Nixon's Secret (63 page)

34
.   Howard Chua-Eoan, “The Watergate Dirty Trickster Who Found God”
Time
, April 21, 2012.

35
.   James Rosen,
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
(Kindle Locations 461-4694).

36
.   Ibid.

37
.   Lamar Waldron,
Watergate: The Hidden History
, p. 863.

38
.   Ibid., p. 864.

39
.   Ibid., p. 867.

40
.   Richard Helms,
A Look Over My Shoulder
, p. 30.

41.   Interview with Charles Colson.

42
.   James Rosen,
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
, p. 156.

43
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 29.

44
.   Eugenio Martinez, “Mission Impossible,”
http://watergate.info/burglary/eugenio-martinez-account-of-watergate-burglary
.

45
.   H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, p. 159.

46
.   Lamar Waldron,
Watergate: The Hidden History
, pp. 1030–1031.

47
.   Lamar Waldron,
Watergate: The Hidden History
, pp. 1032–1033.

48
.   “Hughes Nixon and the C.I.A.,” Playboy magazine, September 1976.

49
.   H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, p. 133.

50
.   H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, pp. 145–146.

51
.   Ibid., p. 145.

52
.   With two top aides to Richard Nixon, Leonard Garment and later Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan playing with the Woody Herman Orchestra, the number of jazz musician tangentially involved in Watergate is interesting.

53
.   Miles Copeland, “The Unmentionable Uses of a CIA,”
National Review
, Sept. 14, 1972.

54
.   Richard Helms,
A Look Over My Shoulder
, p. 27.

55
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 9.

56
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 11.

57
.   Ibid., p. 22.

58
.   Eugenio Martinez, “Mission Impossible,”
http://watergate.info/burglary/eugenio-martinez-account-of-watergate-burglary
.

59
.   Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, pp. 153–154.

60
.   Ibid., p. 153.

61
.   Eugenio Martinez, “Mission Impossible,”
http://watergate.info/burglary/eugenio-martinez-account-of-watergate-burglary
.

62
.   Eugenio Martinez, “Mission Impossible,”
http://watergate.info/burglary/eugenio-martinez-account-of-watergate-burglary
.

63
.   Ibid.

64
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 150.

65
.   Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin,
Silent Coup
, p. 140.

66
.   Ibid., p. 138.

67
.   Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin,
Silent Coup
, p. 156.

68
.   Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober,
The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era
, p. 347.

69
.   Investigative Reports, “The Key to Watergate,” A&E, Sept. 18, 1992.

70
.   Jim Hougan, “Hougan, Liddy, the Post and Watergate,”
www.jimhougan.com
.

71
.   Anthony Summers,
The Arrogance of Power
, p. 417.

72
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, pp. 162-163.

73
.   G. Gordon Liddy,
Will
, p. 322.

74
.   J. Anthony Lukas,
Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years
, pp. 201–202.

75
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 156.

76
.   Ibid., pp. 156–157.

77
.   G. Gordon Liddy,
Will
, pp. 236-237.

78
.   Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, p. 181.

79
.   G. Gordon Liddy, Will, p. 232.

80
.   Jim Hougan, “The McCord File,”
Harper’s
. Jan. 1980.

81
.   Ibid.

82
.   Russ Kick, Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies, p. 20.

83
.   Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, pp. 117–118.

84
.   Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 419.

85
.   Jim Hougan, “The McCord File,”
Harper’s
, Jan. 1980

86
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 183.

87
.   Ibid., p. 192.

88
.   Ibid., p. 310.

89
.   Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin,
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography
, p 253.

90
.   Ibid.

91
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 306.

92
.   Ibid., p. 311.

93
.   Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin,
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography
, p. 253.

94
.   J. Anthony Lukas,
Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years
, p. 206

95
.   Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, p. 198.

96
.   Investigative Reports, “The Key to Watergate,” A&E, Sept. 18, 1992

97
.   Ibid.

98
.   Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
, p. 626.

99
.   H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, p. 128.

100
.   H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
, p. 146.

101
.   Conversation between Richard Nixon and H. R. Haldeman, June 23, 1972.

102
.   Russ Baker,
Family of Secrets
, p. 176.

103
.   Ibid., p. 178.

104
.   Ibid.

105
.   
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no4/html/v44i4a07p_0013.htm
.

106
.   Jefferson Morley, “Watergate’s Final Mystery,”
Salon,
May 5, 2012.

107
.   Summary of Highlights of CIA Activity in Watergate Incident, Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.

108
.   Ibid.

109
.   Ibid.

110
.   Ibid.

111
.   Letter from William Colby to Howard Baker, June 28, 1974.

112
.   Jim Hougan,
Secret Agenda
, p. 183.

113
.   Fred Emery,
Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon
, p. 235.

114
.   E-mail from Scott Kaiser.

115
.   Hunt v. Liberty Lobby,
http://www.leagle.com/decision/19831351720F2d631_11255.xml/HUNT%20v.%20LIBERTY%20LOBBY
.

116
.   Richard Whalen,
Catch the Falling Flag
, p. 255.

117
.   Barry Werth,
31 Days
, p. 242.

118
.   Richard Whalen,
Catch the Falling Flag
, p. 225.

119
.   “Watergate Retrospective: The Decline and Fall,”
Time
, Aug. 19, 1974.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

GEMSTONE

“The more I got into this, the more I see how these sons of bitches have not only done Nixon in but they’ve done me in.”

