuate a cover-up
and protect Haldeman and Ehrlichman. As the tapes show, my
suspicions were correct. 43
It is fortunate that the Senate Watergate Committee was
commencing its investigation, because not only could Watergate not
be resolved behind the closed doors of a grand jury, it became clear
that the President, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman were going to defend
themselves by attacking me. Rather than finding a quick solution
where everyone takes responsibility for his mistakes, I had found a
fight. It was better that this take place in public. While that was
certainly not what I wanted, if that was how it had to be, it was all
right with me. I believe that, sooner or later, the truth comes out.
The White House seemed to believe that they could prevent that and
that I would not testify without immunity. They were unaware that I
had made it clear to Sam Dash, the chief counsel to the Senate
Watergate Committee, that I was prepared to testify with or without
immunity. The White House also believed that by denying me access
to my files and papers, which they did, they could prevent me from
reconstructing what had occurred. But by using old newspapers to
trigger my memory, I was able to recall most of the relevant high

43. S~e, e.g., KUTLER, supranote 27, at 315-19,326-34, 336-48, 360-64,589-90, 598-600.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

points of the events.

When Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox was
appointed, I was still worried about how to proceed. Not about Cox,
but about Richard Nixon, who I knew had the power to fire Cox. It
was Assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor James Neal's relationship
with my attorney, Charles Shaffer, that convinced me that they were
going to do the right thing, letting the chips fall where they might.
Jim Neal and Charlie Shaffer had tried and convicted Jimmy Hoffa
together, and I quickly gathered from the war stories I heard from
them both that the Hoffa trial had been a good way to get to know a
colleague. What I do not believe Jim Neal knew was how badly
Charlie wanted me not to plead guilty. Not only did Charlie
appreciate the risk that Cox and his staff could be fired, and I would
be left hanging with a guilty plea, but he was also convinced (and
remains so to this day) that given the taint problems and breach with
the Assistant United States Attorneys, and given the taint problems
with my Senate Watergate Committee testimony, that I had the
Oliver North case long before North actually made the law.44 Beating
the rap, however, was not what interested me. Resolving Watergate
was. And Richard Nixon made it rather exciting. The day after I
plead guilty, he fired Cox.
As Richard Ben-Veniste, another Assistant Watergate Special
Prosecutor and participant in this symposium, surely recalls, following
the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre" (when the Attorney General
and Deputy Attorney General resigned rather than fire Special
Prosecutor Cox), and after the FBI had taken custody of the
Watergate Special Prosecutor's office, he and I would meet, almost
clandestinely, on a Washington street so we could talk about the fact
that Henry Petersen was taking over the investigation. Today, with
the tapes of the President's conversations with Petersen for all to read
(or hear), the reasons for my concern are clear. While I do not
believe Petersen joined a conspiracy to obstruct justice, he brushed
about as close to the line as anyone can get. Henry Petersen is a good
example of how even a savvy and experienced lawyer could so easily
slide to the wrong side of the law because of the power of the
presidency, and the assumption that the occupant of that high office
was acting with honor.
It was the situation that I have just related that led to the
enactment of the Independent Counsel law. But I cannot forget that
Watergate was resolved without that law, and I have not forgotten
that the Watergate Special Prosecution Force recommended against
the Independent Counsel law, predicting many of the problems that

44. See United States v. North, 910 F.2d 843 (D.C. Cir. 1990).
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

would come to haunt that (now expired) statute.45 I do not know if

any other participants in this symposium have worked in the White
House, and watched the presidency up close. Being President is an
extremely difficult and demanding job. Placing what amounts to a
Mafia strike force on any man (or woman) who holds that office is an
unbelievable burden, and it poses potential dangers to us all. The
Constitution provides remedies for removing a President who has
abused the highest office, and it does not include an independent
counsel investigating him.
During the recent impeachment proceeding against President
Clinton, I worked as a consultant to MSNBC. It provided me with an
opportunity to observe closely the impeachment process, again.
Before Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr made his referral to the
House of Representatives, I had asked one of my former colleagues
from my days as minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee
why the referral language was added to the Independent Counsel
law. 46 Speaking as old friends can, he said that the House Judiciary
Committee recognized that it was almost incapable of conducting an
impeachment investigation. During Watergate it had relied upon the
work of the Senate Watergate Committee and the Watergate Special
Prosecution Force. On the few occasions it had impeachment
proceedings relating to federal judges, either nothing had been done
or another investigative body had presented the evidence. While
many members, and several on the staff, thought that to have anyone
other than the House of Representatives conduct an impeachment
inquiry was an unconstitutional delegation of power, they believed
they had written the referral provision of the Independent Counsel
Law in a fashion that did not delegate this power but rather gave the
Congress the benefit of evidence gathered by an Independent
Counsel. My friend, an attorney long associated with the House
Judiciary Committee, acknowledged that the House could trigger an
investigation of a President under the Independent Counsel law, and
then receive the results of the investigation under the referral
provisions, thus doing indirectly what they knew the Constitution had
never provided. Cut through the smoke, and remove the mirrors, and
the referral clause is nothing more than the House of Representatives
shirking a Constitutional responsibility.
As someone acutely aware of the need to investigate misconduct

45. See WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE REPORT, supra note 3, at 138-
39.
46. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 595(c) ("An independent counsel shall advise the House of
Representatives of any substantial and credible information which such independent
counsel receives, in carrying out the independent counsel's responsibilities under this
chapter, that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.").
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

in high office, I have long believed that the House of Representatives

should create a standing, bipartisan investigative committee on public
integrity, or as I would call it a "standing committee on
impeachments," with jurisdiction to investigate any impeachable
conduct using a full-time, professional investigative staff. Only
Members of Congress who are attorneys should be assigned to this
committee, and only members who have served not less than three
terms, because the committee should not be a political springboard
for those seeking political advancement or attention. In days past
Congress has proven itself very capable at investigating wrongdoing.
I have never heard a good argument as to why the House of
Representatives should not take seriously its responsibility regarding
impeachable conduct. Is not conduct rising to the level of an
impeachable offense a subject for the House, rather than a grand
jury?
Had Watergate been unraveled, as I first mistakenly thought it
should and could be, behind the closed door of the grand jury, I am
certain it would never have been satisfactorily resolved, as it was.
That is the problem with a Deep Throat. No one can truly assess
Woodward's work without knowing his source, and today there is
more myth relating to Deep Throat than facts. Thus, many people
believe that wrongdoing at the White House cannot be unraveled
without a new Deep Throat.
B. Deep Throat 47
Monica Crowley, one of former President Nixon's last staff
assistants, reports that when she and Richard Nixon had a
conversation about the identify of Washington Post reporter Bob
Woodward's source Deep Throat, the President purportedly said,
"Whoever [Deep Throat] was was just trying to save his own ass, bail
himself out from a sinking ship. Dean was a traitor, but the source-
well, he went even beyond that."48 The former President, like most
people, had a very mistaken understanding of Deep Throat.
About six years after the Watergate arrests (and the start of the
Washington Post's Watergate coverage), I started investigating the
only remaining mystery relating to Watergate, i.e., the identity of
Woodward's source. 49 During the post-Watergate years, I had gotten
to know Bob Woodward, and I believed him when he said his
legendary source was not a composite or literary fiction, but rather a

47. See generally CARL BERNSTEIN & BOB WOODWARD, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S
MEN (1974).
48. MONICA CROWLEY, NIXON IN WINTER 298 (1998).
49. For the complete story of my Deep Throat investigation, see generally JOHN W.
DEAN, LOST HONOR (1982).
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

real person. To figure out who it might be, I re-read All the
President's Men,50 where the existence of Deep Throat was first
revealed, and noted on a 3 x 5 card (this was in 1978 and pre-desktop
computers) every single fact that Deep Throat had given Woodward,
and when he had been given that information. I had one card for
each fact, and I was able to date the time Woodward was given the
information either from the book, All the President's Men, or by
checking the corresponding story in the Washington Post.
Given my position as the White House's Desk Officer during the
Watergate cover-up, I was in a unique position to know who could
have known which facts and when they could have known them.
What I did not know first hand, I knew how to determine though
research. Accordingly, I took each 3 x 5 card, with a single fact and
the date Woodward had been given that information on the front, and
then wrote on the back who "could" have known that information at
that time. If one is to believe Woodward (as I do) that he had but
one source, then there should be one name which appears on the
back of every single 3 x 5 card. However, no one person appeared on
every card. Thus, according to my analysis, no single person could
have given Woodward all the information he says he was given by
Deep Throat.
Obviously, there could be several explanations. My analysis
could be wrong, but I do not think so. Or Woodward might have
used misinformation so no one could do exactly what I was trying to
do. To not leave you in suspense, and make a long story short,
through various screening techniques (such as determining that the
most likely venue from which Deep Throat operated was the White
House), I began winnowing my list to my most viable candidates 51
based on who could have known about the 18-minute gap at the time
when Deep Throat told Woodward about it,52 and finally which one
of this group was most likely, based on a relationship with
Woodward, to have been the source. My candidate was Al Haig. But
Haig denied it. 53 Yet clearly there was some relationship, because
Woodward would do for Haig what he has been unwilling to do for
anyone else: he publicly confirmed that Deep Throat was not Haig.5 4

