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Tiger Research 66

The Congress, other national leaders, the military, our educational institutions, public policy groups, foundations, and those in the media must make a much more serious evaluation of this issue than we have done thus far. There must, for example, be still more critical judgments on where the reporter's adversarial position ends and where his responsibility to society as a whole begins. If this is not more clearly defined, then all of society must make it more legally clear. The federal government in general and the military in particular must protect their integrity. The responsibility of the media is one of the most crucial unanswered questions of Vietnam. There must be greater self-discipline and professional ethics than many reporters and editors exhibited during Tet. The outcome of the next war may depend on it. The media cannot shrug off this challenge. Our political leaders, the military, and others have taken their lumps over Vietnam. The media are not exempt from the same accountability. They cannot hide behind the First Amendment, as some try to do, amid the present scrutiny and criticism of their performance by millions of Americans.

I believe the military and the media must now calmly work out a statement of principles and conditions on news coverage during wartime or international conflict. This statement would commit the media to the safety and security needs of the military, while our commanders would guarantee independent reporting of their operations on a timely basis. Mission security and troop safety must be protected in time of conflict in ways which must be more clearly defined. This may include limiting the number of reporters accompanying troops on certain missions, voluntary reporting restraints, and censorship of or delays in the disclosure of information that might assist the enemy. Under our system of government, the media should not be excluded, as they were during the invasion of Grenada. The government cannot become the extended, total source of military reporting. If secrecy is critical to a major operation, a small pool of reporters should accompany U.S. troops—at their own risk. No operation can be compromised to save them if they are not in condition to keep up with a military assault.

Discussions along these lines have taken place among military and media representatives. They should be firmed up and become a formal, written agreement. I believe that if this is not done, we will see more court cases like those of Westmoreland against "CBS News" and Israeli General Ariel Sharon against _Time_ magazine. In my opinion, everybody lost in those cases, especially the media. CBS was unwilling to concede what it daily demands of others—to tell the truth and admit a mistake. CBS's ethics in claiming Westmoreland suppressed critical intelligence on the enemy were questionable to say the least. There is no question about _Time_ 's ethical concern, but it stonewalled the truth about Sharon's alleged role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. If the military and media do not have the foresight to agree on news coverage, it's likely the Congress and courts will do so. Such a confrontation will not be uplifting. On a more basic level, more reporters and editors might voluntarily take a few fundamental courses in law, particularly the rights of individual citizens.

I don't think many Americans have fought more public battles with the media than myself. Yet I'll defend their freedom to my death. But I warn them. If they do not become more responsible and accountable, they are headed for a battle with society—and they may lose the rights to some of their present practices. In the same sense of fairness and accountability, McNamara was offered the opportunity to answer questions and make whatever statements of reasonable length he wished to in this book in defense of his work at the Pentagon and World Bank. He declined to do so. At a White House ceremony on February 28, 1968, his next-to-last day in office, McNamara received a citation from President Johnson. In response to the award for his seven years of service as Defense Secretary, McNamara said, "I had better respond on another occasion." His self-imposed silence on Vietnam fails the test of accountability for every public servant in a democracy. On leaving the Pentagon, McNamara became president of the World Bank in Washington, where he remained for ten years. When he retired, total lending by the bank skyrocketed from $954 million to $12.3 billion—an almost thirteen-fold jump. Many of these loans came from the bank's soft loan affiliate, the International Development Association. McNamara's easy loan policies are a major reason why a trillion-dollar international debt now clouds the Third World and the future of poor countries. The vast debt also threatens the financial solvency of many Western banks.

Harold Graves, the public information director of the bank for twenty-four years, agrees that McNamara was responsible for many bad loans and shares the blame for much of today's Third World debt. Frank O'Brien, the former chief public information officer of the International Finance Corporation under McNamara, says, "It seemed as though he was giving money away, as if trying to make up for something on his conscience." McNamara is now trying to jump the traces of his past. He talks about the "fantastic proliferation" of nuclear weapons. Yet this is the same man who once boasted that we surpassed the Russians in nuclear weapons buildup. It was McNamara who convinced our questioning allies in Western Europe to accept NATO's strategy of nuclear flexibility. This says that the West is willing to engage in "deliberate escalation"—the first use of nuclear weapons—if Western Europe is in danger of being overrun by overwhelming enemy forces. He now contradicts and attacks his own policies as Defense Secretary.

McNamara is accountable for his tenure at the Pentagon and World Bank. Yet he refuses to defend or answer questions of the past but says we should listen to him about the future because he is an expert. That is an intellectually impossible posture. As public figures, we are accountable to society for our records, and, if necessary, we must take it on the chin and get up. I did. And so have many others. I am genuinely sorry for McNamara. He still does not understand that accountability is part of public service. Westmoreland never walked away from accounting for his responsibilities. The general gave dedicated, honorable service to his country. He bore much of the blame and burden for Vietnam, not all of which were his. I believe that history will vindicate Westmoreland as an outstanding officer. In 1969, at the age of sixty, I returned to the U.S. Senate for a third term after defeating Roy Elson, a longtime aide to Senator Hayden, by a wide margin. Richard Nixon became our thirty-seventh President. A few days before he left office, Lyndon Johnson invited me to the White House for a private drink. He said he should have taken my earlier advice and fired McNamara. He wasn't bitter but confused about Vietnam. Johnson still didn't understand why we had failed to win the war.

9 Nixon and Watergate If the War in Vietnam taught the American people and their political leaders anything, it is that truth is their strongest weapon. The Watergate scandal taught the same simple but supreme lesson. Without truth there cannot be freedom or justice, wisdom or tolerance, courage or compassion. Truth is the foundation of a stable society. Its absence was the crux of Richard Nixon's failure. Unfortunately, despite the positive contributions the former President made to his country, his lies will probably be remembered longer than his legitimate labors. He was the most dishonest individual I ever met in my life. President Nixon lied to his wife, his family, his friends, longtime colleagues in the U.S. Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people, and the world. The lies persisted for more than two years, from at least June 23, 1972, when he personally under-took an active role in covering up the Watergate burglary, to his resignation on August 8, 1974. No lie is intelligent, but his were colossal stupidity because they involved the presidency of the United States.

The Watergate break-in was little different from some of the illegal dirty tricks practiced by the two previous Democratic presidents, Kennedy and Johnson. Each used the excuse of national security to place hidden and, in my opinion, illegal wiretaps on reporters, authors, CIA officials, lawyers, congressional employees, and others, including Dr. Martin Luther King. Nixon's masquerade was, however, a long and tortuous trail of deceit that plundered the generosity and goodwill of millions of Americans who wished desperately to believe that their President was not a liar. It was the manipulation and misuse of this vast American storehouse of bigheartedness that history will condemn. Nothing in my public life has so baffled me as Nixon's failure to face Watergate from the time of the burglary and tell the entire truth. I first met Nixon in 1953. He was the Vice President, and I was the new and very junior senator from Arizona. Nixon had a very fine wife and family. He was hard-working, a dedicated Republican. He had the reputation of being a loner—not normally something said about a politician—but was well known for some outstanding investigative work as a member of the House. He had doggedly pursued Alger Hiss, a former State Department official who was eventually convicted of perjury.

I didn't see much of Nixon until 1954, when I became chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. He would then occasionally invite me to his office to discuss politics, particularly the direction of the party. Nixon seemed outwardly friendly but inwardly remote. I didn't pay too much attention to this aloofness because I've always felt it takes time to get to know anyone. One morning on Capitol Hill, while discussing the 1960 Republican National Convention, Nixon promised me that he would personally advocate a right-to-work plank in the party platform. I made a note of what he said and put it in my file. Then, without my knowledge, Nixon abandoned his right-to-work promise at a secret New York meeting with Nelson Rockefeller. This was in return for the governor's support for his presidential nomination. He not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act. I was shocked that Nixon would betray his word without explanation. My shock was mixed—anger that I had not allowed for the pressure of a political deal and resentment that Nixon would act so brazenly. I wrote in my file, "The man is a two-fisted, four-square liar."

Another tip-off on Nixon's character came in January 1969, when I returned to the Senate after a four-year absence. The Nixon-Agnew ticket had captured the White House in 1968 by a narrow margin. As is customary, there were various galas around Washington. Governor Reagan of California was host at a ball in the Sheraton Hotel. When Nixon and his party arrived, they were ushered to the stage, where the President was introduced to the crowd by TV host Art Linkletter—not by Reagan, who was the host. I thought it strange but concluded that some signals had been crossed. Nixon certainly knew that Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were the hosts, but after his remarks he walked directly past their box without shaking hands or saying hello. I was then certain there had been no mix-up. It was deliberate. Why? Was it because Reagan had been elected governor of California just four years after Nixon had failed? Because Reagan was widely seen as doing a good job and was already being hailed as presidential timber? Or was Nixon already being isolated by his two closest aides, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman? If a wall were being built around him, why would he permit it? I wrote in my file, "Mistakes like that do not just happen."

On February 15, 1969, about six weeks after Nixon entered the Oval Office, I added to my private file, "I've tried for three days to get an appointment with President Nixon. I'm beginning to be afraid that a wall has been built around him. Nixon has told me on quite a few occasions that, if I wanted anything from him, all I had to do was ask." On April 24, 1969, I had a pleasant lunch with Admiral Lewis Strauss, former head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Our chat got around to the President. Strauss told me that in June 1968 Nixon had asked him two favors—to visit former President Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm and to talk with some of his old acquaintances at the AEC. The purpose of the Eisenhower trip was to have Ike endorse Nixon for the presidency as soon as possible, in case he died before doing so! Strauss, a good friend of the general, obtained Ike's endorsement for Nixon. Nixon asked the retired admiral to determine if there had been any problems at the AEC under President Johnson that might be blamed on him if he were elected and did nothing about them. Strauss did investigate and told Nixon aides that the AEC could not account for certain fissionable materials. Some shortages were as high as a half ton. Officials didn't know where the material was. Nixon never thanked or communicated with Strauss after the admiral accomplished the missions.

Two weeks after Nixon became President, and for the next four years, I was constantly admonishing him to clean out the high-level Democratic political appointees from the Kennedy-Johnson era. All I ever got was promises. On March 24, 1970, I wrote myself this private note: "All bureaus of government are still filled with holdovers from the Johnson-Kennedy administration. They are making the President's task an extremely difficult one. "It was just a year ago this time that the President suggested we should visit at least twice a month, perhaps more often if needed. It has been since August of last year that I have even seen the President, let alone talked with him. He has drifted more and more away from availability. Whether he realizes it or not, a very effective shell has been constructed around him." On December 18, 1971, I met with Vice President Agnew in his office. We talked and had lunch in the White House Executive Mess. He said something which amazed me: "I don't know the President any better today than I did when he first asked me to be his running mate. The President never telephones me. I receive messages through third parties."

Agnew believed Ehrlichman was blocking him from seeing Nixon, and he told me he would not run again if Ehrlichman remained in the White House. Many notes on the President's isolation dotted my private files. Nevertheless, if a shell were being built around Nixon, it could not be done without his knowledge and approval. This was dangerous—for the President personally, for the Congress, for the American people. A President must feel the pulse of politics and people. I spoke privately with former President Eisenhower about him. Ike was cautious but finally said, "There was not a single thing he accomplished in our administration." That rocked me. I began to study Richard Nixon more closely. Nixon had his hands full with Vietnam. But he drastically reduced the number of American troops there and was well on the way to pulling out of the war. Henry Kissinger, the President's national security chief, was having secret meetings with the North Vietnamese in a bid to formally end the conflict. Antiwar protestors had become nightly celebrities on television news. Draft dodgers were dating the comely girls of Stockholm and enjoying excellent Italian pizza in Toronto.