—John Mitchell
1

J
ohn Dean was well aware that President Nixon and the men around him had a thirst for intelligence. He used this White House fixation to propel himself into the president’s inner circle. Although he has labored mightily to bury the public record, John Dean wanted the franchise on political intelligence and keenly understood the dynamics and tensions between the Haldeman-Ehrlichman axis and Attorney General John Mitchell. He adroitly exploited this tension to push successive campaign intelligence proposals and enlisted Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder, and Chuch Colson to help him move the ball.

In his retelling of the facts in both his Senate testimony and his book
Blind Ambition
, Dean labors mightily to distance himself from these plans and their fumbled execution. Interestingly, in a book proposal, but not in his book
Blind Ambition,
Dean detailed his plan. Dean wrote in a draft for his book
Blind Ambition
, “I reflected on how I might take advantage of Haldeman’s preoccupation. I was still building my law firm seeking new business and I knew the campaign would be a stepping-stone to those who distinguished themselves. But as I looked ahead, I saw the Counsels’ own office performing rather menial campaign tasks. [They did] legal chores hardly important enough to be admitted to the inner circle. If the Counsels’ office could play the same role at the Republican Convention we played on May Day, special White House tie lines, half hourly reports, I knew we’d be in the thicket . . . We had a jump on other White Houses offices in demonstration intelligence. Why not expand our role to all intelligence? That would be of interest to the President and the campaign.”
2

Dean made a play to be intelligence czar and had great assets for such an undertaking in detectives Jack Caulfield and Tony Ulasewicz. Post-Watergate, Dean disavowed knowledge of Caulfield’s intelligence work in the White House, much of which was performed for Dean. Dean would say he had never met Ulasewicz. This is false. Although Ulasewicz took his orders directly from Caulfield, Dean and Ulasewicz had several distasteful encounters. “Every crease in his suit was perfectly ironed, every hair on his head in place, and he had a smooth, almost hairless face,” Ulasewicz later wrote. “Everything about him appeared too delicate and too neat for me. I took an instant dislike to him and dismissed him as a smooth operator.”
3

In
Blind Ambition,
Dean wrote that Caulfield had been assigned to him by Bob Haldeman, and “I don’t know why.” This is also false. As Caulfield lays out in detail in his own memoir he, and later Tony Ulasewicz, were first recruited to work for the White House Counsel’s office for John Ehrlichman, and Dean inherited both when he took the post. Both Ehrilchman and Dean used the detectives for many investigations. Amazingly, Dean later claimed he didn’t know what Caulfield actually did.

“I saw a desire [by Dean] to take greater chances as [Dean] saw the potential rewards,” said White House detective Jack Caulfield. “And the key to the ball game was intelligence—who was going to get it and who was going to provide it. Dean saw that and played the game heartily . . . I was getting my instructions from Dean . . .”
4

Dean was not satisfied with having the two veteran gumshoes working for him on a limited assignment basis. He knew only something bigger would be his ticket to real power in the Nixon entourage. This required a more sophisticated, better-funded design, and Dean asked Caulfield to develop an intelligence plan. Caulfield, hardboiled and a cop’s cop, was a cautious investigator who knew legal limits. Gregarious, hard drinking, and honest, Caulfield knew the dangers of breaking the law for a political campaign set to face to voters. In his very readable biography
Shield #911-NYPD,
the decorated cop, Caulfield, who had worked on intelligence operations for the New York City Police Department, made the case that his proposal was aggressive, but
legal.

Over lunch, Caulfield told Magruder and Dean his idea to set up a private security firm to carry out the secret affairs. Through the firm, Caulfield believed, he could carry out assignments for CRP, the Republican National Committee, as well as corporate clients. The plan would not only provide valuable intelligence, but if uncovered it also provided separation from the White House. Named Operation Sandwedge, the plan was drafted by Caulfield and handed over to Dean for consideration. Budgeted at a half million dollars, Sandwedge was an “offensive intelligence-defensive security” operation that resembled an early version of the Watergate break-ins and proposed to:

Supervise penetration of the Democratic presidential nominee’s entourage and headquarters with undercover personnel;

Conduct surveillance of Democratic primaries, convention, and meetings;

Develop a derogatory information investigative capability worldwide; and

Meet “any other offensive requirement deemed advisable.”
5

Sandwedge’s implementation was contingent on the approval of Attorney General John Mitchell. When Dean presented the idea, the sensible Mitchell did not commit to any “hard decisions.”
6
Dean subsequently told Caulfield he didn’t think the proposal was “going anywhere.”
7
A disappointed Caulfield abandoned the project and, eventually, the Nixon White House for a position at the US Department of Treasury.

Later, Caulfield believed that if Sandwedge had been approved, the errors of Watergate could have been avoided. To him, it was aggressive but legal in its proposed methods for intelligence collection. There is reason to believe John Dean felt similarly: he later said to Nixon “. . . uh, in retrospect—that might have been a bad call-’cause he (Caulfield) is an incredibly cautious person and—and, would not have put the situation to where it is today.”
8

Caulfield said, “I go a lot further and say that error was, in fact, the most monumental of the Nixon Presidency in that it rapidly created the catastrophic path leading directly to the Watergate complex—and the President’s eventual resignation.”
9

On the contrary, in a taped interview with Watergate historian Len Colodny, Dean said, “I was never in the loop on any of that and, and Caulfield, ya know, was assigned to my staff, much to my mystery as to what the hell he was gonna do and why he was there, I mean, I scratched my head for a long time before I, and, it just kind of came out in dribs and drabs as to what he was doin’.”
10