50. See BERNSTEIN & WOODWARD, supra note 47.

51. See DEAN, supra note 49, at 311-14. The list of viable candidates included Chuck
Colson, Alexander Butterfield, Leonard Garment, Dick Moore, Ken Clawson, David
Gergen, Jon Rose, Alexander Haig, and Steve Bull.
52. See id. at 324 (Garment, Rose, Haig and Bull).
53. See iii at 324-54.
54. See Ben Bradlee, Big Ben: A Few Days in the Life of Benjamin C. Bradlee, Editor,
in Which the FirstAmendment Is Saved, Deep Throat'sSecret Is Protected,and a President
Must Take No for an Answer, WASH. POST, Sept. 15, 1995, at F1 ("Woodward finally said
publicly that Haig was not Deep Throat.").
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

As more information has become available, I have been able to

further my research. But that is another story for another day. What
is important is that I learned from my first look at Deep Throat how
misinformed the public is about what this source knew and did not
know. A significant amount of information given to Woodward by
Deep Throat was dead wrong.55 More importantly (and when
Woodward and I last discussed this subject he agreed) it must be
understood how little Deep Throat really knew, or gave to
Woodward. In short, Deep Throat did not have the information to
resolve Watergate, and never came close to providing anything to
Woodward that would have "cracked the case." The lesson,
notwithstanding the importance of the media to the investigation of
public corruption in high office, is that even if you have an equivalent
of Deep Throat, it will not solve the problem. Contrary to some
public notions, neither the Washington Post nor Deep Throat
unraveled Watergate. Watergate fell apart on its own, because of the
weight of misconduct involved.
C. The John Dean Role
My role in Watergate is characterized by some as that of the
snitch, the rat, the tattletale, the informant, the stool pigeon, the
whistleblower or as Richard Nixon would have it, a traitor. Ugly
labels, for sure. None of them, however, trouble me, because I know
what actually happened and why; how others perceive it is not very
important, as I shall explain. Before I went to the prosecutors to end
Watergate, I knew that I would be attacked for doing so. It had even
arisen, indirectly, in a conversation with the President on February
28, 1973 about leaks and informants, when the President said about
someone with inside information who went public, "everybody would
treat him like a pariah. He's in a very dangerous situation. These
guys you know-the informers, look what it did to Chambers.
Chambers informed because he didn't give a God damn.156 I knew
exactly what it had done to Whittaker Chambers, the President's
favorite informant.
Whittaker Chambers, of course, had testified that he had once
been an active organizer for the Communist Party, working the
corridors of government power in Washington 7 But when
Chambers learned of the true nature of communism, and of his

55. See DEAN, supra note 49, at 315-18.

56. WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE, TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENTIAL
CONVERSATIONS, Conversation No. 865-014, at 28 (Feb. 28, 1973; The President, John W.
Dean and Steve Bull; 9:12 to 10:23 A.M.).
57. For an excellent biography of Chambers, see SAM TENENHAUS, WHITTAKER
CHAMBERS: A BIOGRAPHY (1997).
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

former friends who still embraced it, he broke rank and became a
witness against these people and their thinking. Years earlier, I had
read Chambers' book about being a witness. While I had found no
similarities between Whittaker Chambers' life and my own, I had
discovered an eloquent writer, and I had not forgotten the message of
one passage in particular which I later discovered I had underlined:
I had begun to understand that to be a witness, in the sense in
which I am using the term, means, ultimately, just one thing. It
means that a man is prepared to destroy himself, if necessary, to
make his witness. A man does not wish to destroy himself. To the
full degree in which he is strongest, that is to say, to the full degree
of force that makes it possible for him to bear witness at all, he
desires not to destroy himself. To the degree that he is most
human, that is to say, most weak, he shrinks from destroying
himself. But to the degree that what he truly is and what he stands
for are one, he must at some point tacitly
58 consent in his own mind
to destroy himself if that is necessary.
Nixon had it wrong with Chambers. He did give a damn, and that was
why he had taken the actions he did in testifying against Alger Hiss
and others. Within a few weeks of that February 28, 1973
conversation, I knew exactly what Whittaker Chambers was talking
about.
During the last ten days of March, 1973, a confluence of events
would force my decision. I had told Haldeman, I had told
Ehrlichman, and I had told the President that I had no solution to the
problems of Watergate, but I believed that the President had to end
the Watergate cover-up. 59 Then on March 23, 1973, United States
District Court Judge John Sirica, who had been presiding over the
Watergate criminal cases, revealed in open court a letter from James
McCord charging that he and others involved in the Watergate break-
in were under political pressure to plead guilty and remain silent, that
perjury had been committed during his criminal trial, and that higher-
ups were involved in the break-in. It had long been anticipated that
McCord would do something like this. It was no surprise. We knew
that he was correct, but we also knew he had absolutely no hard
evidence to support his charges. He was relying totally on hearsay
from Gordon Liddy, who would likely kill McCord before he would
corroborate his allegations. 6°
When McCord blew the whistle it was time for my decision.
Could the cover-up go on? Absolutely. Could it succeed? Almost

58. WHrTAKER CHAMBERS, WrrNESS 700 (1952).

59. See, e.g., KUTLER, supra note 27 at 247-57 (excerpts of my "cancer on the
presidency" warnings to the President).
60. Liddy has not stated that he would have killed McCord, but Liddy claims of a
willingness to kill when he believed it appropriate are well known. See supra note 17.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

for certain, particularly if the cover-up were justified for "national

security" reasons, and if, when called to testify, I had supported the
earlier testimony by Mitchell and Magruder (which was false) about
the meetings with Liddy in the Attorney General's office-by lying.
In short, my options were clear: either I could go forward and live the
lie or do exactly what Whittaker Chambers accurately described:
consent to the inevitable self-destruction necessary to tell the truth.
While I thought about it carefully, during a long visit to Camp David,
I knew before I started where I would come out. I really had no
choice. I was disgusted with my own behavior and deeply troubled by
the pervasive criminality within the Nixon White House. I made the
decision that, regardless of the consequences, I was going to tell the
truth, and, as they say: The rest is history.
Because of the great number of persons with political, economic
and emotional ties to any President, when you tarnish a President his
followers feel that you tarnish them as well; when you harm that
President you harm them as well; and when that President strikes out
to defend himself against you, his followers will do likewise. 61 When
you do the kind of damage I found it necessary to do, the attacks
against you never end, because Presidents, and those who have
hooked on to a President's star, are not only concerned with
protecting his incumbency but his legacy as well.
Only recently I have had occasion to seriously question my
decision, and it is not my decision as much as it is the fact that the law
provides no protection to public figures, who can be attacked so easily
under modern American defamation law. This problem has become
acute because the Nixon partisans are now attacking my wife, a
person who had absolutely nothing to do with Watergate. Leading
this effort to rewrite history, and to claim that he really did not know
what the Watergate break-ins were all about, is the man who has
made Watergate his career: Gordon Liddy. Liddy has endlessly
repeated his bogus story, while noting that "[master Nazi
propagandist Joseph] Goebbels said in the 1930's, if you tell a lie
often enough people will believe it."62 To address Liddy's false
charges, my wife and I have spent the last eight years pursuing a
defamation lawsuit against Liddy, which is now headed to trial.63

61. From a very different vantage point, I am sure that former Independent Counsels
Lawrence Walsh and Kenneth Starr appreciate this reality.
62 The G. Gordon Liddy Radio Show (WJFK Radio, Nov. 11, 1996).
63. In 1991, Liddy republished his autobiography Will, adding a "Postscript" in which
he set forth his new understanding of Watergate based on Silent Coup: The Removal of a
President, written by previously unpublished authors who claim that the major players
from the Nixon Administration have all been wrongly convicted (e.g., John Mitchell, H.R.
Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman) and are actually innocent; only yours truly was guilty
of anything (which Silent Coup claims is virtually everything relating to Watergate). Silent
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

Could I recommend anyone proceed as I did with Watergate?

No. But for me there was no other choice. While lying might appear
to have been easier, and there was no telling what reward might have
resulted from succeeding with the cover-up, I wonder at what price?
For me the necessary self-destruction was better than having to live
the lie. Over the years many others have privately told me I was
foolish. I think not. Who knows what would have happened had the
cancer not been removed from the presidency. Think about this:
Gordon Liddy as the director of the FBI!
Having closely followed the investigations in Iran Contra, and
the Whitewater-Travelgate-Lewinsky matters, I do not believe there
was anyone during those matters in the position in which I found
myself during Watergate. For had there been, and had they felt as I
did, they would have come forward. Contrary to the notions of some,
I was not flipped by prosecutors to testify against the President and
others, nor was it any external threat that caused me to do what I did.
Watergate was uniquely Nixonian, and I want to believe that it is very
unlikely anything like it will ever happen again.