On May 2, 1971, some of the professional peaceniks involved in the massive march on Washington shoved and shouted their way into the reception room of my office. They swore and slapped red paint on the walls before police towed them off to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, where they smoked pot, drank cheap wine, and wondered, as the songs of the times asked, where Joe DiMaggio and all the flowers had gone. Nixon was delaying or ignoring many domestic policy decisions, except for temporarily imposing wage and price controls, something he had insisted he would never do. All the time, virtually alone, he was secretly undertaking new thrusts in U.S. foreign policy, namely pressing detente with the Soviet Union and China. In July 1971 Nixon announced he was going to Beijing. Nothing Nixon did surprised me anymore. He had contradicted himself so often that I was beginning to expect it. Kissinger had contacted me before the announcement of the China trip. He and Nixon wanted to avoid my criticizing the move since I had always been concerned about our relationship with Taiwan, a loyal friend. The visit was set. There was nothing I could say that would stop it. Kissinger claimed there would be no adverse effect on the Taipei government. I told him that if there were, we conservatives would abandon Nixon. I adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

The official Shanghai communiqué of Nixon's meeting with Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung and his foreign minister, Chou En-lai, caused me genuine anxiety about our friends on Taiwan. The mainland Communists had declared that the islands were part of the People's Republic, the sole legal government of China. The statement had added that the liberation of Taiwan was China's internal affair. Nixon and Kissinger publicly denied that their administration was abandoning Taiwan. I attended a White House briefing by Nixon, Kissinger, and Secretary of State William Rogers after their return. It was a long and detailed explanation which stressed that the normalization of relations between the two countries was good and that no one should seek to dominate Asia. I returned to my office very downhearted. I had always been loyal to my friends. Taiwan had always been a good friend of the United States. Its leaders were now forced to question our loyalty. Yet the President and his advisers had made some good points. The ultimate impact of the trip was still not clear in my mind. So I wrote down each point. At the end I had still not made up my mind about its true significance, since no one could be certain that no secret understandings had been made by Nixon. He had betrayed good friends in the past. Finally, tormented by my own reluctance to come to a conclusion about the communiqué, I wrote in my private file, "If I cannot believe my President, then I have lost all my faith in men, friends, and in my country's leadership."

I sent word to the White House that I had misgivings about the Shanghai communiqué, especially its effect on our future relations with Taiwan. Our office received a message that I would receive an answer. I never did. This later came to be known as the Haldeman-Ehrlichman sense of humor. I wasn't planning to attend the 1972 GOP National Convention in Miami. My wife and I wanted to be together at our summer place in Newport Beach, California. I facetiously wrote to Bob Dole, chairman of the Republican National Committee, that it would take a White House invitation to get me there. A week before the convention I got a call from the organizers, saying the White House wanted me to give a convention speech. They asked me to pay tribute to those who had passed away since the last conclave. The organizers furnished me with a list of forty people, mostly Democrats. The theme seemed inappropriate. I decided to give a different speech. The organizers, acting for the White House, kept demanding an advance copy of the remarks. I stalled them. The White House repeatedly changed the time of my address. Also, it had not been listed in any of the publicity or printed programs. This seemed odd until I realized that some of the White House types might be putting me on. Finally, Bill Timmons, a presidential aide, called and said my address was being put back from Monday evening to Tuesday. I was tired of the runaround and said I would deliver the talk Monday or not at all. I had learned that the President would be arriving in Miami on Tuesday evening, about the time they wanted me to speak. The convention would be preempted, of course, and the television networks would switch to the President's arrival.

That would be the White House answer—some joke on Goldwater, the guy who wouldn't buy the Shanghai communiqué. It was a put-down typical of the Haldeman-Ehrlichman operation. A few hours before I was to deliver my speech, White House aide Fred LaRue came to me as I was being made up for television, never an uplifting experience in any case. He asked that I make two major changes—no criticism of draft dodgers or of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a left-wing Democrat. We had this discussion in a bathroom where a TV man was messing with my hair. Finally I turned to LaRue and said, "If you want me to make these changes, I'm leaving right now." He gulped and left. When I gave the speech on Monday, the Clark and draft-dodger remarks were greeted with more applause than any other part. Later I wrote in my file, "I have a little bit of honor left." The episode caused me to reflect even more about the President and his White House crew. I had heard rumors about some crazy things happening over there, especially vendettas with cabinet members and others who wouldn't jump through their hoops, but I wanted to wait and view the situation more closely.

In 1972 Nixon won a landslide victory over Senator George McGovern. He was ecstatic about it for two reasons: First, he had been his own campaign manager, as in 1960 and 1968, confirming in his mind his own political astuteness. Second, this was not a narrow win, as in 1968, but an overwhelming mandate to govern. About three weeks after the election, Nixon invited me to Camp David for a chat about the future. I told him he had his mandate to lead—47 million votes to McGovern's 29 million. He had received 520 votes in the electoral college to only seventeen for McGovern. Now, I insisted, he had to take full control of the federal government and boot out every single Democratic holdover. Nixon insisted he would finally tackle the federal government—rid it of Democratic appointees in various posts and slash its size and cost. I suggested he transfer Democrats in civil service posts who were actively opposing his policies. Nixon talked of dropping Bill Rogers as Secretary of State but didn't mention Kissinger as a possible replacement. I discussed waste in the Pentagon—overlapping and duplication in our different air tactical commands, as well as lack of competition in procurement. Finally the President said he would force Vietnam into substantive peace talks. On leaving, I mentioned that I'd probably not run for reelection in 1974. It was about time to do something else. We talked about the possibility of my becoming ambassador to Mexico. Watergate, which had been gaining momentum, was never mentioned. I viewed the publicity about the burglary as a distraction from our real goals. The whole thing had to have been carried out by some crazy crew of political neophytes who had been swept up in the excitement of the campaign.

My talk with the President was quite positive. I was delighted that he was finally going to get a grip on the biggest problem in Washington—the enormous appetite of the federal bureaucracy for more power and money, particularly at the expense of state and local governments. This was at the top of the conservative agenda. Despite my thoughts of leaving Washington, I looked forward to 1973 with as much excitement as my first year in the Senate two decades before. It was going to be a truly great Republican triumph as we got Washington off the backs and out of the pockets of the average American. I found it difficult not to smile on the Senate floor as the Democrats immediately began singing their favorite political hymn, "More." I was whistling "Less." The War in Vietnam ended in January 1973. We never really fought the good fight, so it was just as well. The year would close with Agnew's resignation on October 23 and a national storm over Watergate. It became obvious, as the months passed, that Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate. Discouraged that he had done little to fulfill his promises, I wrote him a letter on June 20, 1973. It read in part:

"I'm writing this letter on my little portable typewriter because I don't want anyone but you to read what I have to tell you. I am doing this, in my opinion, in the best interests of yourself, the office of the presidency and most importantly, the country and, to quite an extent, the Republican Party. "... what I am saying to you comes right from the heart.... You may be angry with me for saying these things, but I have never been one to hold back when I think words are needed, and I think they are needed at this particular point. "... you have not started to get acquainted with the Congress. Having a few leadership meetings, a few for state dinners is not getting down to the little fellow who has to go out in his district or state to keep the Republican Party going.... Some said in the press this morning that they had seen more of Brezhnev than they had seen of their own President. Frankly, I think that's a hell of a crack and you should take it seriously. "You have to stop living alone. You have to tear down that wall you have built around you. You have to emerge from the cocoon that you have been in all the years I have known you.... No one whom I know feels close to you... you've got to become the warm-hearted Nixon and not the Cold Nixon, which you are now.

"The party is going to continue in a leaderless fashion, dependent only on senators, congressmen, and governors who are, more and more, assuming the leadership that seems vacated by you. Whether you like it or not, you are the leader of the party, and you have to act like it. I would be derelict in my obligation to my country and my party if I didn't tell you what is on my mind." In the light of the leadership issue, the Agnew affair was all the more unsettling. I didn't know whether the Vice President was guilty of the charges of his accepting financial kickbacks while holding office in Maryland or not. However, I was positive of one thing: The White House itself was leaking some of the allegations against Agnew. This startled me. Some presidential aides and Agnew had never gotten along, but would the President allow his staff to undercut his own Vice President? If so, why? Agnew asked that I meet him privately at his home shortly after Labor Day. He confirmed rumors that U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson was investigating him based on information provided by the Maryland attorney general. Agnew indicated that several Maryland businessmen who were being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service may have tried to implicate him in tax fraud in a plea-bargaining arrangement to help their cases. Then Agnew dropped a bombshell. He said Nixon had known about the investigation for a week, but neither he nor anyone else in the White House had discussed it with him. If the Vice President were in trouble, why wouldn't the President and his staff be concerned about his answers to the allegations? The conduct of the White House was purely and obviously political. They should have been concerned—unless someone wanted to use Agnew, perhaps even force him to leave his post, for some purpose. What could that purpose be?

Agnew said he had been advised that Richardson was about to ask that he be indicted by a grand jury. He asked whether I thought he should go to Representative Carl Albert, Speaker of the House, and ask for a hearing. There was a precedent for such an action. Vice President John C. Calhoun had asked for a House hearing in 1824 after he had been accused of taking bribes. I advised Agnew to see Albert but not tell the White House he was doing so. I left his home perplexed about the roles of both the Attorney General and the White House. Whether Agnew was innocent or guilty was not my immediate concern. It was, rather, the motives of Richardson and the White House. Surely they would give him the opportunity to defend himself—or would they? Over the next several days, I began asking myself more probing questions about the matter and finally came to one which stopped me in my tracks: What if the White House is using Agnew to take the glare of Watergate publicity off the President and his staff and place it elsewhere? And if Agnew were to leave office in disgrace, could it not be argued that the Administration had been sufficiently punished by its critics—that enough was enough?

My questions increased when Agnew sought to see Nixon but the President sent word he was unavailable. Suddenly, General Alexander Haig, who had succeeded Haldeman as White House chief of staff, and Bryce Harlow, a presidential counselor, visited the Vice President and suggested he resign. In the meantime, leaks continued to pour out of both the White House and the Justice Department implying that Agnew may have misused campaign contributions while he was the county executive of Baltimore and governor of Maryland. More questions arose with each day's headlines. Why was the Administration making such an obvious effort to blow its own man out of the water? At the same time, the White House was highly protective of the President and executive privilege. Why would Nixon not hear Agnew's side of the story when the White House was asking the media to be fair to him? I knew that Nixon didn't particularly care for Agnew personally, but this was ridiculous. He had to have some feeling for the Vice President and his family because they were being destroyed by rumor. Some evidence indicated that Agnew may well have been involved in shady dealings, but he still deserved a hearing.

About a week after our first talk, Agnew called and asked me to meet with him again. He disclosed that Nixon had requested that he resign. I was not surprised. In fact, I was beginning to smell a rat. Agnew indicated that Nixon had stopped him from going to the Speaker of the House to ask for a hearing there. He never said how or why Nixon had done this. I concluded that the President had cut him loose among the wolves. However, I learned much later that Agnew had not told me the truth. He had, indeed, gone to the House and met with Speaker Albert and others. The Democratic leadership was not anxious to become part of a Republican dispute which was already in the courts. I flew home to Phoenix tired and depressed. Even if the Vice President were guilty, Nixon's handling of the affair was indecent. Agnew had been tried and found guilty through leaks before he knew what the Attorney General's formal charges were. The White House apparently had gotten word that Agnew and I had been talking. When I got home, there was a message that one of the President's lawyers, Fred Buzhardt, and Harlow had left Washington by plane just after I had and would soon be at our house. The two arrived shortly after I did. They said Richardson would drop the bribe charges if Agnew entered a plea of no contest to a single charge of failing to pay a certain amount of federal income tax.

