The Nation: The Evidence: Fitting the Pieces Together

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The evidence confirms that Colson did urge Magruder to speak with Hunt and Liddy, who at the time were promoting the Watergate break-in plan. But if the President was aware of Colson's involvement, he seemed anxious to keep others from finding out. A week after Nixon made the Dictabelt, according to evidence revealed in the Judiciary Committee's volumes, Nixon instructed Ehrlichman to inform Richard Kleindienst, then the Attorney General, that "neither Dean nor Haldeman nor Colson nor I nor anybody in the White House had any prior knowledge of this burglary." On March 30, nine days after the President recorded his suspicions of Colson, Ziegler told reporters: "As we have said before, no one in the White House had any involvement or prior knowledge of the Watergate event, and I repeat that statement again today."

Ziegler was asked about that pronouncement by a Watergate grand jury last Feb. 12. His testimony included:

Q. Did the President tell you to make that statement in March?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. So the President didn't tell you what he had learned on March 21st [from John Dean] prior to your making the March 30th statement?

A. No, he didn't.

Cover -Up of the Cover-Up

After the March 21 meeting with Dean, the President and his top aides spent weeks huddled in strategy sessions, looking for ways to limit damaging disclosures about Watergate while trying to give the appearance of exhaustively examining the case. A 15-minute portion of a March 22 meeting of Nixon, Mitchell and Dean was entirely left out of the White House transcripts. The Judiciary Committee transcript of that portion of the meeting depicts the President in a cover-up frame of mind.

PRESIDENT:. . . I was going to say, uh, uh, John Dean is, uh, (unintelligible) got—put the fires out, almost got the damn thing nailed down till past the election and so forth. We all know what it is. Embarrassing God damn thing the way it went, and so forth. But, in my view, uh, some of it will come out; we will survive it. That's the way it is. That's the way you've got to look at it.

Significantly, when John Dean claimed before the Ervin committee that Nixon praised his efforts to contain the Watergate affair, the White House denied that Nixon had done so. The transcript, however, clearly shows the President complimenting Dean on his work. In the March 22 conversation, the President seems still to be looking for a way to "put the fires out" without making a full disclosure:

DEAN: We were within a few miles months ago, but, uh, we're—

PRESIDENT: The point is, get the God damn thing over with.

DEAN: That's right.

PRESIDENT: That's the thing to do. That's the other thing I like about this. I'd like to get—But you really would draw the line on—But, I know, we can't make a complete cave and have the people go up there and testify. You would agree on that?