Coup, which simply ignores the relevant existing evidence, was described by former chief
counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee Samuel Dash, in the March/April 1992 issue
of the Washington Lawyer as a "fraud." The publishers of Silent Coup, and the authors,
after spending millions of dollars (of insurance money) in an effort to defeat our lawsuit,
settled. The settlements are, at the insistence of these defendants, confidential; however,
we are permitted to say that we are "satisfied." Liddy, who is not interested in settling,
has not only embraced Silent Coup, but also material that the publishers of Silent Coup
understandably were not willing to publish (but Liddy was) from a source who has been in
and out of mental institutions and jails his entire adult life, most recently informing a court
official after an arrest in 1994 that he is, in fact, an abandoned space captain from Alpha
Centauri. See Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505, 543 (4th Cir. 1999), cert. denied 120 S. Ct. 939
(2000) ("Liddy also knew that in 1992 Bailley had gotten into an altercation with a security
guard at the Library of Congress during which Bailley told the guard that he was Star
Caesar."). See also Brief of Appellant at 7 n.2, Wells v. Liddy, 186 F.3d 505 (4th Cir. 1999)
(No. 98-1962), cert. denied, 120 S. Ct. 939 (2000) ("Bailley's story, to which he testified at
his deposition, was that he was an abandoned space alien waiting for a spaceship from
Alpha Centauri. Bailley Dep. at 32."). If we cannot prevail in this lawsuit against Liddy,
there is no effective defamation law for any public figure in the United States. Should that
be the case, I would advise anyone finding themselves in a position remotely similar to
mine, that for the sake of those close to them who have also attracted public attention (as
did my wife only because she is a beautiful woman), they not do what I chose to do. The
cost is too high if non-combatants near and dear can be falsely charged.
Originally there were fifteen defendants. Only Liddy remains. We have been
represented by the Los Angeles law firm Iverson, Yoakum, Papiano & Hatch, with
partners John Garrick and Doug Larson serving as trial counsel. The lawsuit was
transferred from California to the District of Columbia, where our local counsel is David
Dorsen, former assistant chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, Of Counsel
with Wallace, King, Marraro & Branson, PLC and a professor of law at Georgetown Law
Center. The trial is scheduled to begin July 5,2000.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

m. Why Break into the DNC?

Watergate, of course, began with the arrests during the
Watergate break-in. The question of why break into the DNC at the
Watergate is said (particularly by those inclined to keep these matters
confused) to be a remaining mystery of this scandal. It is not much of
a mystery, however, if you dig into the available archival material.
While I have found nothing that changes the understanding of
Watergate that emerged during the investigations by the Senate
Watergate Committee and the Watergate Special Prosecutor, gaps
can be filled in and understanding expanded from the trove of
available information. The information explaining the Watergate
break-ins first jumped at me while I read transcripts from the so-
called "abuse of power" tapes. 64 Below are excerpts that caught my
attention and started my inquiry: 65
June 20, 1972 4:35-5:25 p.m., EOB Office [three days after the
arrests at the Watergate, and the first day back in his office]:
Nixon: My God, the [Democratic National] committee isn't worth
bugging in my opinion. That's my public line.
Haldeman: Except for this financial thing. They thought they had
something going on that.
Nixon: Yes, I suppose.
Haldeman: But I asked the question: If we were going to all that
trouble, why in the world would we pick the Democratic National
Committee to do it? It's the least fruitful source.6
January 3, 1973 11:30a.m.-:00 p.m., Oval Office
Nixon: I can see Mitchell, but I can't see Colson getting into the
Democratic office.
Haldeman: The stupidity.
Nixon: What the Christ was he looking for?
Haldeman: They were looking for stuff on two things. One, on
financial.
Nixon: Yes.
Haldeman: And the other on stuff that they thought they had on
what they were going to do at Miami to screw us up, because
apparently-a Democratic plot. And they thought they had it
uncovered. Colson was salivating with glee at the thought of what
he might be able to do with it. And they were very reluctant, the
investigator types were reluctant, to go in there. They were put

64. See infra notes 106-122 and accompanying text ("Watergate Defined and
Described").
65. The following only highlights the information I have found explaining the events
that lead to the Watergate break-ins.
66. KUTLER, supra note 27, at 47-49.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

under tremendous pressure that they had to get that stuff. None of
this-I don't know any of this firsthand. I can't prove any of it, and
I don't want to know it. 67As I pointed out, if I ever get called in I'll
be ignorant, which I am.
What struck me is that I had never provided any of this
information to Haldeman, for I had not known about these facts. But
I knew exactly what Haldeman was referring to when he mentioned
the "financial thing," because I had heard him use the reference both
before and after the arrests at the Watergate on June 17, 1972.68
The "financial thing" was a short-hand reference to the
Democrats' funding for their 1972 Miami Convention and an alleged
kickback scheme the White House had been told the Democrats were
operating at their convention. 69 It was not, as some thought, a
reference to getting financial information on DNC Chairman Larry
O'Brien. The effort to go after the Democrats had been prompted by
the release on February 29, 1972 by columnist Jack Anderson of a
memorandum from ITT lobbyist Dita Beard, which indicated that the
Government had settled an antitrust case with rIT in exchange for a
$400,000 pledge; 70 in succeeding columns, Anderson would implicate
Mitchell and Attorney General nominee Richard Kleindienst. 71 At
Mitchell's last press conference as Attorney General, the first
question was about Jack Anderson's ITT charges. In responding,
Mitchell noted: "This is a political question, because the only one that
I know that is raising it is Larry O'Brien. 72 As Chairman of the
DNC, Larry O'Brien saw an opening to attack the Republicans, and
he made the most of it. As the material I found in the National
Archives shows, Richard Nixon responded to this attack. 73

67. Id at 194-97.
68. Haldeman often referred obliquely to matters he felt were sensitive. For example,
when he mentioned the Ellsberg break-in to the President, he called it "other stuff" and
"stuff we know nothing about," yet it is clear to anyone with knowledge what he was
referring to. Id. at 73.
69. Magruder has written "We... had a tip from Kevin Phillips, the conservative
columnist, that the Democratic Party might be involved in a kickback scheme in
connection with their convention. The report was that the Democrats would lease space
to individual exhibitors and kick back part of the fee to the Democrats." JEB STUART
MAGRUDER, AN AMERICAN LIFE: ONE MAN'S ROAD TO WATERGATE 190-91 (1974). It
should be noted that Kevin Phillips had worked for John Mitchell during the 1968
campaign, and after Mitchell became Attorney General. Mitchell had great respect for
Phillips and would not have lightly dismissed a tip from him.
70. See N.Y. TIMES ABSTRACTS, Mar. 1, 1972, at 1. See also H.R. HALDEMAN, TiE
HALDEMAN DIARIES 425-37 (1994).
71. See, e.g., N.Y. TIMES ABSTRACrS, Mar. 3, 1972, at 38; N.Y. TIMES ABSTRACrS,
Mar. 21, 1972; N.Y. TIMES ABSTRACrS, Apr. 11, 1972, at 33. See also HALDEMAN, supra
note 70, at 425-37.
72. HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 640-41
73. When the =t story broke in February 1972, 1 was completing the last leg of a trip
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

March 5, 1972-The President was returning from Key Biscayne

to the White House on Air Force One. Haldeman, when meeting
with the President, took notes, including the following: "do some
[checking] on where the Dem[ocratic] money for Miami is coming
from-re ITT Sheratons what contracts they have made." 74
March 7, 1972-Haldeman dictated his notes of his 3-5-72
meeting on "AF-1" with the President into an "Action Memo."
Handwriting I found on the document by Haldeman's top aide Larry
Higby states, "Put Dean, Colson & Magruder to work on this. Dean
in charge." Haldeman responded to Higby's note with his own:
"OK-not by memo." Haldeman also wanted a fast follow-up on this
action, having also written "H FU 3/10" in the upper right hand
corner, which meant a follow-up by March 10th.75
March 7 or 8, 1972-When Higby gave me the assignment he did
not place me in charge of obtaining the information, rather he wanted
me to check it to be certain there was evidence of a kickback before
anyone leaked anything to the media. Higby wanted me to have Jack
Caulfield investigate it.76 Caulfield, who had left the White House to
work for John Mitchell at the reelection committee, had his private
investigator who had been working for the White House since 1969,
Tony Ulasewicz, take a look.
March 8, 1972-Haldeman met with the President (EOB Office
at 12:30 p.m.) and the President wanted to know if there was
"anything on the Miami investigation?" The President asked, "why
can't we find some dirt on Democrats; we should be able to counter
'77
attack, put them on [the] defensive.
March 8, 1972-Haldeman dictated another Action Memo based