This was shameful. The White House was threatening to allow Agnew's prosecution unless he handled the matter their way—resignation in disgrace. Why not allow him to be heard in the House? I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yet Nixon was not, although he was asking Congress and the American people to give him the benefit of any doubts they might have about Watergate. I was sick of this dirty business, so I spoke to the pair in plain, political terms. A lot of us in the GOP knew Nixon would have preferred Rockefeller or former Texas Governor John Connolly as his running mate in 1972, but conservatives would not have tolerated that. Both were still unacceptable, and if Nixon tried to replace Agnew with one of the two, we would strongly oppose it. I warned them that the White House was threatening to divide the party by acting this way toward a conservative like Agnew. I was certain they carried that message back to Nixon. The Vice President obeyed orders. He pleaded no contest to the charge of income tax violation, paid a fine, and resigned.

I don't profess to know the precise role Nixon and his staff may have played in the Agnew affair, but they were already maneuvering behind the scenes to move Michigan Representative Gerald Ford into the vice presidency. There is also no doubt about their long-standing enjoyment in putting Agnew down. Later, when the President resigned and some of his staff sought pardons for their involvement in Watergate, I couldn't help but wonder if, in the darkness of their souls, their consciences didn't remind them of what they had done to Agnew. Since the Agnew affair, a good number of people have said to me that I was wrong to offer Agnew any consolation—that he was a crook. Perhaps he was. But I do not lightly view abandoning anyone under fire. The Agnew case was a study in the contradictory character of Richard Nixon. He quickly deserted Agnew while asking me and millions of other Americans not to flee from him in his hours of trial and torment. Haldeman and Ehrlichman had resigned earlier, on April 30. Dick Kleindienst, who had preceded Richardson, resigned as Attorney General about the same time. Richardson had moved from the post of Secretary of Defense to take charge of the Justice Department. Nixon's directions to him are worth recalling, since they offer another insight into the man in the Oval Office: "You must pursue this investigation even if it leads to the President. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, don't take the job."

Richardson hired his old Harvard law professor, Archibald Cox, as special prosecutor. Cox later insisted that Nixon turn over to him certain conversations that he had secretly taped in the Oval Office. Nixon refused and in October 1973 told Richardson to get rid of Cox. When he wouldn't, Richardson was fired. His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned. This was called the Saturday Night Massacre. Judge Robert Bork, next in line at Justice, fired Cox at Richardson's direct request. Richardson felt it essential to reestablish the continuity of office amid chaos. Leon Jaworski, a Texas lawyer, became the new special prosecutor. The President, still insisting that he knew nothing of the break-in or any activities connected to it, was stonewalling any attempt to investigate Watergate. Charges against Nixon and the White House staff—that they were withholding evidence on the tapes—continued to mount. There was an 18 ½-minute gap in a tape of June 20, 1972—three days after the break-in and arrest of five men—in which Nixon and Haldeman had discussed the burglary. This could be destruction of evidence. Jaworski was attempting to determine what had happened. Word was filtering out that the special prosecutor might seek to charge the President with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nixon would probably appeal any indictment in the U.S. Supreme Court. Some in Congress had introduced impeachment resolutions. Jerry Ford had replaced Agnew as Vice President. It was mind-boggling.

In April I had publicly asked the President to level with the American people on Watergate. Trying to move Nixon off his butt, I told _The Christian Science Monitor:_ "The Watergate. The Watergate. It's beginning to be like Teapot Dome. I mean there's a smell to it. Let's get rid of that smell." In December, during another interview with the _Monitor,_ I tried again to get Nixon to open up by saying the President was doing too little, too late about Watergate: "He chose to dibble and dabble and argue on very nebulous grounds like executive privilege and confidentiality when all the American people wanted to know was the truth." I said Americans wanted to know how honest their President was, adding: "I hate to think of the old adage 'Would you buy a used car from Dick Nixon?'—but that's what people are asking around the country." Within hours after giving the interview to the _Monitor,_ I was invited to have dinner that very evening with the President and Mrs. Nixon. It was, to say the least, remarkable timing and turned out to be a most unusual experience.

Pat Nixon greeted me in the second-floor Yellow Oval Sitting Room of the family quarters. A comfortable Christmas fire crackled. I had a small glass of sherry. We chatted amiably. Other guests arrived—Bryce Harlow and his wife, Betty; Pat Buchanan and his wife, Shelley; speechwriter Ray Price; Julie and David Eisenhower; Rosemary Woods, the President's longtime personal secretary; and Mary Brooks, an old friend of the Nixons, who was director of the U.S. Mint. The President entered after we were assembled. He was quite amiable, even garrulous. He moved quickly among us, rapidly jumping from one topic to another. Then, unexpectedly, his mind seemed to halt abruptly and wander aimlessly away. Each time, after several such lapses, he would snap back to a new subject. I became concerned. I had never seen Nixon talk so much, yet so erratically—as if he were a tape with unexpected blank sections. Pat Nixon eased us into the private family dining room. It was the first time I had the pleasure of dining there, and I must say the setting was beautiful. I sat at one end of the table, the President at the other. Pat was on my right with Rosemary to the left.

Nixon asked me if I preferred a red wine. I said no. He broke out a very fine bottle of German white. The President told me he knew a great deal about wine. He said he had learned about it from so many formal and state dinners at the White House. As soup was served, Nixon was preoccupied with whether he and Pat should take the train to Key Biscayne, Florida, for a brief Christmas rest. The question seemed odd, even bizarre, considering all that was happening in Washington. The President asked for my opinion. I told him the trip was fine. However, if he were caught on the train without good communications and something serious happened in the world, the country would never forgive him. I said, "Act like a President." The words shot out with a sting I never intended. Perhaps it was my subconscious talking. I was upset about Nixon's obsession with Watergate and lack of leadership. What was so important about a trip to Florida? He didn't have his priorities straight. I bit my lips to say no more. But such gibberish coming from the President of the United States, when the mood of the country was approaching a crisis, worried me.

Nevertheless, Nixon returned to the clicking rails and the family's Florida train trip. He muttered concern about having the U.S. Secret Service properly instructed because all the bridges might not be protected. His words were disjointed. The whole conversation was without purpose. The President turned to Harlow and Price, dangling a new series of questions. He discussed Congress with Harlow but soon dropped the subject and took up the State of the Union Address with Price. He never allowed either to respond. Julie and David interspersed their own observations. It was like the babble at a Georgetown cocktail party, not the warm, intimate conversation of family and friends at home. Nixon continued his ceaseless, choppy chatter. I was becoming more and more uncomfortable. What's going on? I asked myself. Why is Nixon rambling all over the map? Hunching and quickly dropping his shoulders? Incessantly sputtering something, constantly switching subjects? Finally, searching for some reaction to the President's erratic behavior among his family and other guests, I asked myself the unthinkable: Is the President coming apart because of Watergate?

Suddenly Nixon was addressing me: "How do I stand, Barry?" He did not, of course, mention Watergate. I watched the expressionless faces on both sides of the table. Everyone knew what he meant. Each face was frozen in a plastic smile, as if we were being photographed for posterity. The table fell silent for the first time that evening. I said the obvious: "People are divided—those who want you to go and others who wish you'd stay. Among the latter, there's a particular group who believe a President should not resign." It was a tip-off. I was telling him that some of us in Congress neither expected nor wanted a President of the United States to quit. It would humiliate the office in the eyes of the world and was too horrible for Americans to contemplate. There was no reaction to my remarks—none whatever. I sat back, stunned and silent. Nixon had brought up the subject himself. He was asking me about the presidency itself, its future with the Congress and the nation. We were witnessing one of the most tempestuous times in the long and distinguished history of that office. Here we were at his dinner table, and the President himself was seeking the thoughts of his guests.

Yet, silence. Not a single word from anyone. Julie looked at her plate. Price and Buchanan seemed to be staring into the distance. Harlow gazed at me without expression. Rosemary Woods toyed with her salad. Nixon peered into the bottom of his wine-glass. I straightened in my chair. With questions written all over my face, I was pleading with them. With open hands, I was silently begging them. Yes, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about this matter as family and friends in the spirit of Christmas. Let's open our hearts. Let us solve all this together and put it behind us—for the good of the nation. Silence. They all knew what my face was telling them. It was simple and straightforward. I wanted the President to go on television and tell the American people the truth—whatever that was. If it was bad, he could ask for their help and forgiveness. We can all be guilty of poor judgment, even the President of the United States. Millions of good and decent people would understand. He could say he had made a mistake and explicitly say he was sorry. He could stand tall again. The office of the presidency, he himself, his family—and the country—would not be dishonored.

Complete silence. It seemed that for at least fifteen or twenty seconds, everyone had crawled into some hiding place inside themselves. There was not a single word or sound. I couldn't fathom them. Yet, in recalling that moment today, perhaps they were more realistic than I realized. Finally the President spoke. His mind had rolled back to the family vacation, and he was riding the rails to Florida again. Perhaps, he said, Barry was right. They should not take the train but fly. There would be no problems. He soon switched to the nation's gasoline and energy problems. Nixon insisted there was no oil crisis. Full supplies would soon return. He asked Harlow to speak up, to offer his views on the energy issue. The longtime Washington lobbyist and astute observer of the national and international scene slowly began to speak. The President cut him off. He suddenly opened an attack on liberals in the media. A very odd feeling gripped me. There was something dreadfully wrong at the table—this whole scene. Nixon was making no sense to me whatsoever.

I asked myself whether I was witnessing a slow-motion collapse of Nixon's mental balance. Was the public pressure finally starting to tear the President apart? Nixon began discussing foreign policy. His wife, Pat, quickly jumped in. She criticized Kissinger for taking too much credit in such affairs. David and Julie joined in the accusation. The President ruefully admitted that Kissinger was grabbing a lot of headlines. However, he firmly insisted, all the initiatives to China and the Soviet Union had been made by the President. He was making the real decisions. I pointed out that the situation was not unique. Secretaries of State sometimes received more publicity than Presidents. John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson were no slouches. If the President and guests would come back with me to the Hopi Indian tribe in Arizona, they would find a similar example. It was a Hopi custom that the chief rarely if ever spoke publicly on important matters. A promising young brave always did so. If anything went wrong, it was the brave's fault. If things went right, the chief was praised.

Dinner ended on a somber, strained note with several stretches of silence—all except for the President. He jabbered incessantly, often incoherently, to the end. We exchanged early Christmas greetings and departed in different directions into the chill Washington night. The White House seemed cold and bleak as I got in and started my car. I let the engine run and looked up at the tall white pillars. They were so stately, so solemn, so seemingly strong. How could anyone in these surroundings ever become involved in such a petty escapade as Watergate? It was just crazy. It couldn't be true. Yet the subject had seemed to haunt the room and dinner table, an uninvited guest. I drove home and dictated these words for my files: "I have reason to suspect that all might not be well mentally in the White House. This is the only copy that will ever be made of this; it will be locked up in my safe and Judy is pledged to secrecy." I phoned Harlow the following day and bluntly questioned him about the President's behavior. He said that Nixon had been drunk before and during dinner.

Later Price lamely claimed that Nixon had been "working" each person at the table. Among his other aims, Price said, the President was trying to keep him and Harlow from jumping ship. Their leaving the President at this particular time would have caused embarrassment to Nixon and further media speculation that the situation inside the White House was deteriorating. All of that may have been true, but the point was Nixon's unusual behavior. To this day Pat Buchanan will not comment on the dinner. The evening was a watershed for me. Nixon appeared to be cracking. The presidency was crumbling. I would not stand idly by if the situation worsened. Nixon had to come clean, one way or the other. I sensed that in the end there would be a confrontation between us. Nixon himself had remarked that he feared only one man in Congress—Barry Goldwater. If no one in the Republican Party would stand up to Nixon, I would. He was not going to make the GOP take the rap for him. We had done no wrong. Nixon was not above his party, the Congress, or those who had elected him. Nor was he above the country, the American people.

