March 21, 1973: 10:12 A.M.–11:55 A.M.
Dean: “I think that there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got. We have a cancer, within, close to the Presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily, it’s compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. That’ll be clear as I explain, you know, some of the details of why it is. And it basically is because, one, we’re being blackmailed; two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves, to protect other people and the like. . .
“So let me give you the sort of basic facts. . . . First of all, how did it all start, where did it all start? . . . It started with an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn’t set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation over at the Re-Election Committee.”
Nixon: “Hmm.”
Dean: “Not being in this business I turned to someone who had been in this business, Jack Caulfield. . . . I don’t know if you remember Jack or not. He was your original bodyguard.”
Nixon: “Yeah.”
Dean: “An old New York City policeman.”
Nixon: “Right, I know him.”
Dean: “I said, ‘Jack, come up with a plan.’ . . . You know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing. He did . . . and uh, I went to Ehrlichman with it. I went to Mitchell and the consensus was that Caulfield wasn’t the man to do this. In retrospect that might have been a bad call, because he is an incredibly cautious person, and wouldn’t have put the situation to where it is today. . . . After rejecting that they said ‘we still need something’ so I was told to look around for somebody . . . and that’s when I came up with Gordon Liddy.”
Dean: “All right, now we’ve gone through the trial. I don’t know if Mitchell has perjured himself in the grand jury or not. . . . I don’t know how much knowledge he actually had. I know that Magruder has perjured himself in the grand jury. I know that Porter has perjured himself in the grand jury.”
Nixon: “Porter?”
Dean: “He’s one of Magruder’s deputies.”
Dean: “So, Liddy said ‘we’ll ride this thing out.’ . . . Then they started making demands: ‘We’ve got to have attorney’s fees, we don’t have any money ourselves, and if you want us to take this through the election.’ . . . So arrangements were made through Mitchell. . . . These guys had to be taken care of. Their attorney’s fees had to be done. . . . Kalmbach raised some cash.”
Nixon: “They put that under the cover of a Cuban Committee . . .”
Dean: “Yeah, they had a Cuban Committee and some of it was given to Hunt’s lawyer, who in turn passed it out. You know, when Hunt’s wife was flying to Chicago with ten thousand, she was actually, I understand after the fact, now, she was going to pass that to one of the Cubans.”
Nixon: “Why didn’t she? . . . Well, it’s maybe too late to do anything about it, but I would certainly keep that under cover, for what it’s worth.”
Dean: “That’s the most troublesome thing. Because Bob is involved in that, John is involved in that, I’m involved in that, Mitchell is involved. That’s an obstruction of justice.”
Nixon: “The fact that you’re taking care of the witnesses.”
Dean: “That’s right.”
Nixon: “How was Bob involved?”
Dean: “They ran out of money over there. Bob had three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a safe over here that was really set aside for polling purposes. . . . I had to go to Bob and say ‘Bob, . . . they need some money over there.’ And I had to tell him what it was for, because he wasn’t about to send money over there willy nilly. . . . We decided, you know, that there was no price too high to pay to let this thing blow up in front of the election.”
Nixon: “I think you should handle that one pretty fast.”
. . .
Dean: “Hunt called one of the lawyers from the Re-Election Committee to meet with him over the weekend. The guy came to see me, to get a message directly from Hunt to me.”
Nixon: “Is Hunt out on bail?”
Dean: “Hunt is on bail, correct. Hunt now is demanding another seventy thousand dollars for his own personal expenses, another fifty thousand to pay his attorney’s fees, a hundred and twenty some thousand dollars. He wanted it by the close of business yesterday. Because, he says ‘I’m going to be sentenced on Friday, and I need to get my financial affairs in order.’”
. . .
Dean: “So that’s it. That’s the extent of the knowledge. Now, where are the soft spots on this? Well, first of all there’s the problem of the continued blackmail.”
Nixon: “Right.”
Dean: “Which will not only go on, it will go on when these people are still in prison, and it will compound the obstruction of justice situation. It’ll cost money. It’s dangerous. Nobody . . . people around here are not pros at this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, and things like that. . . .We are not criminals and not used to dealing in that business.”
Nixon: “That’s right.”
Dean: “It’s a tough thing to know how to do. . . . It’s a real problem as to whether we could even do it. Plus there’s a real problem in raising money. . . .”
Nixon: “How much money do you need?”
Dean: “I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.”
Nixon: “We could get that. . . . If you need the money, I mean, you could get the money. What I mean is, you could get a million dollars, and you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.”
March 1, 1974
Indictment Handed up to Judge Sirica by Watergate Grand Jury, Count One
From on or about June 17, 1972, up to and including the date of the filing of this indictment, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, John N. Mitchell, Harry R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, Charles W. Colson, Robert C. Mardian, Kenneth W. Parkinson and Gordon Strachan, the defendants, and other persons to the grand jury known and unknown, unlawfully, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with each other, to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, to obstruct justice in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1503, to make false statements to a Government agency in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, to make false declarations in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1623, and to defraud the United States and agencies and departments thereof, to wit, the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) and the Department of Justice, of the Government’s right to have the officials of these departments and agencies transact their official business honestly and impartially, free from corruption, fraud, improper and undue influence, dishonesty, unlawful impairment and obstruction, all in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.