for the White House that had taken me to Saigon and Tehran. During the President's
historic trip to China (he departed on February 17, 1972 and returned February 28, 1972),
I had taken the opportunity to mix business with a trip of my own. Having never circled
the earth (to make sure it is round), I did so while the President headed to China, and I
called my office from Paris on Friday, March 3, 1972 hoping to spend a weekend resting.
Haldeman, however, was looking for me, and had left instructions with the hotel staff to
tell me when I checked in that I was to get back to my office as soon as possible. As my
White House telephone logs show, I was away from my office from the afternoon of
February 17, 1972 until the morning of March 6, 1972. All I knew was that the White
House was in a tizzy when I returned. Now I better understand why.
74. H.R. Haldeman Handwritten Notes (Mar. 5, 1972, Air Force One), in NIXON
PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS PROJECt, WHITE HousE SPECIAL FILES, STAFF MEMBERS
& OFFICE FILES (on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
75. H.R. Haldeman Action Paper (Mar. 7, 1972, ITT), in NIXON PRESIDENTIAL
MATERIALS PROJECT, WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL FILES, STAFF MEMBERS AND OFFICE
FILES (on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
76. See 3 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 931 (my testimony on this
matter), 1151-56 (the documents).
77. See infra note 79 and accompanying text.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS ITM

on his meeting with the President. Haldeman's first request,

according to a note on the document, went to Colson: "We need an
attack on the Democrats for the contributions to individual and to the
party. There should be a careful investigation of the financial support
of their convention and that should be put together as 78 material for an
attack." Haldeman also sought a fast follow-up on this.
The March 8, 1972 EOB conversation had never been
transcribed. As I listened to it, I heard a very annoyed President
unhappy with the media flak he and his Attorney General are getting
over the ITT matter, which he believes to be totally unjustified. After
reviewing the events, the President told Haldeman what he wanted
done:
Nixon: One thing I was going to tell you to do, and I assume our
boys are smart enough to do, they may be smart enough but they
aren't doing it-has anybody thought to check to see what Miami
Beach hotels have underwritten the [Democratic] Miami
convention, and second, this is what they have to check. There
probably is more than one or two over there that doesn't have
gangster money, have they thought of that?
Haldeman: Yeah, we got a little problem there-
Nixon: Harold Smith?
Haldeman: No, no, it bounces back on your convention in '68.
Nixon: Give a shit.

Haldeman: We're, we'll get the San Diego, the Miami story on, on,
the, their support thing ....

Nixon: I advised Mitchell and his gang, and Ehrlichman all along,
and they have not followed through when I ordered this two years
ago, go after the bastards, you know, we've got to have dirt to
throw at them, correct? I'll tell you, I don't know what they've
done. I don't know where it is? Anything, throw it up there.7 9
In the records of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's office, I
found that Caulfield's investigator, Tony Ulasewicz, had informed the
Watergate Special Prosecutors that he had met with two men from
IRS in Miami (Caulfield had extensive contacts in the Treasury
Department and IRS), explaining that "he was investigating rumors
concerning who was paying for the Democratic Convention and that

78. See supranote 75 and accompanying text.

79. I prepared this transcript at the National Archives, and had one of the Archivists
associated with the Nixon Project listen to several of the passages with me to confirm that
we both heard the same remarks. I had the same assistance with the March 14th and April
5th conversations. See infra note 90 and accompanying text.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

there might be some mob connections." 80 I had never made such a

request to Caulfield (or Ulasewicz). But the President's request was
clearly addressed, and what Richard Nixon wanted done was, in fact,
8
done. '
March 8, 1972-Haldeman also dictated an Action Paper. This
document focused on "IT&T" raising alternatives to deal with the
negative publicity, such as asking the San Diego "Host Committee to
give the money back to IT&T, along with a real blast by the Mayor of
San Diego saying this is a smear job." Then Haldeman added:
In any event, we need a counterattack. We must not let them get
away with the only attack on this. We've got to build up the Miami
story and anything else we can.... We've got to find a way to turn
around the PR on this. We're getting taken unfairly and we should
be taking some initiative ourselves. 82
March 13, 1972-In the President's files I found the reason for
his concern, and reason for this whirlwind of activity to find negative
financial information about the Democrats. The President believed
that the Democrats were using the ITT matter to tarnish the political
triumph of his just-completed trip to China. On March 13, 1972, the
President dictated a lengthy memorandum to Haldeman regarding
Mrs. Nixon insisting that the pandas given to them on the China trip
by Mao "must go to the Washington Zoo," that there should be a
public display of other gifts from the trip, and other trip-related
matters. Then the President explained the reason for his
memorandum:
This brings me to the point. It is very much in our interest, of
course, to keep the China story alive in terms of the enormous
public impact that it has had.... The main point for us to recognize
is that it is very much in our interest to keep the China visit in the
minds of people across the country and not to allow the press to
succeed in its efforts to submerge it completely by concentrating on
other issues. As a matter of fact, the IT&T case I think was
deliberately surfaced at this time for the purpose of knocking down
public interest and coverage of the China visit. In that connection,
it was a brilliant success although not a total success due to the fact
that we had a few announcements to make after the IT&T story
broke. But make no mistake about it. This is exactly why Kennedy
et al. broke that story at this point. They have had it for a long time

80. Memorandum from Frank Martin to Files of U.S. Dep't of Justice, Watergate
Special Prosecution Force, (Oct. 3, 1973, Based on Interview of Anthony Ulasewicz), at 3
(on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
81. In recent years I found many documents in the National Archives showing that
Jack Caulfield undertook assignments for Bob Haldeman (and presumably the President)
without my having any knowledge, although Caulfield had been assigned by Haldeman to
my staff.
82. H.R. Haldeman Action Paper, supra note 75.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?.

and they saved it up for right now so that they could torpedo the
China visit. I am sure that Henry [Kissinger] and others concerned
would not understand that this is what the deal was all about, but I
could see it the moment that I saw the stories begin 83to surface on
Friday after we had returned from China on Monday.
When testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee,
unaware of these conversations between the President and
Haldeman, but recalling the investigation of the financing of the
Democratic convention, I mentioned these matters in passing. I
raised the subject of this investigation because I was not sure whether
it was related to the Watergate break-ins or not. At the time, I
certainly did not know that the call for investigating the Democrats
was coming directly from the President, because he wanted to counter
the Democrats who were deflecting the positive political afterglow of
his China trip. The Democrats could not have hit on a subject more
dear to Richard Nixon, except maybe his daughters.
When testifying, I turned over to the Senate Watergate
Committee (and later the prosecutors) the documents I had on the
matter. In addition to a newspaper article provided to me by
Caulfield on the visible funding of the convention (Caulfield
uncovered no invisible funding), Jeb Magruder had given me a copy
of a March 15, 1972 memorandum that Gordon Liddy had written to
Mitchell, after Magruder (apparently at Higby's request, for it was
not at my request) had instructed Gordon Liddy to undertake an
investigation into the Democrats' convention funding and the alleged
kickback operation. Liddy's memorandum contained a sweeping
conclusory statement purportedly given to Howard Hunt by "an
experienced political correspondent for major news media in the
Miami area" that the DNC was "receiving a 25% kickback from the
funds raised through the exposition to be held at the Fontainebleau
Hotel and Convention Hall" during the July 1972 Democratic
National Convention.84
Magruder had come to me with Liddy's memorandum because
Mitchell, who had resigned as Attorney General effective March 1,
1972, was extremely busy helping his successor win Senate
confirmation, which was stalled by the ITT flap. Magruder, not an
attorney, wanted an opinion as to whether he should leak to the press
Liddy's information that the Democrats were operating a kickback
scheme. After reading Liddy's memorandum, I concluded that the
information was ambiguous at best, and advised Magruder to do
nothing without more information. Liddy's conclusory statement

83. Memorandum from the President to Bob Haldeman (Mar. 13, 1972), in NIXON
PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS PROJECT, WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL FILES, MEMORANDA
FROM THE PRESIDENT (on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
84. 3 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 1152-55.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

about the kickbacks from the Fontainebleau Hotel was attributed to

an unnamed newsman. I suggested to Magruder that he should get
more information about that newsman so he could assess it. I jotted
"need more info--" on the memorandum to make a record of why I
had killed any idea of leaking the information.
Liddy's plans for illegal intelligence-gathering had not been
approved at this time (mid-March 1972). After I threw cold water on
Liddy's plans during a second pitch meeting with then-still-Attorney
General Mitchell, on February 4, 1972, nothing had happened. As I
later told the President, after telling Haldeman of my actions at this
February 4, 1972 meeting, I had no personal knowledge of how or
why Liddy's plans were approved. But during the cover-up I did
listen. Only once did I press as to whether, in fact, Mitchell had
approved Liddy's plans at a meeting with Magruder on March 30,
1972 (as Magruder has testified), and Mitchell told me he had done 86
so.85 That same day, Mitchell told Haldeman the same thing.
Relying on what I learned at the time, and what I have learned since
from the Nixon tapes and White House files at the National Archives,
there is no doubt in my mind that Richard Nixon personally lit the
fuse that exploded in the early dawn hours of June 17, 1972 in the
DNC offices at the Watergate.
Did the President order the Watergate break-in? No. Did he
know the break-in was going to take place? No. But the evidence is
clear that his order and pressure to get financial information about
the convention activities of the Democrats, or evidence of other
contributor illegalities, were the direct catalyst for the approval of
Liddy's illegal plans, and the illegal activities undertaken at the
Watergate.
Follow the fuse. Start with the President's demands on March 5
("do some [checking] on where the Dem[ocratic] money for Miami is
coming from-re ITT Sheratons what contracts they have made."),8
and March 8 ("I ordered this two years ago, go after the bastards, you
know, we've got to have dirt to throw at them"),8 look at Haldeman's
action memorandum issuing the President's instructions,8 9 and note
that the President was again pushing for this information when he
met with Haldeman in the Oval Office at 10 a.m. on the morning of

85. See id at 1006-07. (On March 28, 1973, almost a year after Mitchell approved
Liddy's plans while in Key Biscayne, he admitted to me that he had approved them. He
did not, however, say why other than that he had been assured by Liddy that all of Liddy's
activities would be far removed from the reelection committee, an assurance Liddy clearly
did not honor.)
86. See HALDEMAN, supranote 70, at 618.
87. Supra note 76 and accompanying text.
88. Supra note 81 and accompanying text.
89. See supra note 84 and accompanying text.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?.