In March 1974 Watergate secrets were splattered in headlines across the country. A secret grand jury report contained "evidence" against the President, and he was named as an unindicted coconspirator. The grand jury recommended that materials in its possession—testimony, other documents, and tapes—be given to the House Judiciary Committee. The public indictment named seven of the President's onetime aides, including Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and Attorney General John Mitchell. It was clear before the close of March that the Judiciary Committee's counsel, John Doar, believed he had a case of impeachment against the President. The committee and Jaworski demanded that the White House furnish them additional tapes. Nixon was fighting them through a twisting delaying action. Haig and the President's attorneys, James St. Clair and Fred Buzhardt, were now on the hot seat. They knew that the President had deleted critical material from typewritten summaries of some of the recordings the grand jury had requested. They, too, could be indicted for concealing evidence.

A tape from March 22, 1973, was particularly damning. There was reference to a meeting the President had had a day earlier with John Dean, then his counsel, in which they discussed paying off Howard Hunt, one of those implicated in the burglary. Hunt apparently had been threatening to talk. On the tape, in a meeting with Dean, Haldeman, and Mitchell, the President said, "I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it. Let [the accused burglars] plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up, or anything else, if it'll save the plan. That's the whole point.... We're going to protect our people if we can." Nixon had his way. Edited transcripts—with passages deleted by the President himself—were delivered to the Judiciary Committee and the leaders of both parties at the end of April. The 200,000 words of transcripts, which also were given to the media, caused a national sensation. Nixon's clear indications of a cover-up, plus his foul language, caused an endless stream of interpretation by the media. Some Americans were confused. Others said Nixon was innocent of everything. Still more insisted he was guilty all the way, from approving the break-in to clamping a lid on the investigation of it.

It was now clear that millions of Americans believed Nixon had ordered his aides to cover up whatever they knew of the break-in. No precise proof—the so-called smoking gun—had been made public as yet. There were endless rumors about conversations on the tapes still held by the White House. The tapes had become the center of national speculation—even jokes—from the corner pub to corporate boardrooms to late night TV talk shows. The whole nation seemed mesmerized by an almost daily dose of Watergate speculation and revelations. I was getting phone calls from just about everywhere—people who said they had shaken hands with me during the 1964 campaign; others we had met while touring Europe; military officers I knew; scores of people whom I had never met. I took only a few of the calls. Our staff was bombarded. They told me it was, at times, frightening. Some callers were almost hysterical, warning of a military coup with possible bloodshed in the streets. More than anything else, people wanted a reassurance about the continuity of government. Many Americans believed a crisis of vast proportions was possible—that the country could be left without presidential leadership. They were asking sophisticated questions about impeachment, about whether the President might stand trial in the Senate, about whether he would resign.

The questions also became very personal—whether Nixon was crazy or so isolated by his staff that he didn't understand what was actually happening, whether his staff could be trusted. While many of the questions were about Nixon, most involved the institutions of government—the Constitution, whether the scandal would affect future presidents or the dignity of the office, and the effect on the balance of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The question most asked was whether I believed Nixon was honest. We were asked that question not only by the Iowa farmer and Arizona cotton grower but by many in the Washington news corps. They were driving me nuts—some even got hold of the unlisted number for our Washington apartment phone. Many of the callers were extremely agitated—some weeping. Some were in their teens, others quite elderly. Ellen Thrasher was new on our staff and only twenty-three. She told me, "Here I am, just a receptionist, and people are trusting every word I tell them. It's kind of heady. They want me to say that the country is going to be all right. They want reassurance about the whole system of government. If the President leaves, I tell them, it will be done properly, legally. We're a nation of laws and traditions."

The essential question in the thousands of calls we received was whether our system of government could stand the immense public strain that was being placed on it—not what would happen to Richard Nixon. This was the only time in my life I heard people express serious doubts about the future of the country. As Nixon became more paranoid, so did much of the nation. We were losing belief in our institutions, in our ability to cope, in ourselves. On July 12 the House Judiciary Committee released nearly four thousand pages of evidence. The contents contained one damning section after another, all pointing to a cover-up. For the first time, the White House admitted Nixon would not be surprised if the Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment. However, he didn't believe the full House would do so. The President left for the Western White House at San Clemente, California, as the scandal blew wide open. Nixon was wrong. The Senate majority and minority leaders—Mike Mansfield and Hugh Scott—met to prepare for a Senate trial if the House voted for articles of impeachment.

Reports circulated on Capitol Hill that Nixon was unstable—moody, depressed, subject to fits of temper. It reminded me of his erratic behavior at the December dinner. In rapid succession, Judiciary Committee Counsel John Doar said that a case for impeachment had been made, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon's claim of general executive privilege for the tapes. The decision, including the votes of three Nixon appointees, ordered the President to turn over sixty-four tapes to Jaworski. The smoking gun—the tape of June 23, 1972, in which Nixon's own words showed his direct involvement in the cover-up—was about to become the centerpiece of the affair. The conversation flatly contradicted just about everything Nixon had said for two years. The President himself called it to the attention of his attorneys in late July. He suggested they might have some problems with the contents. As they were to conclude, the tape "convicted" the President of lying and withholding evidence. Haig and the lawyers now faced the charge of a crime themselves—conspiracy to obstruct justice—if they failed to disclose the contents to Jaworski.

We were not yet aware of the June 23 tape, but a growing number of my Senate colleagues privately asked me to see the President and suggest he consider resigning. I didn't ask to do this, because I believed Nixon would refuse to see me. Meantime, in the waning days of July, the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment. Republicans joined the Democratic majority. For the first time, I began to lean toward impeachment. Nixon clearly had abused the power of the presidency, and government would be at a virtual standstill unless and until he left office. Impeachment would demean the office and the nation. We would wash our dirty laundry in public, and our country would be the worse for it. The damage could last for decades. There had to be a better way than either impeachment or forcing a moody President into a corner, not knowing what he might do. I discussed the situation with the two GOP minority leaders, Scott of the Senate and John Rhodes, a fellow Arizonan, who was the House minority leader. All of us were upset at Nixon, but we decided to wait rather than force a confrontation. But how long could we wait? We simply hoped that an opening would develop which would not make it appear that we were putting Nixon up against a wall. The issue was, however, bigger than we were. Time was running out. Both the House and Senate had now lined up against the President. The question now was not whether but when he would be formally impeached and disgraced.

On Monday morning, August 5, Dean Burch, my former aide and now a special assistant to the President, phoned me from the White House. We met in my office late in the afternoon. Burch's face was unusually white and taut. He appeared to be holding something back, and I said, "Okay, Dean, out with it." He handed me two white legal-size pieces of paper that had been stapled together. I held the pages, knowing we were close to the end of the long drama, and asked, "What does he say?" Burch replied, "The President says he hasn't been telling the truth." The June 23 tape had finally surfaced. Nixon tacitly admitted that he had used the FBI and CIA to cover up aspects of the break-in. He also indirectly confessed discussing how to limit the exposure of his people's political involvement in Watergate. Burch said that the White House would be releasing the statement within the hour. He left quietly. I was deeply distressed, almost speechless. I had believed Richard Nixon. I had wanted to. Every man deserved a final say. Yet Nixon would offer no reasonable explanation. He was hiding behind a lot of analytical legalese on two pieces of paper that said, "I was aware of the advantage this course of action would have with respect to limiting possible public exposure of involvement by persons connected with the re-election."

It was the same old Nixon, confessing ambiguously, in enigmatic language, still refusing to accept accountability. It was, above all, an insincere statement, as duplicitous as the man himself. Yes, I said to myself, it is the perfect statement for Nixon—indeterminate, eminently deniable. Others were at fault. He had only tried to help them. It was always the others—"persons connected with the re-election"—never Richard Nixon. Haig was walking a tightrope inside the White House. The number of Republicans who would vote for Nixon's impeachment was increasing each day. The higher this total, the more steeled Nixon became against resigning. Yet there had to be a way to show the President that resignation was his best option. That was precisely what Haig was trying to do. It was August 6. I told Dean Burch that my head count in the Senate showed that the President had no more than fifteen or sixteen senators with him, not enough to block a two-thirds vote for conviction. And he might have as few as a dozen.

The Senate Republican Policy Luncheon convened at noon. Vice President Ford, who had just come from a cabinet meeting in the White House, said that Nixon had told them he was not guilty of an indictable offense. However, Ford made it clear that Nixon had admitted that more disclosures were coming and that the President had been involved in some deception. That did it. I blew my top. I said that Nixon's position was hopeless, even among Republicans in the House and Senate. The President might continue to find some legal points here and there which might delay the process, but that would only be temporary. He had lied to us, and we could be fooled only so many times. We were sick and tired of it. The best thing he could do for the country and the party was to get the hell out of the White House—the sooner the better. As far as I was concerned, he could get out that afternoon. I was interrupted to take an urgent phone call from the White House. I excused myself. I didn't want any more double-talk from them. I'd hang up if they started that. No more excuses. The operator said General Haig was calling from the Oval Office. When Haig picked up the phone, I heard a second click. I guessed it was Nixon. Haig asked how many votes the President had in the Senate. I told him no more than a dozen. I added that it was all over. Nixon was finished. I snapped, "Al, Dick Nixon has lied to me for the very last time. And to a hell of a lot of others in the Senate and House. We're sick to death of it all."

When I returned, Ford had resumed answering hostile questions from other senators. Senator Cotton said we were getting nowhere talking to one another and that we should send a special Senate delegation to see Nixon in the White House. We could no longer just sit and be expected to support whatever move Nixon made. The Vice President departed, but we continued to argue among ourselves. Some insisted we should be wary of appearing to prejudge the President. Others maintained that the head count had been taken and Nixon was finished. The party should not go down with him. A few said I was the only one blunt enough to get across to Nixon the feeling of most GOP senators. The meeting broke up in disagreement. It was quickly leaked to reporters that a rebellion against the President had occurred and that I had called for his resignation. I believe not one but several, including Hugh Scott, revealed to newsmen what had happened. They were pressuring Nixon. Later, at a meeting of the GOP Senate leadership, it was decided that I should go to the White House alone. I spoke to my wife on the phone that evening. We had finally decided that I would make one more run for the Senate and then retire. Perhaps if I called for Nixon's resignation, I should not make the race. It would infuriate Republicans back home. They had backed Nixon through thick and thin. Peggy said, "No, Barry, they will respect your truthfulness and honor. You do what you think is right, but don't retire. It's just not the way to leave after so many years."

Burch invited me to lunch at his home with Haig the following day, Wednesday, August 7. The meeting was the general's idea. He wanted to speak with me before I saw the President late that afternoon. Haig said that Nixon wanted Scott and Rhodes there, too. The President wanted as broad a picture as possible on what the Republicans might do. Haig described Nixon as a man dancing on the point of a pin. He was someone who could be set off in any one of several directions. It would be best not to demand or even suggest that he resign. Every time that had happened in the past, Nixon had reacted defiantly. The best thing to do would be to show him there was no way out except to quit or lose a long, bitter battle that would be good for no one—the country, Nixon, his family, or the party. Haig summed everything up succinctly: The President needs to know that there are no more alternatives, no more options. About a half hour after I returned to the Capitol, Bob Clark reported on ABC radio and television news that I had said the President would resign. I was never more furious in my life. I had told him no such thing. Clark, a normally reliable newsman, finally phoned me, and I really gave him hell. He promised a retraction. ABC did retract its story, but NBC refused to withdraw a false report it had been broadcasting since the evening before—that I had sought entrance to the White House but had been refused.

