The Nation: The Evidence: Fitting the Pieces Together

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> The President stated in August 1973 that he ordered Ehrlichman to investigate the Watergate case after he learned that Dean was unable or unwilling to carry out his inquiry. Ehrlichman testified before the Senate Watergate committee that the orders came at a noon meeting on March 30. But a White House transcript for that meeting shows that, in the words of the committee report, "the only subject discussed was a statement to be issued by Ziegler at a press briefing." The President, Ehrlichman and Ziegler did discuss the possibility of going up before the grand jury but only as a public relations device.

> One of the President's handwritten notes shows that he fretted over the $350,000 shelled out by Frederick LaRue, a former re-election committee aide, to the Watergate conspirators. "What will LaRue say he got the 350 for?" wrote the President on April 15, 1973—the day when Nixon was told by Prosecutor Henry Petersen that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were guilty of cover-up activities. The exact meaning of Nixon's note is unclear. But apparently he was not thinking that telling the simple truth would be the best course for LaRue.

Previously undisclosed evidence reveals a seamy, desperate attempt to pin the blame for the break-in on a couple of vulnerable faithful servants of the President. The White House tried to use Mitchell and Magruder to protect the President and his top aides. The method: secretly tape separate conversations with Mitchell and Magruder and then turn their words against them.

On April 13,1973, while Magruder was cooperating with the prosecutors, he was called by Lawrence Higby, an aide to Haldeman. According to a transcript of the tape, Higby charged Magruder with leaking information to two reporters. Magruder retorted that that was "just ridiculous," but he went on to implicate both himself and Mitchell: "I've committed perjury so many times now that I'm, uh, you know, I'm, uh, I've got probably a hundred years on perjury alone." Then he talked about his decision to "make a clean breast of things." He added: "Of course, he [Mitchell] will be upset with me because I obviously will implicate John Mitchell." Finally Higby extracted from Magruder exactly whom his testimony would implicate: Dean, Strachan and Mitchell—but not Haldeman and not the President.

This was just what Higby and Haldeman wanted. The next evening, Ehrlichman told the President: "He [Higby] tape recorded this thing. Higby handled it so well that Magruder has closed all his doors now with this tape."

PRESIDENT: What good will that do, John?

EHRLICHMAN: Sir, it beats the socks off him if he ever gets off the reservation.

"Can you use the tape?" the President wanted to know. After some discussion, Haldeman said that, according to Washington, D.C., law, they could.