March 14, 1973. "Do we have anything new on the investigation into
the Miami Beach, ah, convention?" the President asked. Haldeman
replied, "Nothing yesterday." That afternoon, when meeting in the
EOB Office, the President raised it again: "Can't we find (pause-whip
sound) 90 some dirt on the Democrats?" Haldeman: "Yep. We sure-
" He is interrupted by the President with an inaudible or
unintelligible statement, but when the President flatly and clearly
gives the order, "You better," there is little question what he was
referring to.
Jeb Magruder testified before the Senate Watergate Committee
that, when Mitchell approved Liddy's plans on March 30, 1972 while
they were in Key Biscayne, the plans called for "initial entry into the
Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, and
that at a further date if the funds were available we would consider
entry into the Presidential contenders' headquarters and also
potentially at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami." 91 A few months
later during an interview with the Watergate Special Prosecutor,
Magruder explained what it was that Liddy was to look for at the
DNC:
Liddy understood that photographs were to be taken of any
documents in the DNC that would be valuable in terms of the
intelligence that Liddy was supposed to be providing at that time,
which included, in particular, anything that would demonstrate that
the Democrats had agreed to the kick-back scheme at the
Fountainblue [sic] that Kevan [sic] Phillips had previously
reportedY2
Liddy, who said nothing of his Watergate activities until he
published his memoir Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy
in 1980, fleetingly mentions his investigation in mid-March 1972 into
the Democratic convention funding.93 Liddy's first (1980) account of
Watergate, while generally consistent with what was known long
before he published, often distorts facts relating to Jeb Magruder,
Howard Hunt and myself, calling into question both his memory in
reconstructing these events almost eight years after the fact and his
intentions. The fact that Liddy despises (and planned to kill)

90. There is a tape-whip sound in the middle of the sentence, and, as explained to me
by an archivist who handles these materials, this occurs when there is a pause in the
conversation which stops the recorder, and then when the voice-activated machine
resumes, it jerks the tape back across the recording head causing what they call a "whip
sound" for but an instant. Yet the President's statement was very audible to me.
91. 2 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 794-95.
92. Memorandum from G.Frampton & G. Goldman to Files of U.S. Dep't of Justice,
Watergate Special Prosecution Force (Oct. 26, 1973, Based on Interview of Jeb
Magruder), at 2 (on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
93. LIDDY, supra note 17, at 214.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

Magruder, Hunt and me explains these distortions. 94 The fact that he

now claims he really did not understand what was happening during
the Watergate break-ins, and that he only learned the real story in
1991, certainly compounds his unreliability.
Liddy, however, can be removed from the equation without
losing the answer. We know what Magruder told the prosecutors at a
time relatively contemporaneous to the events, and when he was
cooperating and thus had no reason to offer anything but his best
memory of events; and we know what Howard Hunt (who was
Liddy's operational partner) told the men who went into the DNC
what to look for. And we know what the burglars say they were
looking for. All this information is totally consistent with, if not
corroborative of, a surreptitious inquiry into the financial
arrangements by the Democrats relating to their convention and the
contributors associated with the Democrats, which is precisely the
information that the White House, and specifically Richard Nixon,
wanted.
Howard Hunt, notwithstanding his admission that he initially lied
when questioned about, and writing his book about, Watergate, 95 has
testified consistently as to what he told the Cuban-Americans he
recruited for the Watergate break-ins.9 6 Hunt, who first agreed to
testify truthfully during the United States v. Mitchell trial, explained
what was being looked for in the DNC:
[Testimony regarding the first break-in at the DNC]
Q Now, can you tell us what instructions were given to the men
under your command, to Mr. Barker and his men?
A That they were to make the entry and photograph anything with
a figure on it.
Q When you say a figure, you are referring to financial type
material?
A Yes, sir.
Q This is in the office of the Democratic National Committee
Headquarters?
A Yes, sir.
Q What about Mr. McCord? Did you know what Mr. McCord was
supposed to be doing in there?

94. See id. at 211 (beating Magruder to death), 308 (killing Hunt with poison), 334
(killing Dean with a pencil in the throat).
95. RICHARD BEN-VENISTE & GEORGE FRAMPTON, JR., STONEwALL: THE REAL
STORY OF THE WATERGATE PROSECUTION 349 (1977).
96. See, e.g., 9 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 3711 (Hunt told the
Senate "[W]hen I approached Mr. Barker with the requirement for an entry into
Democratic national headquarters I told him that we wanted to verify a report to the
effect that Castro money was reaching the Democratic National Committee coffers.").
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

A I knew that Mr. McCord would either be bugging or

wiretapping. 7
[Second break-in at the DNC]
Q What instructions were the men who were to photograph
documents given?
A They were to photograph everything that was available with
particular reference to any papers with financial figures and
computations on them, anything that looked like contributors. In
fact, a second camera had been procured for that purpose, together
with a large quantity of film.

Q Did you know what Mr. McCord was supposed to be doing on

the second entry?
A He was supposed to be either replacing or repairing an
electronic device that for some reason was not functioning
properly.98
The Cuban-Americans (Bernard L. Barker, Rolando Martinez
and Virgilio R. Gonzalez) and their friend (Frank Sturgis) who
undertook the burglary and made the photographs during the first
undetected entry (they were arrested before they could do anything
during the second entry) all corroborate Hunt's account. 99 While it
appears that Hunt (always the CIA operative) suggested to his

97. Transcript of United States v. Mitchell, at 4144 (Oct. 28, 1974), in U.S. DEP'T OF
JUSTICE, WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE RECORDS (on file at National
Archives, Washington, D.C.). (Symposium panelist and former Assistant Watergate
Special Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste questioned Hunt, who was called as a court
witness).
98. Id. at 4148. Electronic surveillance man James McCord has consistently testified
that he sought to wiretap the telephone of Larry O'Brien, as instructed by Liddy. In his
self-published book, he provides the following explanation of what he was doing:
Liddy had explained the targeting of the DNC headquarters .... He said that
"they" wanted to wiretap and burglarize Larry O'Brien's apartment at the
Watergate apartment building [but Liddy had argued] that the DNC would be a
more productive target where the DNC files could be looked over.
[During the first break-in] Barker pointed out the area of interest for the
electronic work, and I began checking the telephone call director arrangement. I
had been asked to install only one device but had brought a second "for
insurance" in case needed. I found an office with a direct view from across the
street at the Howard Johnson Motel, pulled the curtain and made the installation
in the telephone in about five minutes, tested the device and found it working. I
did the same on an extension off a telephone call director carrying Larry
O'Brien's lines in an adjoining room.
JAMEs W. MCCORD, A PIECE OF TAPE: THE WATERGATE STORY: FACT AND FICTION
18-19,25 (1974). See also 1 Senate Select Comm. Hearings,supra note 5, at 128,156-57.
99. Bernard L. Barker, Rolando Martinez, Virgilio R. Gonzalez, and Frank Sturgis
(Feb. 8, 1977), in Transcript of Oliver v. Committee for the Re-election of the President,
(on file at National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

burglary team that the DNC may have received funds from Fidel
Castro (giving the expatriated Cubans added incentive to undertake
the task), this explanation to the burglars does not alter the fact that
they were looking for financial information or contributors. The
information request that started with Richard Nixon on March 5,
1972 (if not earlier) runs directly to the Watergate burglars when they
first enter the Watergate offices of the DNC on May 27, 1972 and
again on June 17, 1972. It is impossible for me to believe this is a
coincidence.
It was not until after I had gathered much of this information
that I realized that the President, using an oblique technique he
frequently employed when testing others for knowledge or
understanding, actually had raised this matter with me during our
conversation on March 13, 1973; when I was trying to figure out what
he knew, he was clearly trying to figure out what I knew. At the time,
the significance of the inquiry went right by me.
DEAN: ... A lot of people around here had knowledge that
something was going on over there. They didn't have any
knowledge of the details of the specifics of, of the whole thing.
PRESIDENT: You know, that must, must be an indication, though,
of the fact that, that they had God damn poor pickings. Because
naturally anybody, either Chuck or Bob, uh, was always reporting
to me about what was going on. If they ever got any information
they would certainly have told me that we got some information,
but they never had a God damn [laughs] thing to report. What was
the matter? Did they never get anything out of the damn thing?
DEAN: No. I don't think they ever got anything.
PRESIDENT: It was a dry hole, huh?
DEAN: That's right.
PRESIDENT: Jesus Christ.
DEAN: Well, they were just really getting started.
PRESIDENT: Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, Bob one time said something
about the fact we got some information about this or that or the
other, but, I, I think it was about the Convention, what they were
planning, I said [unintelligible]. So I assume that must have been
MacGregor, I mean not MacGregor, but Segretti. 1°°
If Richard Nixon was testing to determine whether I had
connected the dots, and had learned of his interest in financial
information about the Democrats and their convention, realizing that
his orders had triggered the break-ins, he had nothing to be
concerned about. It has taken me a quarter of a century to get the

100. WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTION FORCE, Transcript of March 13, 1973, The
President and John W. Dean, Oval Office.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

full picture as to why they broke into the Watergate offices of the
DNC. Now I understand. He wanted ammunition against the
Democrats to protect, as long as possible, the lustrous images of
Richard Nixon at his greatest moment-his trip to China.