I rushed to the floor of the Senate and requested thirty seconds to speak on a point of personal privilege. It was immediately granted. I blew my stack again, stating that both the ABC and NBC stories were completely false. I looked up at the packed press gallery and declared in a loud voice, "You are a rotten bunch!" I never heard such spontaneous applause and cheers from visitors in the gallery. Even senators on the floor applauded. Later, Scott and I met Rhodes at the White House. We waited in a nearby office before seeing Nixon. None of us was in a mood to talk. We knew what we had to do. All of us were aware of Nixon's moodiness, his habit of trying to conceal his real thoughts, the unpredictability of his character. The minutes seemed like hours. Finally the phone rang, and we were invited to the Oval Office. The White House had just issued a statement: The President had no intention of resigning. Nixon put his feet up on the desk, leaned back in his swivel chair, and began reminiscing about the past. It was as if we were a foursome of old golfing partners sitting on the shady lawn of some nineteenth hole, listening to stories about games gone by, and sipping tall, cool drinks.

I didn't buy it—not one bit. I was sitting directly in front of Nixon with Scott and Rhodes at my side. I was looking at the public man, waiting for the private person to emerge. Slowly his voice began to harden. Some of the men who had campaigned with him—fought the wars over the years—had turned against him. Yes, he remembered them well. His voice was becoming remote now, and the sound of the words was lengthening, as though he were alone listening to his own voice. Suddenly, sharply, Nixon ended his soliloquy. He snapped at Rhodes that the situation—meaning impeachment—in the House was not good. Before Rhodes could answer, Nixon abruptly clumped his feet on the floor, wheeled his chair around, and faced Scott. Scott turned to me, saying I would be the spokesman for the group. For a split second, Nixon stopped. He had not planned it this way. Goldwater face to face. He stared at me, then said, "Okay, Barry, go ahead." This was no time to mince words. I said, "Things are bad." Nixon: "Less than a half dozen votes?" His voice dripped with sarcasm. His jaw automatically jutted out as his eyes narrowed.

"Ten at most," I said. "Maybe less. Some aren't firm." The President asked Scott if he agreed. He did. I could see that Nixon's blood pressure was rising. Now was the time to warn him without causing him to make some reckless, suicidal move. I said, "I took a nose count in the Senate today. You have four firm votes. The others are really undecided. I'm one of them." I hit him as directly and as hard as I could. It didn't seem to hurt him. Nixon turned to Rhodes, who said the situation was about the same in the House. For the first time since we had entered the room, the President paused. He looked at all three of us. I was on the verge of tears—of humiliation, not sorrow. Nixon leaned over the desk toward Rhodes and asked, "Do I have any options?" Haig was right. He would try to beat the rap until it was absolutely clear that the situation was hopeless. Rhodes replied, "I want to tell the people outside that we didn't discuss any options." Nixon snapped his agreement, stressing, "It's my decision."

There was no modulation in Nixon's voice now. He spoke in a monotone. He was not interested in a pardon or amnesty. He would make the decision in the best interests of the country. It was going to be all right. He would make it so. The President stood and thanked us for coming. We shook hands. Haig was waiting for us. We told him there had been no demands and no deals, but Nixon now knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished. None of us doubted the outcome. He would resign. I told the waiting reporters that no decision had been made. The President would act in the best interests of the country. All three of us fudged on the overwhelming congressional count to impeach the President. I intensely disliked not laying it on the line but if I had said Nixon was certain to lose in both houses, there was no telling how he would have reacted. My office was bedlam when I returned. It overflowed with reporters, and the phones were ringing off their hooks. I quickly slipped into my office and phoned Mrs. Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington _Post._ My opinion of the _Post_ hadn't changed. We opposed one another. But now the country came first.

I told Mrs. Graham what had happened in the Oval Office—that Nixon was wobbling and could go off in any direction, depending on how the media, particularly the _Post,_ handled the story. Could they play it cool for just one day, refrain from saying Nixon was finally finished, and let the President resign? If they threatened Nixon and got him mad, there was no telling what he would do. As things stood, I believed he would resign. The _Post_ was as circumspect as it could be the following morning, Thursday, August 8. Since 1953, when I entered the Senate, I have taken second place to no one in my criticism of the _Post._ And I'm well aware that the newspaper led every news organization across the country in uncovering the ungodly mess we call Watergate. However, that morning stands out in my mind as the _Post_ 's finest hour. It may have spared the nation the agony of impeachment and a long, wrenching aftermath. Mrs. Graham never mentioned the subject to me. I understand why. Newspapers call their own shots. There are times in the history of a nation, however, when the media should put their country above themselves. That hasn't happened with some in the past generation, but the _Post_ did it on August 8. I will never forget their recognition of responsibility as long as I live.

President Nixon resigned that evening, effective at noon on Friday, August 9. Vice President Ford was sworn in as President at that hour in the East Room of the White House. I watched Nixon's address on television with tears in my eyes. Despite his long record of political treachery, my heart ached for him and his family. It was, in the end, ironic that he had betrayed himself and became his own executioner. I waited vainly for Nixon to say he was sorry and ask the forgiveness of the American people. Instead, he spoke of his preference to carry through to the finish although he had lost much of his base in Congress. The one phrase of consolation in those final words was "hastening the healing." He did not mention, of course, that Bob Haldeman had used that very word, healing, in asking Nixon to pardon all his aides before leaving office. Instead, he flew away to exile in California. To this day, Nixon has never asked the nation for forgiveness. Yet he was given a pardon by President Ford. I've never discussed this publicly, but it's time to do so. Ford called me just after granting the pardon but before announcing it. It was 4 A.M. when the phone rang at Newport Beach, California, where Peggy and I were on vacation. I said, "Mr. President, you have no right and no power to do that. Nixon has never been charged or convicted of anything. So what are you pardoning him of? It doesn't make sense."

Ford said, "The public has the right to know that, in the eyes of the President, Nixon is clear." I was stunned by Ford's words. This was the same man who had openly admitted that Nixon had deceived the Congress. That was most likely a criminal act—obstruction of justice. I replied, "He may be clear in your eyes, but he's not clear in mine." It was a bad mistake by Ford. He should never have opened his mouth. Nixon had never been formally charged, although Jaworski and Judge Sirica were aware of a sealed grand jury indictment. Nixon had never been ordered to go to jail. He had, in effect, already turned down a pardon by refusing to ask the public for forgiveness. Ford saw the pardon as a holy act. I still do not understand how. To my knowledge, no one in a position of authority wanted to pursue the matter. So why the pardon? If Ford was trying to say Nixon was not guilty—and apparently he was—he knew that was false. The Congress had been certain to impeach Nixon. It's difficult to find more formal guilt.

Jerry Ford is a decent man, but the pardon never made sense to me and still doesn't. It hurt him politically and indeed may have been instrumental in his loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976. I'll never forget Al Haig in this crisis. He put his butt on the line when many of the most powerful men in Washington went into hiding. Haig held the White House together in the last two weeks of the Nixon administration. He now recalls: "The true story of Watergate was not then and has not yet been told. When it is, Barry Goldwater will be one of the good guys. "During the months of July and August of 1974—before Nixon resigned—there was a growing impatience in the House and Senate with Watergate and the continued tenure of President Nixon. I and others around the President questioned whether he would receive due process of the law. There were certain legislators who were contemplating extraconstitutional solutions—anything from a sense-of-Senate resolution to certain direct demands. The chances of that kind of an unprecedented outcome were very high in the waning hours of the crisis.

"Barry Goldwater was, despite his disenchantment with Watergate and the President, an absolutely unflinching advocate of due process and that our constitutionally provided procedures be followed. He would tolerate no other approach to the problem. He was extremely influential. I think history and the American people owe Barry Goldwater a deep, deep debt of gratitude. I know I do personally." I'm not going to discuss some of the final aspects of Watergate since I was not personally present at some crucial discussions. The full story has yet to be told. But I do wish to stress that the hysterical rumors about a military coup were completely unfounded. Al Haig and I know that. One day, those involved in some political moves may speak for themselves. On January 23, 1975, I visited Nixon at his home in San Clemente. It was a sunny day. I flew from Phoenix to the Orange County airport, rented a car, and drove down the coast to the Nixon home. On approaching the gate, a Marine guard recognized me and waved me through. I pulled up in front of the house about 1 P.M.

The place was quite different from the last time I had been there. No helicopters or jeeps. No fleets of golf carts. No people walking around with papers in their hands, whispering. It was quiet, almost desolate. I knew the young guard at the door. He motioned me to enter. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere—the rear patio, garden, the swimming pool. Finally I spotted the former President stretched out on a beach chair in a corner of the back patio, snoozing. I called to him, and he quickly awakened. Nixon greeted me warmly and put his arm around my shoulders, and we walked into the living room. Pat's touch was everywhere. The onetime broken-down adobe home was now tastefully furnished in bright, cheery colors. We sat and immediately began talking politics. He asked how Jerry Ford was doing. I said Jerry had to quit listening to members of the House, who had never made an important decision in their lives, and forget compromising. We talked about the country's oil problems, the makeup of the Congress, and CIA surveillance of American citizens.

We went to lunch and continued the discussion. Without ever mentioning the word, we finally turned to Watergate. Yes, Nixon said, mistakes had been made. They were all his. Although he didn't know all these things were happening, it was his fault for waiting too long before acting. It was the old Nixon song, but I decided not to say anything in response. We talked about leaks in the National Security Council. Both of us knew who had been doing the leaking—a Navy man—but it had to be handled carefully. Nixon was talking about his health. He said that news stories speculating that he was losing his will to live were "bullshit." Like any other person, Nixon said he wanted to live. He asked if I thought he should go ahead with a book. There had been criticism of his plans and the fact he would make money from it. I said, "Yes, by all means, write it. Tell the truth. Tell everything." I had said it. Those few words were worth the trip. The truth—finally—the truth. At 3 P.M., it was time for me to leave. Nixon was sorry to see me go. He walked me outside. Referring to the book, I said, "Perhaps you could do something about clearing your name, although that might be beyond doing."

He said nothing. I repeated, "Tell the truth." Nixon stood there in the sun. Alone. His face was expressionless. In April 1987 the former President temporarily blocked the scheduled public release of about 5 percent of 1.5 million pages of his private presidential papers. The National Archives had released a small part of the papers a year earlier. The batch Nixon stopped contained documents relating to the Watergate scandal. Over his objections, some 250,000 pages of the papers were finally released by the archives about a month later. 10 Spies, Secrets, and National Security Intelligence is a nation's most advanced weapon against attack. Such secret activity is also its most practical and powerful substitute for war. Yet no country in the world has made public more details of its secret military and other government intelligence activities than the United States. Never have these disclosures been greater than in the past dozen years: the Church and Pike committee hearings in 1975, the 1987 Iran-Contra testimony, and Bob Woodward's book _Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987._ Until Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike, Democrats of Idaho and Ohio, no officials had ever compromised America's secrets for political advantage. Today, that is becoming common practice among an alarming number of politicians.

Church, who chaired a Senate inquiry into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, made no secret of the fact that he hoped to become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1976. I have never more severely questioned the conduct of a U.S. senator than I have Church's display of ambition during those televised hearings. For a year, as a member of that committee, I watched his brazen bid for national power at the expense of undermining our national security. Church waved a poison dart gun as part of a sensationalized opening day of public hearings. The gun was supposedly part of a CIA arsenal to assassinate foreign leaders. Church engaged in other dramatics, such as CIA shrimp toxin, for the benefit of a daily minute or so on the national TV networks. He launched a broad, biased attack on the CIA, describing it as a "rogue elephant." We were supposedly still in the process of evaluating testimony and other evidence. Church was joined by Pike, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, who directed a special House group investigating the CIA. Pike was so partisan that even the media, hungry for the names of American "assassins," recognized that, in tearing the CIA apart, he was trying to build a platform for his own political ambition. The two men, who spoke of restoring decency to America after the Watergate scandal, eventually became political losers.

