The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down (36 page)

October: Dean is assigned responsibility for developing a campaign intelligence plan for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP). He soon recruits Liddy for its design and implementation.

December 8: Liddy leaves the WH staff to become CRP general counsel, with added responsibility for the campaign intelligence plan.

1972

January 27: Liddy presents his plan in Attorney General John Mitchell’s office. Dean and Jeb Magruder are also present. The one-million-dollar plan includes proposals for “mugging, bugging, kidnapping, and prostitution.”

February 4: Liddy presents his scaled-down plan in Mitchell’s office, with Dean and Magruder again present. Proposals for mugging,
kidnapping, and prostitution are omitted, but the five-hundred-thousand-dollar plan includes specific targets for bugging.

March 1: Mitchell resigns as Attorney General to become head of CRP.

March: Charles Colson calls Magruder to urge proceeding with Liddy’s intelligence plan. He later claimed that he knew nothing of its specifics.

May 28: The first illegal entry into Democratic National Committee (DNC) offices at the Watergate office building. Photographs are taken and wiretaps are planted on phones of Larry O’Brien and Spencer Oliver.

June 17: The second illegal entry into DNC offices, supposedly to repair the tap on O’Brien’s phone. McCord, CRP’s head of security, and four Cubans are arrested on site. Liddy and Hunt are arrested some weeks thereafter.

June 19: Dean meets with Liddy in the morning and learns that it is his operation that has gone bad. Dean also meets with Mitchell, Magruder, and others in Mitchell’s apartment that evening to begin orchestrating the cover-up.

June 20: The first recorded Nixon-Haldeman conversation following Watergate arrests. Haldeman notes say “Watergate,” but a portion of their conversation is lost (the “eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap”).

June 23: In a meeting with Haldeman, Nixon agrees to Dean’s recommendation that the WH direct the CIA to ask the FBI to limit their investigation. (This conversation would become known as the “smoking gun.”)

July 1: Mitchell resigns as head of CRP, supposedly to tend to his difficult spouse, Martha.

September 15: A grand jury indicts seven men for the Watergate burglary, including Liddy, Hunt, and McCord.

November 7: Nixon is re-elected, beating George McGovern with 61 percent of the popular vote, the second-largest margin in U.S. history.

December: Edward Bennett Williams meets privately with Sirica to handle problems caused by efforts of
Washington Post
reporters to interview Watergate grand jurors.

The reporter Clark Mollenhoff has a series of meetings with Sirica, urging an aggressive role in presiding over the break-in trial. He then writes a column predicting such conduct and praising Sirica for it.

1973

January 30: Liddy and McCord are convicted on all counts in the Watergate burglary trial. Hunt and the Cubans had already pleaded guilty. Sirica, believing that his attempts to uncover the truth have been frustrated, calls for a Senate investigation and produces a list of people to be called before the grand jury.

February 7: The Senate establishes a Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Ervin Committee).

March 17: Sam Dash, majority counsel for the Ervin Committee, meets privately with Sirica and urges maximum sentencing, with the possibility of reduction conditioned on the defendants’ cooperation with the Senate’s investigation.

March 21: 10:00 a.m., Dean’s “cancer on the presidency” meeting with Nixon; 10:00 p.m., LaRue makes the final payment to Hunt’s lawyer.

March 22: Nixon-Mitchell meeting in which Nixon announces his determination to require all staff to appear before the Ervin Committee without a claim of executive privilege (Nixon’s “Stonewall” comments).

March 23: Dean goes to Camp David to prepare a report on the scandal; Sirica releases the McCord letter alleging a cover-up and imposes provisional sentences of up to thirty-five years on the convicted Watergate burglars.

March 28: Dean is recalled from Camp David when he admits he is unable to produce the promised report. He then retains Charles Shaffer as his criminal defense counsel.

April 17: At a news conference, Nixon announces “major new developments” in the Watergate case and states that WH staff members will appear voluntarily before the Ervin Committee, under oath and without claim of executive privilege.

April 22: Dean vacates his WH office over the weekend, boxing up many counsel files for later negotiation with career prosecutors in an attempt to obtain personal immunity.

April 30: Nixon announces the resignations of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. He nominates Elliot Richardson as attorney general and gives him the discretion to appoint a special supervising prosecutor.

May 25: Richardson appoints Archibald Cox as Watergate Special Prosecutor. Cox’s staff soon grows to almost a hundred positions.

June 25: Dean begins testimony before the Ervin Committee, saying Nixon knew of the cover-up as early as September 15, 1972. He essentially accuses Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman of knowing participation in the cover-up.

July 16: Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the White House taping system.

October 19: Dean pleads guilty to a single felony count, with sentencing postponed indefinitely.

October 20: Special Prosecutor Cox is fired in what becomes known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

November 5: Leon Jaworski is sworn in as special prosecutor.

November 21: WH discloses the existence of the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap.

December 14: Jaworski and three members of his staff meet privately with Judges Sirica and Gesell.

Late December: WSPF prosecutors establish that the final payment to Hunt’s lawyer was made on the evening of March 21, 1973.

1974

January 21: WSPF memorandum urges a private meeting with Sirica to alert him to the intended grand jury report, to be sent to the House Judiciary Committee.

February 11: Sirica meets privately with Jaworski to urge quick action on the Watergate cover-up indictments. Jaworski uses the occasion to discuss their intended grand jury report.

March 1: The grand jury indicts seven people for the Watergate cover-up (Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mardian, Strachan, and Parkinson) and names eighteen unindicted co-conspirators (including Nixon). Separately, the grand jury asks Sirica to forward its report (known as the “Road Map”) to the House Judiciary Committee. Later that day, Sirica assigns himself as trial judge for the cover-up case.

March 19: Judge Sirica turns seventy and is required to step down as chief judge of the federal district court, thereby losing his ability to assign cases to specific judges (including himself).

April 28: Mitchell and Stans are acquitted on all charges in the Vesco trial in New York City.

May 9: The House Judiciary Committee opens its impeachment hearings.

June 7: The D.C. Circuit denies a writ of mandamus to remove Sirica as judge in the cover-up trial in a one-line, unsigned order, without opportunity for a hearing.

July 24: The Supreme Court rules eight to zero that sixty-four subpoenaed tapes must be turned over to Judge Sirica for review. Eight hours later, the WH announces its intent to comply.

July 27–29: The House Judiciary Committee approves three resolutions recommending that the full House impeach President Nixon.

August 2: Sirica sentences Dean to a prison term of one to four years for his role in the cover-up. Dean’s sentence is to begin on September 3, the scheduled date for the first day of the cover-up trial.

August 5: The WH releases transcripts of the remaining tapes, including three Nixon-Haldeman conversations of June 23, 1972 (the “smoking gun”).

August 8: In an evening speech to the nation, Nixon announces that he will resign the following day.

August 9: Nixon’s resignation becomes effective at noon. Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as president.

September 8: Ford grants a full, unconditional pardon to Nixon.

October 1: The cover-up trial begins, having been postponed for one month at the urging of the D.C. Circuit.

1975

January 1: The cover-up trial concludes with guilty verdicts on all counts for Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman.

January 8: On his own motion, Sirica reduces the sentences of Dean and Magruder to time served, freeing them after only several months of confinement.

February 21: Sirica sentences Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman to terms of two and a half to eight years. Each will serve approximately eighteen months in prison.

1976

October 12: The D.C. Circuit upholds the cover-up convictions of Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman.

APPENDIX B

Woodward notes from Jaworski interview of December 5, 1974

Discussed at p. 91 in text