IV. Watergate Defined and Described

I began these musings about Watergate by wondering how others
remember these events. I have found no better evidence of our
collective memory than what I found in 1980, when flipping through a
new dictionary in a bookstore. It was then that I noticed for the first
time that Watergate had become a defined term; while I cannot recall
the dictionary I can remember well the definition: Watergate was
defined as "abuse of high office occurring during the presidency of
Richard Nixon." Today, all good dictionaries have a definition of
Watergate. 101 If these dictionary definitions represent the collective
memory of Watergate, which I suspect they do, largely forgotten is
the litany of activities that constitutes that sad chapter of our history
that we call Watergate.
A more complete definition, and, I submit, a more accurate one,
is found in the Code of Federal Regulations ("CFR"). After
Congress passed a law controlling the preservation of Richard
Nixon's tapes and papers,1°2 it became necessary to define Watergate.
The CFR does so by defining Watergate as the work of the Senate
Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities ("Senate
Watergate Committee"), the Watergate Special Prosecution Force,
and the charges found in the three Articles of Impeachment against
Richard Nixon adopted by the House Judiciary Committee. 0 3
This inclusive delineation of Watergate in the CFR is remarkably
consistent with the subject matters covered in the more
comprehensive books on Watergate, 1°4 and not inconsistent with

101. The Random House Webster's College Dictionary defines "Watergate" as:
1. a political scandal during the 1972 presidential campaign, arising from a break-
in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate building complex in
Washington, D.C. and culminating in the resignation of President Nixon. 2. any
scandal involving corruption and other abuses of power, and attempt to conceal
these activities from the public.
RANDOM HousE WEBSTER'S COLLEGE DICTIONARY 1505 (1991).
The American Heritage Dictionary is less incident-specific, and says "Watergate" is
"[a] scandal that involves officials violating public or corporate trust through perjury,
bribery, and other acts of abuse of power in order to keep their elective or appointive
positions." THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICrIONARY 1366 (2d College Ed. 1985).
102. Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, Pub. L. No. 93-526; 88
Stat. 1695 (codified as amended at 44 U.S.C. § 2111 (1999)).
103. See Appendix, infra.
104. See, e.g., FRED EMERY, WATERGATE: THE CORRUPTION OF AMERICAN
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

Richard Nixon's own discussion of these events in his memoir.105

Since few have time to read all that would be included in the CFR
definition, but clearly more than is found in the typical dictionary is
necessary for understanding, I have cobbled together with the
guidance of the dictionaries and the CFR, drawing on representative
specifics from the historical record, what I believe should be
envisaged when a symposium of attorneys seriously address the
subject of Watergate. It is my hornbook, black letter, summary
definition and description.
Watergate related to misconduct by President Nixon and his
appointees and associates in endeavoring, ordering or sanctioning
abuses of the powers of the office of the President of the United
States by
(1) undertaking covert actions and activities not called for by
national security, such as:
(a) planning to remove restraints on domestic law
enforcement agencies to gather intelligence by means of
surreptitious entries, electronic surveillance and mail covers
(opening and examining first class mail) to obtain information
relating to political dissidents and protesters; 1°6
(b) breaking and entering, and stealing information, at the
Brookings Institute; 107
(c) breaking and entering the office of a psychiatrist treating
Daniel Ellsberg to obtain information that could be used to
discredit Ellsberg after he leaked a Pentagon study of the war
in South Vietnam to the news media;1 8and
(d) wiretapping newsmen and White House staff members to
obtain information about potential news leaks. 1°9

POLITICS AND THE FALL OF RICHARD NIXON (1994); STANLEY I. KUTLER, THE WARS
OF WATERGATE (1990); J. ANTHONY LUKAS, NIGHTMARE: THE UNDERSIDE OF THE
NIXON YEARS (1976).
105. RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON, RN: THE MEMOIRS OF RICHARD NIXON (1978) 386-
90 (Leaks and Wiretaps), 469-76 (The Huston Plan), 500-02 (The White House Tapes),
508-15 (The Pentagon Papers), 580-83 (ITT), 625-69 (The Watergate Break-in), 649-53
(The Gray Phone Call), 653-87 (The Democratic Nominee), 707-17 (The Corruption
Issue), 773-91 (Watergate Recurs), 791-859 (The March 21 Conversation), 869-75 (The
May 22 Statement), 890-98 (John Dean Testifies), 898-906 (The White House Tapes
Revealed), 909-12 (Trying To Regroup), 929-44 (October 1973), 944-48 (Setback and
Rally), 948-52 (The 18 1/2 Minute Gap), 952-61 (Property and Taxes), 961-68 (The Assault
Becomes Personal), and 969-1090 (1974).
106. See supra notes 20 - 23 and accompanying text.
107. See supra note 22.
108. See HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 161-66. See also United
States v. Ehrlichman, 546 F.2d 910 (D.C. Cir. 1976); United States v. Liddy, 542 F.2d 76
(D.C. Cir. 1976); United States v. Barker, 546 F.2d 940 (D.C. Cir. 1976).
109. See HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 146-51. See also
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

(2) using of illegal, improper and unethical activities in the

presidential election campaign of 1972, including
(a) breaking, entering, bugging, wiretapping and making
copies of information within the offices of political
opponents;" 0
(b) disruption, hindrance, impeding and sabotage of the
political campaign of opponents;"'
(c) fabrication, dissemination, or publication of false charges
or other false information for the purpose of discrediting
2
political opponents;"
(d) using the powers of incumbency for political advantage,
by assisting those friendly to the president and "screwing" his
enemies; 13 and
(e) violations of the campaign finance laws, including the sale
4
of ambassadorships."
(3) concealing illegal, improper or unethical conduct undertaken
by the president or his staff, by such means as
(a) obstruction of justice;" 5

Halperin v. Kissinger, 606 F.2d 1192 (D.C. Cir. 1979) (former White House aide Halperin
also named Nixon, former Attorney General John Mitchell, and former White House
Chief of Staff Haldeman, who were involved in either authorizing or receiving the
information from the wiretap of his residence).
110. See SENATE SELECT COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 18-32; HOUSE JUDICIARY
COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 35-41; United States v. Liddy, 509 F.2d 428 (D.C. Cir.
1974); United States v. McCord, 509 F.2d 334 (D.C. Cir. 1974); United States v. Barker,
514 F.2d 208 (D.C. Cir. 1975).
111. See SENATE SELECT COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 130-50 (re the political
enemies project, political misuses of the IRS, FBI and other departments and agencies),
158-206 (re the dirty tricks activities of Donald Segretti who was hired by White House
aide Dwight Chapin, who was periodically advised of his efforts, to disrupt the presidential
primary campaigns of Nixon's opponents. Segretti would travel to sixteen states to recruit
others to pursue such activities as arranging for pickets and hecklers, publishing bogus
literature from opponents, issuing phony press releases, placing false advertisements, and
engaging in pranks involving false orders for food, flowers and beverages).
112. See id.; United States v. Chapin, 515 F.2d 1274 (D.C. Cir. 1975).
113. See SENATE SELECT COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 361-430 (regarding using
the resources of the government to the political advantage of the President, such as
presidential appointees assisting with campaign matters).
114. See id. at 445-562 (regarding illegal corporate contributions and sales of
ambassadorships).
115. United States v. Mitchell, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (This was the Watergate
Special Prosecutors case in which Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman were convicted of
conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjury); SENATE SELECT COMM. REPORT, supra note
20, at 31-95; HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 42-136 (detailing the
Judiciary Committee's conclusions regarding the President's avoidance of information
about the break-in, his false statements about his knowledge, his order to have the CIA
block the FBI's investigation, his early discussions with Ehrlichman about clemency for
those involved, his false statement about a White House investigation of Watergate, his
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