One of the few things that both William Colby, then director of the CIA, and Richard Helms, a former director, agreed on at the time was that Church and Pike were putting on a political melodrama. Colby and Helms had sharply opposing views about congressional oversight of the CIA. More than a decade afterward, Helms told me the two committees had damaged the American intelligence community severely. He found very little in Senator Church's efforts that aimed to improve the quality of U.S. intelligence—how we either collected or organized it. Helms explained that the dart guns had never even been made in the agency and that he never knew what purpose or connection the shrimp toxin had had with the CIA. He concluded, "Church and Pike were on fishing trips. They just muddied the waters about the major issue at the time: whether what the CIA did was secret and would remain secret." Church was eventually defeated in a bid for reelection to the Senate. Pike's ambitions finally dissolved in his swollen pride. He disappeared from the scene and was never missed.

I thought that Congress and the nation had learned something from the Church-Pike fiasco about the need to keep our national secrets. Instead, Congress made the Iran-Contra hearings another public spectacle in which our intelligence activities—sources and methods of operation—and certain classified information were paraded on television like a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Also, any foreign intelligence service reading Woodward's book could gain considerable information from it. In my four years as Intelligence Committee chairman, we had a total of 260 meetings, hearings, and briefings. More than 90 percent of these were held behind closed doors. The result was little partisan debate or bickering but plenty of results. The committee produced seventy-one pieces of legislation and reports for the Senate, more than it had during the preceding years under Senator Birch Bayh or during the subsequent tenure of Senator David Durenberger. Senators are at their best in private. The Iran-Contra hearings were a step-by-step, textbook demonstration of U.S. covert operations. The basic methods of U.S. intelligence operations—from planning to personnel and financial payments—were clearly diagrammed for the world. The disclosure of what appeared to be simple facts betrayed real secrets to professional foreign spies. As the hearings ended, I dejectedly closed my eyes, leaned back on my memories of three decades in the Senate, and asked, "Do we have any clothes on at all? Is the country now completely naked?"

Woodward's book covered very sensitive material as well. It has caused and will continue to cause this country real problems by compromising certain American agents and activities, disclosing particular techniques in collecting intelligence, and harming our intelligence relations with other nations. For obvious reasons, I am not going to go into specifics. We are not naked—yet. America does have secrets, big secrets, but they are few. Those who say sarcastically that U.S. intelligence has become an open book are not far from the truth. That era, which began with Church and Pike, continues today. Some members of Congress and others still place their own interests above those of their fellow countrymen. Some of the Church-Pike probing had a basis. The hearings publicized assassination plots against Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. The CIA had been involved in contingency planning, but not actually in carrying out attempts on the lives of the two. Other improper activities, mostly invasions of privacy, had also been conducted by the agency.

I found, however, few redeeming qualities in the sensationalized manner in which these matters were aired. It had long—indeed, for decades—been established that the United States had been engaged in "dirty tricks." By definition, that is the intelligence business. It is one of the world's dirtiest professions, blackened by lies, bribery, deceit, even murder. The real question is the intention of this country in engaging in such conduct. If the intent is to keep us from national harm—from threats of economic injury or war—then the CIA performs a needed and, in my mind, just mission. We have a right and duty to protect ourselves. It is folly to suggest that 535 members of Congress will agree on what is moral or even ethical. Nor will the American people. That is why we place our lives and fortunes, to a limited extent, in the hands of trusted public officials. In this case, the Constitution gives the President the power to advance our foreign policy goals. Under Article II, Section 2, the Constitution makes the President the commander in chief of our armed forces. It also gives him the power, on the advice and consent of the Senate, to agree to treaties and appoint ambassadors. The President makes foreign policy.

I am not suggesting that the CIA was justified in plotting the Castro and Lumumba murders. The law now prohibits that. U.S. espionage must reflect American values. We're not running the KGB. However, it's a good thing never to say never about many things. We could witness the coming of another Hitler or worse. I believe that killing a new Hitler would be morally and politically justified, and I would not rule out such a possibility. There is a much more pertinent point in all this. I believe that private contrition—limiting access to the most sensitive negative aspects of spying to specific members of government—is much more reasonable than public confession, airing it on television and elsewhere for all the world to witness. It has been my experience that unpublicized hearings and cooperation contribute to better policy. Our officials who handle these matters privately face ultimate accountability. I maintain that there is a more appropriate time and forum than TV or other media to make policy on our most sensitive intelligence matters.

The purpose of congressional oversight of intelligence activities is not to embarrass this country around the world. Neither should it jeopardize the CIA's ability to function abroad. Its purpose is to deal with the security interests of more than 240 million Americans in a world that does not necessarily share our interests or beliefs. I voted against the establishment of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee in 1976 for reasons that I will make clear. Those who presided over the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings were well aware of the problems created by the Church and Pike committees. There were other compelling reasons to hold closed door sessions. A public prosecutor had been appointed to investigate, indict, and punish anyone guilty of criminal acts. Members already knew most of the facts from private testimony before their committee as well as from the Senate Intelligence Committee's previous investigation. They granted limited immunity to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Rear Admiral John Poindexter, the two most critical witnesses, to learn more. Yet they felt obliged to parade them in public. For what purpose? Certainly not to find the truth. That could better have been accomplished in private. The truth is, the Democrats thought they could damage the President. They were right. The Democrats also believed they would cover themselves with political laurels. They were wrong.

North became a new American hero as some members sat idly watching from the stage the committee had created for itself. Americans were hungry for North's faith in and loyalty to his country. Some committee members and others called him a liar. His truthfulness was never the issue. It was his moral intent. And that purpose was to save the lives of American hostages and prevent the Soviet Union and Cuba from gaining a base in Nicaragua. I don't know if North will prove to be a lasting hero. There are many questions still to be answered. But I regard his testimony as moral, uplifting, and heroic. I won't easily forget North's calm as congressmen stammered questions from idiot sheets prepared by their staffs. It was clear that the majority had chosen theater over the tedious toil of the much more deliberate, detailed questioning that is characteristic of private sessions. I was at first disappointed at and ultimately disgusted with the public posturing of many of my former colleagues. That was particularly true of Texas Representative Jack Brooks, whose asinine performance as a political prosecutor made his Democratic donkey look good by comparison.

I believe such hearings should be held behind closed doors. That still does not solve a big problem. There is no guarantee that members of Congress and their staffs would keep the secrets of such private sessions. The fact that so much information was leaked before the hearings is proof of that. So this country is faced with a dilemma worthy of a spy novel—only it's for real. We are a nation that cannot keep its secrets. Under the auspices of congressional inquiry and investigative reporting, we tell the world the most minute details of crucial intelligence activities. Even when such undertakings are discussed in congressional and executive branch privacy, their outlines are often leaked to the media in a matter of days. This cannot continue. It can only lead to catastrophic consequences. These conclusions come from eighteen years of involvement in intelligence activities in the Senate, beginning in 1969, when I became a member of the Armed Services Committee. Later, I was a member of the Church committee and then was vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1977 until the end of 1980. I served as chairman of the Intelligence Committee from 1981 through 1984. During my last two years in the Senate, I was chairman of the Armed Services Committee, where intelligence was an integral part of our activity.

Meeting with Ike in the 1964 campaign. Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts is at Ike's right. With JFK. With President Johnson, 1964. President Nixon and I in happier times. In the Oval Office with President Ford. With President Reagan on the day they honored General Jimmy Doolittle. With Cap Weinberger at my Pentagon farewell ceremony, December 10, 1986. Squaring off with Al Haig after his Watergate testimony. At West Point to receive the Thayer Award, September 1987. A photo I took of the Arizona desert. With Hopi friends in Washington. They presented me with a Kachina carving. The CIA and NSC work for the President, not for Congress. For that reason, during my early tenure in the Senate, only a few members of Congress knew intelligence secrets—Senator Richard B. Russell of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Representative Carl Vinson of the House Armed Services Committee, and Representative Clarence Cannon of the House Appropriations Committee. Russell held most of the information inside this informal oversight group because the CIA was the President's agency and Congress was limited to authorizing budgets without compromising secrecy. Russell believed in parliamentary procedure and prudence. Contrary to what his latter-day critics claim, he was not a man who sought power. The Georgian trusted the directors of these agencies to tell the truth to him, his colleagues, and the President. They did.

It is not true that Congress was ignorant about what intelligence activities were being funded in those years. These three members knew where every dime went on each operation or program. I know that firsthand. It is pure baloney to suggest that the trio ignored dirty tricks. As fiscal conservatives, they followed the flow of funding, which led them directly to the operations being undertaken. They unquestionably did respond to legitimate queries from colleagues. Russell's prudence and deep patriotism caused him and the others to be concerned about leaks which could expose American lives and operations to danger. Some members of the Iran-Contra committee were clearly concerned about what they were portraying to the country. Just as clearly, millions of Americans, including myself, saw them trying to further their careers at the President's expense. There is a time and place for politics. There is also a time and place—taught us by Russell, Representative George Mahon of Texas, longtime chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and others—to be, in the nation's best interests, truly bipartisan.

I cannot help but reflect on the stark contrast between Senator Daniel Inouye and Russell, the masterful constitutionalist. I was astonished that the characteristically fair-minded Hawaii Democrat allowed the questioning to degenerate to the level of that of a criminal trial. There are few if any rules in such a hearing—members live by their own interpretation of proper procedure—so Inouye had to allow members wide latitude. There's a difference, however, between a congressional inquiry and a political lynching. One man prevented such a hanging. Oliver North confronted the committee on the critical issue of constitutional separation of powers and beat members at their own game. I believe the committee lost sight of the objective—to arrive at a meaningful understanding of the separation of authority between the executive and legislative branches. Members glossed over the critical fact that only the President can initiate and carry out foreign policy. The hearings became a strong-arm grab by Congress for more influence in foreign affairs.

The real objective of the hearings was raw political power, both personal and party. It was a bold new move by Congress to usurp the authority of, if not control, the presidency. It clearly aimed to take from the President some of the power to make foreign policy and the authority to gather intelligence. Why does Congress want to control intelligence? Because classified reports from around the world are very significant in the making of foreign policy. If Congress can dominate our clandestine services—knowing and approving every operation and making the entire intelligence community serve it as well as the White House—members will have gone a long way toward not only influencing and regulating foreign policy but initiating it. In my view, that would so politicize our international interests that we would be babbling incoherently around the world. The free world can never put its safety and trust in the inconsistent politics of 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Democrats in Congress are embarked on a revolution to rewrite the Constitution in partisan power terms. It is one of the most dangerous developments in our public life. Inouye and others looked to the most obvious means to bolster their push for power.

So the committee chose a public roasting. But North, Poindexter, Reagan, and others openly challenged their maneuver to curb long-established presidential authority. This is what the real fight is about. Congress wants preeminence over the executive branch. America is witnessing a classic internal power struggle, a revolution going to the constitutional foundation of the Republic. These are strong words, but Congress has launched a powerful attack. That is why some basic understanding of American intelligence is important. This apparatus is now at the center of a battle at the highest levels of our national leadership. The opening salvos, fired by Church, Pike, and other liberals as they savagely attacked the CIA in 1975 and 1976, were only the beginning. The Democrats then leaked the final House report to _The Village Voice._ They also leaked excerpts of the final Senate reports to the media. They broke the very pledge the committees said Congress could and would keep. And such leaking has persisted ever since.

In April 1976 I wrote a critical minority report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, saying the Church hearings had been "sensationalized." No one in government had adopted the assassination of foreign leaders as intelligence policy. Church and the Democrats had issued a special report which largely implied that. By listing various assassination plots, they lent credence to their claim that the CIA had become a bunch of killers. In many instances their proposed reforms brushed aside government cases in the courts that would have allowed the CIA and FBI to undertake certain counterintelligence activities. I refer in particular to activities to help block hostile foreign intelligence. I also disagreed with their recommendations that would effectively have paralyzed FBI efforts to deal with mob violence. The climax of the hearings came in a bitter confrontation between William Colby, then director of the CIA, and former director Richard Helms. I recall their testimony well, but, for the purposes of these recollections, both men recently gave me their accounts of what happened then and the importance of events since. All of us agree that those were traumatic times for U.S. intelligence.

Colby was the principal player in this drama, which really began in 1974 with published reports that the CIA had conducted illegal activities inside the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. The agency had no such jurisdiction. It was President Ford, vacationing in Vail, Colorado, who publicly confirmed that the agency had been involved in assassinations abroad. Ford then created the Rockefeller Commission to undertake a private investigation of the charges. After the Vice President's group was formed, Congress quickly established committees to look into the same allegations. Colby decided that he would beat Ford and Congress to the punch. He disclosed the agency's "skeletons" to Ford himself. These secret files revealed details of illegal CIA activities during the 1950s and 1960s. This included a revelation that was a sure public shocker—that the CIA had plotted the assassinations of Fidel Castro and Marxist leader Patrice Lumumba of the Belgian Congo. Colby also confirmed that the agency had operated unlawfully within the United States, opening private mail, investigating reporters who had published leaked information that had been classified, engaging in electronic eavesdropping, and other invasions of privacy.

Colby's strategy was brilliant. He would go public with the revelations, appealing to fair-minded members of Congress and the American people to understand the shadowy world in which the CIA operated. He knew the Rockefeller Commission report, which would go to the President, could not long remain confidential. Colby and the agency would be seen as coming clean. He would be sacrificing his career, but it was dead anyway. In the course of carrying out this strategy, Colby not only turned the other cheek to his attackers in Congress but went one crucial step further: He joined them. Colby mentally abandoned the agency to which he had given his entire career and was still directing—indeed, had risked his life for—for a mess of questionable motives. Step by step, like a man confessing the sins of a lifetime, Colby began to disavow what he saw as sins of the Silent Service. In doing so, he dismantled its tradition of secrecy. Colby thought that Congress should be allowed into the innermost chambers of intelligence. This would protect our elected representatives from future embarrassments like assassination plots. The agency would also be protected. If Congress knew, both operations and bureaucratic asses would be covered.

Colby had found the CIA a new place in the cold—a calculated distance between the White House and Congress. This would isolate the agency from presidents like Nixon, who had pushed the CIA into illegal domestic activities. But presidents Kennedy and Johnson had operated similarly with federal agencies. The CIA chief apparently thought he had seen the handwriting on the wall when Congress passed the Hughes-Ryan Amendment in 1974. That statute forbade the agency from engaging in covert operations without informing eight different congressional committees. This meant that more than 160 members, plus staff members, would know of any secret operation. With a total of some 200 people in the know, leaks were as certain as sunrise. I never understood how a circumspect man like Colby could cave in to so many big mouths in Congress. Members themselves openly admitted the Hill could not keep a secret, even to protect the lives of Americans engaged in dangerous secret missions. I made my disagreement with Colby and my disapproval of Congress's encroachment on these covert activities crystal clear. The CIA took another route: The agency simply didn't undertake missions that could be blown by Congress. That meant it put important covert operations in cold storage. The result was an absurd shackling of the CIA.

In fairness to Colby, the times had targeted him and the agency. Congress was marching on the White House to capture presidential territory because Nixon had left the office weakened. In the minds of some Democrats, the Oval Office was almost defenseless. Ford was trying to distance himself from the CIA and certain other agencies because Nixon had made improper use of them. If one man is responsible for the increasing congressional challenge to the prerogatives and power of the presidency, it is Nixon. His ironic legacy was to destroy the protective gates of the White House itself. Colby argued that the separation of powers gave Congress the right to be much more aware of intelligence actions. He also implicitly maintained that the American people had a right to know more of what their government was doing. However, Colby never adequately addressed the constitutional question regarding congressional invasion of presidential power. Nor did he deal with the major problem of leaks. Neither Colby nor Congress answered other important questions: How many in Congress should be trusted with the nation's top secrets? Who in the White House and other parts of the executive branch, including the CIA, should share which secrets?

If America had not yet come to terms with spying, at least one man had—Helms. He maintained that the country should keep its secrets. Helms thus contradicted Colby's conclusion before the Church committee and other investigations. Helms would batten down the agency's hatches, letting it be known that extensive public disclosure could neutralize the agency's effectiveness and endanger its people. Colby's premise that the CIA could deal its secrets to Congress in exchange for its protection was unacceptable to Helms. He had had just as much personal conflict over that crucial question as Colby but had come to a completely different conclusion. Although he was no Boy Scout, Helms was just as principled as Colby. His moral strength came from his fierce loyalty to the agency, its mission, and its people. Helms and I were of the old school. If intelligence was to be effective, it had to be secret. On July 26, 1777, George Washington wrote to Col. Elias Dayton, "For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue."

By virtue of his office and the power granted him by the Constitution, the President, as commander in chief, is the source and protector of this trust. He should consult with Congress and, indeed, trust certain members with the nation's most important secrets. But that trust, to be assured, must be restricted to a handful of members of both parties. A bipartisan foreign policy could thus be developed and continuously maintained. If internal conflict about a serious national security development were to arise, those trusted elected officials could consult with other appropriate Americans in and out of government. Instead, Colby was in a mood to give Congress its way. I was not then and am not today. Colby was a compromiser, as the national mood then seemed to demand. The director thus broke the agency's code of silence and publicly damned its traditions in the process. Colby says he acted on behalf of the separation of powers. I question whether that is an accurate description of his actions. I don't believe he had the right or duty to pose as a mediator while actually running interference for Congress in the dispute over who was to manage our intelligence activities. Colby has shifted ground a bit on congressional oversight. He recently told me, "I would be happy to see the present two congressional committees involved in oversight of the CIA boiled down to one—a joint committee of the Senate and House. To as few people as possible. I believe it would be a mistake to go back to the old days of Senator Russell. But I think it's very useful for Barry Goldwater to say, 'Now, wait a minute. Let's not go too far.' "

Helms has a much more direct approach: "You can't keep secrets with the present system. The whole ship of state leaks. Leaks are one of the five most critical problems before the nation. It's not important who leaks—Congress, the administration or anyone else. The real issue is that the officials charged with this trust must work out a system of checks and balances whereby they are actually accountable for the confidence placed in them." One way to discourage leaks would be to force leakers to resign from the intelligence committees. This occurred, in effect, in the case of the Democratic senator from Vermont, Patrick Leahy. His colleagues were furious with him, and he resigned in the face of probable committee action after it was disclosed that he had leaked secret intelligence committee material to "NBC News." Leahy had voted with his colleagues not to release the information. So it was a real double cross. If an offense is sufficiently serious, I believe Congress should remove the violators from office, and, in some cases, jail them. If the President is not above the law, as so many legislators remind us, neither are members of Congress.

Helms is pessimistic. He told me that nothing would be done about the leaks until the United States suffers a disaster, something that shakes the Republic to its foundations: "You don't have fellows like Senator Russell and Representative George Mahon in Congress anymore, men who were confident of who and what they were. They didn't feel they had to make political hay out of our secrets or a lot of other things that came down the political road. It's a rat race up on Capitol Hill today. Everybody is competing with everybody else. The senior men don't stand out as primarily interested in the Republic. Hell, no. These fellows think about what's good for them. When the country is mentioned, it's in terms of interest groups—real estate operators, investment bankers, a P A C, or some other group. "Patriotism has slipped. Look at the number of American spies we are turning up—and for paltry sums of money in some cases. A minimum sense of patriotism would have prevented that. Take a hard look at what is happening in this country. Be my guest."

Colby, Helms, and I clearly agree on one point: The most important basic problems facing U.S. intelligence agencies today are not the Soviet KGB or other enemies abroad. They are the leaks and the American media's recurrent publication and airing of top military and other highly classified material that allows our national security to be compromised. Congress alone is not to be blamed. The executive branch is also guilty. Colby was outraged when, in 1986, a detailed description of how this country had built the new American Stealth bomber appeared in print. The disclosure was the start of a major struggle that is now arising over specific media revelations that many of us see as compromising the national interest. There is an epidemic of leaks in Washington, as Woodward himself admits in his book. The arrogance with which many in the media defend their position favoring disclosure has not diminished. They insist that the media have the right under the First Amendment to publish even top secret projects. The claim that they are somehow the major inheritors of our most basic freedoms is inherently false. The situation calls out for some of us to knock some constitutional sense into them. The media have effectively become the fourth branch of government, yet there is no provision for outside checks and balances on them. This has not worked, and it never will.

It's clear that the media's First Amendment chorus rings more hollowly across the country with each passing year. Millions of Americans are waiting for an opportunity to take the media on. The issue may well become the fiercest fight in the history of media-government relations. We will see whether the media's uncompromising but tired defense—that it's the government's responsibility to protect secrets and the media's duty to reveal them—is correct. The government is now burdened with virtually all the responsibilities while the media enjoy most of the rights. If it's our duty to protect those secrets, let's be a great deal tougher about it. A 1950 federal law makes it illegal to publish classified material on communication intelligence and provides criminal penalties for anyone who does so. The law is not being invoked for several reasons. The major one is that the same government leaders and others who would bring such charges are the ones doing the leaking. Some have formed arrangements with newsmen to obtain favorable treatment. Others are concerned that if they get tough on the law, the media will attack them.

I favor using that law as a starting point and changing it to penalize those who leak to the media as well. The law would be toughened to ensure that those peddling classified information would pay an increasingly higher price. The business and sport of Washington is talking, night and day. The nation's capital is the Hoover Dam of leaks. I have long said there are more leaks in Washington than in Anheuser-Busch's biggest men's room. If any spy wants to know what is going on, all he has to do is frequent the bars around Capitol Hill and elsewhere and he will go home loaded with inside information. No law will entirely end the leaks. I am not blaming the media for all the leaks. I do not, for example, blame Woodward or the Washington _Post_ for the disclosures on the CIA. It appears painfully obvious that some people both in and out of government spilled their guts. Our first and foremost aim must be to stop the leaks within government. The only way I know how to do that is by law, with severe penalties.

Stopping the leaks means changing the character of Washington. Yet we are obliged as a nation and a people to try to do it. If we are to institute stiff prison and other penalties, the media and most liberals will begin a knockdown fight. Good. Let's go to it. The American people should know more about leaks. No self-respecting conservative could pass up such a glorious showdown. I will be there swinging at the leakers in government and the media with everything I have left in my weary old bones. With my new artificial right knee, I'm more mobile for a fight, and my trusty cane is also ready! This battle originated in the past. My recollection of events during the mid-1970s summarizes the first big struggle in Congress over the direction of U.S. intelligence. To me, Colby's attitude was just one example of the sad direction we had taken. Watergate and Vietnam had been used as crosses for a national crucifixion. To me, they were more like two thieves who had robbed the national treasury. The country was filled with self-seekers and weak sisters—like so many street people and draft dodgers—who masqueraded under the banner of righteous dissent. We heard a new language—values, lifestyle, pop culture, counterculture, charismatic communication—the speech of a new and selfish generation.

Old-fashioned virtue, distinctions between right and wrong, were being ridiculed. For many, breaking the law had become their new Bill of Rights. Jane Fonda had gone to Hanoi to propagandize with the Communists and had become a liberal heroine. I believe she was a political whore. Jimmy Doolittle and a lot of other guys with real guts were my heroes. I didn't believe God was dead. I still put my faith in country—and in the CIA, when the chips were down. Jimmy Carter arrived in 1977 to let us know that we were being reborn under a messenger of God in the White House. He made it clear that Satan—"thieves and crooks" was the Oval Office expression—lived at the CIA's seven-story headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Carter appointed Admiral Stansfield Turner to cut the devil's fangs. That became Turner's First Commandment. If Carter handed Turner the knife, Vice President Walter Mondale twisted it. Mondale detested the CIA. That was evident to me as I watched him in Intelligence Committee work. Mondale pushed Turner behind the scenes into what eventually became a massacre of some of the agency's best and brightest people.