(b) perjury;" 6
(c) misuse of the departments and agencies of the
government; 117 and
(d) providing8 secret grand jury information to grand jury
targets."
Watergate, however, encompassed more than misconduct, for it
also involved discovering, uncovering, correcting and castigating or
punishing the nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance of high
officials. Unfortunately, much more attention has been paid the
wrongs than the processes of righting of those wrongs.
Just as there is no agreement as to what should or should not be
considered Watergate-related activities, so too there is no consensus
on whether or not the efforts of the United States Attorney's Office
for the District of Columbia, the FBI and the Department of Justice
were competent and conscientious in investigating and prosecuting
Watergate following the arrests at the DNC;" 9 there are differing
views regarding the tactics of United States District Court Judge John
J. Sirica, who employed long provisional sentences to force first-time
offenders into cooperating with prosecutors;120 fault has been found
with televising the investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate
Committee;' 2 ' and not surprisingly Richard Nixon (and his apologists)

rewarding Deputy Campaign Director Jeb Magruder's perjury with a government post, his
inaction to the warnings of his counsel regarding a cancer on the presidency, his omissions
in transcripts of presidential recorded conversations, his willingness to pay hush money
when told of the demands, his misuse of executive privilege, his firing of Watergate Special
Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and his refusal to cooperate with the congressional
investigations of Watergate-to mention a few).
116. See United States v. Mitchell, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976); SENATE SELECT
COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 31-95; HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note
20, at 42-136.
117. See United States v. Mitchell, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976); SENATE SELECT
COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 31-95; HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note
20, at 42-136.
118. See HOUSE JUDICIARY COMM. REPORT, supra note 20, at 101-15.
119. See, e.g., KUTLER, supra note 104, at 334-35 (on the ability of the U.S. Attorney's
Office and Department of Justice to do the job); BEN-VENISTE & FRAMPTON, supra note
95, at 24 (regarding anger of original prosecutors at being replaced by a special
prosecutor), 144-50 (regarding the concern of the staff of the Watergate Special
Prosecutor's office at being assimilated into the Department of Justice after the firing of
Archibald Cox); KEN GROMLEY & ARCHIBALD COX: CONSCIENCE OF A NATION 254-61
(1997) (for a detailed discussion of why Cox was concerned about the integrity of the
Department of Justice's investigation).
120. See, e.g., DEAN, supra note 49, at 255-57.
121. See, e.g., SAMUEL DASH, CHIEF COUNSEL: INSIDE THE ERVIN COMMITTEE-
THE UNTOLD STORY OF WATERGATE 140-46 (1976) (Dash tells that Cox tried to shut
down the Senate's televised proceedings fearing they would compromise his criminal
investigations and prosecutions); NIXON, supra note 105, at 984 ("Earl Warren had once
called it 'frontier justice' to haul prospective defendants up before public hearings.").
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?.

have taken issue with the investigations conducted first by Special

Prosecutor Archibald Cox and then his successor Leon Jaworski. 122
Yet when viewed in the context of the enormity of the task of
resolving Watergate, the criticism of the process and procedures
employed remain minor and inconsequential. The efforts that
brought Watergate to its conclusion, the work of the Senate
Watergate Committee, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office,
and the House Judiciary Committee's Impeachment Inquiry, have
become exemplars. What, in fact, occurred is that the system worked.
Time has only reinforced that conclusion in my mind.

V. Concluding Thoughts
As I was gathering thoughts and writing, I realized how easy it is
to pass judgments on others. And I thought about a book I was
reading when doing my Watergate time at a safe house outside of
Washington. I was lucky: I was never sent to prison for my
involvement in Watergate. While I lived in the witness protection
program for almost a year (the Government was concerned about
keeping me alive given the number of death threats), I was only in
custody for 120 days, most of which were spent in the Watergate
Special Prosecutor's office, or testifying at trial. When the verdict
came in convicting Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell, I felt
vindicated because the jury had recognized what I knew to be the
truth. But that feeling did not last very long. I turned back to the
book I was reading, and read the following passage:
At first sight it is curious that our own offences should seem to us
so much less heinous than the offences of others. I suppose the
reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned
them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse
in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and
when we are forced by untoward events to consider them find it
easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they
are part of us and we must accept the good and the bad in ourselves
together. But when we come to judge others it is not by ourselves
as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have
formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that
offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
To take a trivial instance: how scornful we are when we catch
someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he had never told
not one, but a hundred? We are shocked when we discover that
great men were weak and petty, dishonest or selfish, sexually
vicious, vain or intemperate; and many people think it disgraceful
to disclose to the public its heroes' failings. There is not much to

122. See, e.g., NIXON, supra note 105, at 909-12, 929-36, 991-92, 999; VICTOR LASKY, IT
DIDN'T START WITH WATERGATE 336-42 (1977).
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and

littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have
more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one
direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially
they are the same. For my part I do not think I am any better or
any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every
action in my life and every thought that has crossed23 my mind the
world would consider me a monster of depravity.
That is from Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up. And that
sums it up very well, indeed.

123. W. SOMERsET MAUGHAM, THE SUMMING UP 38 (1963).

April 20001 WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?

APPENDIX

A. Watergate As Defined By the Code of Federal Regulations

From the Code of FederalRegulations [36 CFR Ch. XII §1275.16]
(c) Abuses of governmental power popularly identified under the
generalterm "Watergate." The term abuses of governmental power
popularly identified under the generic term "Watergate" (also
referred to as abuses of governmental power), shall mean these
alleged acts whether or not corroborated by judicial, administrative
or legislative proceedings, which allegedly were conducted, directed
or approved by Richard M. Nixon, his staff or persons associated
with him in his constitutional or statutory functions as President, or
as political activities directly relating to or having a direct effect
upon those functions, and which-
(1) Were within the purview of the charters of the Senate Select
Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities or the Watergate
Special Prosecution Force; or
(2) Are circumscribed in the Articles of Impeachment adopted by
the House Committee on the Judiciary and reported to the House
of Representatives for consideration in House Report No. 93-1305.
Note: Below find the relevant portions of the charters of (A) Senate
Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, (B) the
Watergate Special Prosecution Force and (C) the acts
circumscribed in the Articles of Impeachment.

B. Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities

The Final Report, United States Senate, Select Committee on
Presidential Campaign Activities, 93rd Congress, 2d Session, June
1974 (at 1231-39) sets forth the enabling resolution of the committee,
which states:
Section 1. (a) That there is hereby established a select committee of
the Senate, which may be called, for convenience of expression, the
Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, to conduct
an investigation and study of the extent, if any, to which illegal,
improper, or unethical activities were engaged in by any persons,
acting either individually or in combination with others, in the
presidential election of 1972, or in any related campaign or canvass
conducted by or in behalf of any person seeking nomination or
election as the candidate of any political partly for the office of
President of the United States in such election, and to determine
whether in its judgment any occurrences which may be revealed by
the investigation and study indicate the necessity or desirability of
the enactment of new congressional legislation to safeguard the
electoral process by which the President of the United States is
chosen.
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

Section 2. That the select committee is authorized and directed to

do everything necessary or appropriate to make the investigation
and study specified in section 1(a). Without abridging or limiting in
any way the authority conferred upon the select committee by the
preceding sentence, the Senate further expressly authorizes and
directs the select committee to make a complete investigation and
study of the activities of any and all persons or groups of persons or
organizations of any kind which have any tendency to reveal the
full facts in respect to the following matters or questions:
(1) The breaking, entering, and bugging of the headquarters or
offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate
Building in Washington, District of Columbia;
(2) The monitoring by bugging, eavesdropping, wiretapping, or
other surreptitious means of conversations or communications
occurring in whole or in part in the headquarters or offices of the
Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Building in
Washington, District of Columbia;
(3) Whether or not any printed or typed or written document or
paper or other material was surreptitiously removed from the
headquarters or offices of the Democratic National Committee in
the Watergate Building in Washington, District of Columbia, and
thereafter copied or reproduced by photography or any other
means for the information of any person or political committee or
organization;
(4) The preparing, transmitting, or receiving by any person for
himself or any political committee or any organization of any report
or information concerning the activities mentioned in subdivision
(1), (2), or (3) of this section, and the information contained in any
such report;
(5) Whether any persons, acting individually or in combination with
others, planned the activities mentioned in subdivision (1), (2), (3),
or (4) of this section, or employed any of the participants in such
activities to participate in them, or made any payments or promises
of payments of money or other things of value to the participants in
such activities or their families for their activities, or for concealing
the truth in respect to them or any of the persons having any con-
nection with them or their activities, and, if so, the source of the
moneys used in such payments, and the identities and motives of
the persons planning such activities or employing the participants in
them;
(6) Whether any persons participating in any of the activities
mentioned in subdivision (1), (2), (3), (4), or (5) of this section have
been induced by bribery, coercion, threats, or any other means
whatsoever to plead guilty to the charges preferred against them in
the District Court of the District of Columbia or to conceal or fail
to reveal any knowledge of any of the activities mentioned in
subdivision (1), (2), (3), (4), or (5) of this section, and, if so, the
April 20001 WATERGATE: WHAT WAS rT?

identities of the persons inducing them to do such things, and the

identities of any other persons or any committees or organizations
for whom they acted;
(7) Any efforts to disrupt, hinder, impede, or sabotage in any way
any campaign, canvass, or activity conducted by or in behalf of any
person seeking nomination or election as the candidate of any
political party for the office of President of the United States in
1972 by infiltrating any political committee or organization or head-
quarters or offices or home or whereabouts of the person seeking
such nomination or election or of any person aiding him in so
doing, or by bugging or eavesdropping or wiretapping the
conversations, communications, plans, headquarters, offices, home,
or whereabouts of the person seeking such nomination or election
or of any other person assisting him in so doing, or by exercising
surveillance over the person seeking such nomination or election or
of any person assisting him in so doing, or by reporting to any other
person or to any political committee or organization any
information obtained by such infiltration, eavesdropping, bugging,
wiretapping, or surveillance;
(8) Whether any person, acting individually or in combination with
others, or political committee or organization induced any of the
activities mentioned in subdivision (7) of this section or paid any of
the participants in any such activities for their services, and, if so,
the identities of such persons, or committee, or organization, and
the source of the funds used by them to procure or finance such
activities;
(9) Any fabrication, dissemination, or publication of any false
charges or other false information having the purpose of
discrediting any person seeking nomination or election as the
candidate of any political party to the office of President of the
United States in 1972;
(10) The planning of any of the activities mentioned in subdivision
(7), (8), or (9) of this section, the employing of the participants in
such activities, and the source of any moneys or things of value
which may have been given or promised to the participants in such
activities for their services, and the identities of any persons or
committees or organizations which may have been involved in any
way in the planning, procuring, and financing of such activities.
(11) Any transactions or circumstances relating to the source, the
control, the transmission, the transfer, the deposit, the storage, the
concealment, the expenditure, or use in the United States or in any
other country, of any moneys or other things of value collected or
received for actual or pretended use in the presidential election of
1972 or in any related campaign or canvass or activities preceding
or accompanying such election by any person, group of persons,
committee, or organization of any kind acting or professing to act in
behalf of any national political party or in support of or in
opposition to any person seeking nomination or election to the
office of President of the United States in 1972;
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

(12) Compliance or noncompliance with any act of Congress

requiring the reporting of the receipt or disbursement or use of any
moneys or other things of value mentioned in subdivision (11) of
this section;
(13) Whether any of the moneys or things of value mentioned in
subdivision (11) of this section were placed in any secret fund or
place of storage for use in financing any activity which was sought
to be concealed from the public, and, if so, what disbursement or
expenditure was made of such secret fund, and the identities of any
person or group of persons or committee or organization having
any control over such secret fund or the disbursement or
expenditure of the same;
(14) Whether any books, checks, canceled checks, communications,
correspondence, documents, papers, physical evidence, records,
recordings, tapes, or materials relating to any of the matters or
questions the select committee is authorized and directed to
investigate and study have been concealed, suppressed, or
destroyed by any persons acting individually or in combination with
others, and, if so, the identities and motives of any such persons or
groups of persons;
(15) Any other activities, circumstances, materials, or transactions
having a tendency to prove or disprove that persons acting either
individually or in combination with others, engaged in any illegal,
improper, or unethical activities in connection with the presidential
election of 1972 or any campaign, canvass, or activity related to
such election;
(16) Whether any of the existing laws of the United States are
inadequate, either in their provisions or manner of enforcement to
safeguard the integrity or purity of the process by which Presidents
are chosen.

C. Watergate Special Prosecution Force

The Watergate Special Prosecution Force, Report, October 1975
appendix (at 249-50) sets forth the duties and responsibilities of the
Special Prosecutor as follows:
The Special Prosecutor. There is appointed by the Attorney
General, within the Department of Justice, a Special Prosecutor to
whom the Attorney General shall delegate the authorities and
provide the staff and other resources described below.
The Special Prosecutor shall have full authority for investigating
and prosecuting offenses against the United States arising out of
the unauthorized entry into Democratic National Committee
Headquarters at the Watergate, all offenses arising out of the 1972
Presidential Election for which the Special Prosecutor deems it
necessary and appropriate to assume responsibility, allegations
involving the President, members of the White House staff, or
Presidential appointees, and any other matters which he consents to
have assigned to him by the Attorney General.
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?.

In particular, the Special Prosecutor shall have full, authority with

respect to the above matters for:
-conducting proceedings before grand juries and any other
investigations he deems necessary;
-reviewing all documentary evidence available from any source, as
to which he shall have full access;
-determining whether or not to contest the assertion of
"Executive Privilege" or any other testimonial privilege;
-- determining whether or not application should be made to any
Federal court for a grant of immunity to any witness, consistently
with applicable statutory requirements, or for warrants, subpoenas,
or other court orders;
-deciding whether or not to prosecute any individual, firm,
corporation or group of individuals;
-initiating and conducting prosecutions, framing indictments,
filing informations, and handling all aspects of any cases within his
jurisdiction (whether initiated before or after his assumption of
duties), including any appeals;
-coordinating and directing the activities of all Department of
Justice personnel, including United States Attorneys;
-dealing with and appearing before Congressional committees
having jurisdiction over any aspect of the above matters and
determining what documents, information, and assistance shall be
provided to such committees.

D. Articles of Impeachment
The Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of
Representatives, 93rd Congress, 2d Session, Report No. 93-1503, sets
forth the following Articles of Impeachment:
Resolved, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is
impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the
following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the Senate:
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of
Representatives of the United States of America in the name of
itself and of all of the people of the United States of America
against Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of
America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against
him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article I
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States,
Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully
to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the
best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed,

and impeded the administration of justice, in that:
On June 17, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee
for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry
of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in
Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing
political intelligence. Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon,
using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and
through his subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or
plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation
of such unlawful entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those
responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other
unlawful covert activities.
The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan
included one or more of the following:
(1) making or causing to be made false or misleading state-
ments to lawfully authorized investigative officers and
employees of the United States;
(2) withholding relevant and material evidence or information
from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees
of the United States;
(3) approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counseling
witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading
statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and
employees of the United States and false or misleading
testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional
proceedings;
(4) interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of
investigations by the Department of Justice of the United
States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of
Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional
Committees;
(5) approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious
payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of
obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses,
potential witnesses or individuals who participated in such
unlawfully entry and other illegal activities;
(6) endeavoring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an
agency of the United States;
(7) disseminating information received from officers of the De-
partment of Justice of the United States to subjects of
investigations conducted by lawfully authorized investigative
officers and employees of the United States, for the purpose of
aiding and assisting such subjects in their attempts to avoid
criminal liability;
(8) making false or misleading public statements for the pur-
pose of deceiving the people of the United States into
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT?.

believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been

conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the
part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States
and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the
President, and that there was no involvement of such
personnel in such misconduct; or
(9) endeavoring to cause prospective defendants, and indi-
viduals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored treatment
and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony,
or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony. In
all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to
his trust as President and subversive of constitutional
government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and
justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United
States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants
impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article I
Using the powers of the office of President of the United States,
Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully
to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the
best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take
care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in
conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the
due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful
inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the
executive branch and the purposes of these agencies.
This conduct has included one or more of the following:
(1) He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and
agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue
Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens,
confidential information contained in income tax returns for
purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of
the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other
income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a
discriminatory manner.
(2) He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret
Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or
disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or
authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue
electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes
unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any
other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or
permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes
unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any
other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the
 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 51

concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of

Investigation of electronic surveillance.
(3) He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and
agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of
citizens, authorized and permitted to be maintained a secret
investigative unit within the office of the President, financed in
part with money derived from campaign contributions, which
unlawfully utilized the resources of the Central Intelligence
Agency, engaged in covert and unlawful activities, and
attempted to prejudice the constitutional right of an accused to
a fair trial.
(4) He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully
executed by failing to act when he knew or had reason to know
that his close subordinates endeavored to impede and frustrate
lawful inquiries by duly constituted executive, judicial, and
legislative entities concerning the unlawful entry into the
headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and the
cover-up thereof, and concerning other unlawful activities,
including those relating to the confirmation of Richard
Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States the
electronic surveillance of private citizens, the break-in into the
offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, and the campaign financing
practices of the Committee to Re-elect the President.
(5) In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the
executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive
branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Criminal Division, and the Office of Watergate Special
Prosecution Force, of the Department of Justice, and the
Central Intelligence Agency, in violation of his duty to take
care that the laws be faithfully.executed.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to
his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government,
to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the
manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants
impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article III
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States,
Richard M. Nixon, contrary to his oath faithfully to execute the
office of President of the United States and, to the best of his
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that
the laws be faithfully executed, has failed without lawful cause or
excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized
subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House
of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974,
and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. The
April 2000] WATERGATE: WHAT WAS IT? 659

subpoenaed papers and things were deemed necessary by the

Committee in order to resolve by direct evidence fundamental,
factual questions relating to Presidential direction, knowledge, or
approval of actions demonstrated by other evidence to be
substantial grounds for impeachment of the President. In refusing
to produce these papers and things, Richard M. Nixon, substituting
his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the inquiry,
interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful
subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to
himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the
sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the
House of Representatives.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to
his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government,
to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the
manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants
impeachment and trial, and removal from office.
* * *