Another wrecking crew was Ambassador Andrew Young and his "Manson family" at the United Nations in New York. Young had no use for the FBI and such agencies. That was because former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had investigated Young, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other black leaders of the civil rights movement. Young's hatred had become pathological. CIA agents called his staff the "Manson family," referring to the drug-crazed California mass killers, because they believed their behavior at the United Nations was crazy. Our U.N. delegation often contradicted and sniped at U.S. policy while enjoying diplomatic life on Uncle Sam's payroll. They portrayed the CIA, for example, as bad guys who violated human rights. As a CIA agent once put it to me, "Young's people were leftovers from the hippie generation. They were what some of us called 'looney tunes.' " Turner became the most distrusted CIA director in my thirty years in the Senate. I never met a man in the agency who felt he could rely on him. In the guise of ridding the CIA of deadwood and upgrading the agency's technical intelligence, Turner established his rotten reputation by cutting the throat of the CIA's clandestine service. Some 200 longtime covert operators' jobs were abolished. More than 600 others engaged in espionage activities were shoved out on the street. These were not "rogue elephants" of the Church era or break-in artists of Nixon's time. Turner was getting rid of the intellectual cadre, the brains of the CIA. These were people with insight into our enemies' strategy and capabilities. Turner castrated the clandestine service.

The White House word to me and others on Capitol Hill was that the agency had gotten too fat during the Vietnam War. It was necessary to cut back. I didn't believe a word of it because Turner had already begun attempting to micromanage—politicize professional findings is a more accurate description—the assessment process among the agency's analytical corps. This told me a lot about Turner, because these professionals represented the highest cadre of government official in Washington. Their level of education exceeded that of any other department or agency. That included the State Department, which has always falsely claimed to be our elite. Even the superelite at State fall short of the academic credentials of these analysts. Also, these CIA professionals were appointed after objective criteria exams, while many of State's employees are simply members of the Foreign Service old boy network. Turner was distrusted not only because he was a "political" director but because he did not accept the methods and men of the CIA. He not only substituted technological for human intelligence but instituted regular polygraph tests to determine the honesty of his people. The admiral had lost faith in them as human beings, and they lost confidence in him as their director. Many middle management officers no longer saw the agency as an elite breed. In all the turmoil created by Carter, Mondale, and Turner, they came to view it as just another bureaucratic colony at the mercy of those in power. Hundreds resigned.

President Carter and Turner also severely questioned CIA ethics and its secrecy. They were undermining the major reason for the existence of the agency. The CIA was built on this simple but enormously strong foundation: Intelligence can help us avoid major conflict. That is the major reason why I have been such a loyal supporter of the CIA. No one can tell us how many American lives the agency may have saved. Certainly hundreds of thousands of young Americans did not have to go to war because the CIA was able to provide critical, timely information to our leaders about the intentions of our enemies. I know firsthand that the CIA has done extraordinary work during my many years of being associated with U.S. intelligence work. Its story—its own defense—can never be adequately explained for obvious reasons. Let me try to show with a single example how the Carter administration failed the CIA. On November 4, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini's militants occupied the U.S. embassy in Teheran and seized sixty-nine hostages. That number was later reduced to fifty-three when they released some women and blacks. These diplomats were held for 444 days. Not a single American CIA operative was then on the scene in Iran to help Carter and Washington in their struggle to free the hostages. It was an ironic, incredible intelligence disaster. I believe, in significant measure, that wiping out the clandestine service cost Carter the presidency.

There was another irony to all this. Billy Carter, the President's opportunistic brother, flew to Libya to consort with Moammar Khadaffy as an honored guest of his poisonous regime. I don't pretend to know much about the Libyan government "loans" to Billy, but they looked more like gifts to many people—or, to put it more bluntly, bribes. I do know that Senator Birch Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who was charged with investigating Billygate in the Senate, got cold feet and iced the inquiry. He got a lot of hot letters from angry constituents and was subsequently upset in a bid for reelection. Let's face it, Democrats do not investigate Democrats. They investigate Ronald Reagan, Judge Robert Bork, and Oliver North. They don't investigate House Speaker Jim Wright and his deep involvement in the Texas savings and loan scandal, nor how many times Delaware Senator Joseph Biden has lied about his life. When Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 and the Republicans took over control of the Senate, I became chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. One of the first things I did was write a letter to its members. It said, in part, "I believe the committee has to be non-political. This is the reason I haven't moved in and fired all the Democrats and replaced them with Republicans.... I want to repeat that Democrat or Republican doesn't make a darn bit of difference.... Some staff will be replaced but not on a partisan, political basis. I have always believed that our major job is to oversee the intelligence community and to do everything in our power to improve that community, but I don't intend to make a political community of it for one moment. I will not tolerate politics on the part of staff members, and I would implore members of the committee themselves not to take advantage of an eager press to make political brownie points out of the work of the committee...."

I met with Senator Pat Moynihan and told the New York Democrat that I meant what I said in the letter. Although he was vice chairman of the committee, I considered him an equal. My secrets would be his secrets and vice versa. He would preside over the committee when I was not present. I told him that the country came first and our parties second—or even third if things got real hot. Pat is a very partisan guy, but the big Irishman loved the idea. It was kind of mystical to him. "Bipartisan" did not have the ring of poetry, but I could see that Pat was humming it, trying the word out, to see if the syllables had any decent lilt. He rose with a roguish smile. We were marching in step like McNamara's Band. There was a certain irony in the thought. Yes, Moynihan said with a rise in his deep voice, there was a clear, statesman-like ring to it all. It would do nicely, indeed. Of course, I mentioned as casually as an old Arizona desert rat could that CIA director William Casey would at times give the committee highly sensitive information. That would be kept between the chairman and vice chairman—alone. There would be no leaks. I paused. Pat smiled just enough to let me see he agreed. I told him that before any highly classified material would be passed on to all members, both of us would have to agree there was some urgent and compelling reason for them to know. Moynihan nodded solemnly. He was liking things better every moment and had to repress a smile. In the four years we worked together, we never passed along the most sensitive information to the rest of the committee. This compartmentalization worked well.

Moynihan couldn't resist trying to putter at some politics on occasion, and he relished being acting chairman when I was away. Once or twice I hadn't even left town but had only gone to Walter Reed Hospital for checkups. Right away Pat was on the phone to Committee Staff Director Robert "Rob" Simmons. He told Rob that he had taken charge and began issuing a stream of instructions. I was told by committee staffers that Pat and his minority staff sat around his office some evenings, plotting how to outflank Goldwater on certain issues. I found, nevertheless, that Moynihan was rather reliable, once he abandoned partisanship. On one occasion, Pat was—as Irish Catholics like him often put it—the very rock of St. Peter himself. His hour came after a dramatic announcement on the Senate floor. In April 1984 Senator Biden said the CIA had been directly involved in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors. I understood that the Contras—not the agency—had mined three harbors, the Atlantic port of El Bluff and the Pacific ports of Corinto and Puerto Sandino. I stood on the floor and said that, as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, I had no knowledge of any such CIA activity and therefore did not believe the charge to be true.

Although the document was not marked classified, I began reading from a secret report on the matter. Contrary to Woodward's assertion, staff director Rob Simmons did not rush on the floor and rip it from my hands. He told Maine Senator Bill Cohen what was happening. Cohen quietly advised me to halt the speech. I did immediately. And for the first and only time in my three decades in the Senate, I had the record expunged so as not to disclose any secrets. I returned to my office and met Simmons. He insisted that neither Bill Casey nor his deputy, John J. McMahon, had ever made such a disclosure to us. I was uneasy. Casey had never been comfortable with Congress. He distrusted some members and disliked dealing with them. I had known Bill a very long time, and in all those years, that's the way he played the game much of the time. He would withhold facts when it was in his interest. Putting it bluntly, if Bill believed in something, he often did what he damn well pleased. The reason Casey disliked and distrusted Congress was that he saw us as meddling in intelligence. For the most part, I agreed with him. He knew that. There were just too damn many leakers on Capitol Hill. However, he was not above the law which required congressional oversight. My own hope and aim was to change the law to allow less congressional intrusion. Casey just said to hell with Congress. He would find a way around us. I phoned him on various occasions and raised the roof with him. Bill would mumble and stumble around, but I knew he was going to march his own way.

Members of the Intelligence Committee used to laugh when Casey was scheduled to testify before us. While waiting for Bill to arrive, I would often do an imitation of him. I called Casey "Flappy" because both his mouth and arms flapped when he wanted to make a point. He would be like a kid blowing bubbles real fast or imitating a repeater water pistol. His mouth would spray in all directions. It was a mistake, however, to sell him short. That was his game, mumble and spray. Much of the time, I never knew what the hell he was talking about. Neither did anyone else on the committee. That was just the way Bill wanted it. Yet many of us admired him for his bedrock devotion to this country. I had pushed Reagan hard to make Admiral Bobby Inman, former deputy director of the CIA, head of the agency. He had more than twenty years' experience in various aspects of intelligence. He was the first to learn that Billy Carter was playing footsie with Libya. Here was a government official who went directly to the FBI with his information, not to President Carter. Inman was a professional first and everything else second. He was one of the most brilliant men I had ever met in government. I told Reagan that. The President then said to me, "I don't care what you say, Barry. Bill Casey is going to head the CIA."

Reagan was adamant about Casey. He had a fierce loyalty to him. Bill felt the same way about the President. Woodward's claim that Casey told him that the President was lazy is beyond my comprehension. It's contrary to everything I know about Casey. Casey never knocked the President to anyone, and he certainly wouldn't do it to a reporter. It would also have been highly uncharacteristic of Casey to admit to any newsman—Woodward claims it was to him—that he knew about the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras. It's also very hard for me to believe that Woodward got into Bill's room at Georgetown Hospital. If Mrs. Casey says that she or her daughter was in the room twenty-four hours a day during the entire time of Bill's illness, I believe them. I am also convinced that CIA security was good. Also, I was once a patient at the hospital, and my doctor ordered that no one could see me. No one got in. Woodward has never personally told me a lie, and I respect his professional ability. But I believe it was impossible for anyone to have entered Casey's hospital room without the CIA and/or his wife or daughter knowing it.

If Woodward really did get in to interview Casey, this presents even greater problems. Was it right to put this pressure on a dying man? And can the testimony of a man as sick as Casey be relied upon? This is just not good reporting in any case—even if we accept the unlikely idea that Woodward actually talked with Casey as the CIA chief lay dying. If Mrs. Casey has no witness to categorically dispute Woodward's claim of an interview, neither has Woodward clearly confirmed it. In such circumstances, Woodward had a duty to prove that the interview took place and Casey's responses were sufficiently reasonable to be made public. He has not done that. In any event, Reagan wouldn't listen to me on Casey. Bill was his man. Inman always understood what Casey was up to. I said to Bobby one day during a casual conversation, "I notice you often pull up your black socks when Casey is speaking with me or testifying before Congress. Why's that, Bobby?" Inman looked at me as if I had just picked his pocket. Slowly, gauging how to phrase a delicate answer, he finally replied, "Well, I guess that's a habit of mine. Whenever Casey is not telling the truth or is getting something screwed up, I pull up my socks."

"Thanks, Bobby," I said, "that info may help me some day." In any event, I wanted Simmons to find out what Casey was up to in the Nicaraguan mining affair. I told Rob to go over to the CIA and talk with Casey and McMahon as well as see whoever else was necessary to get the truth—and do it fast. A few days later—it was a Friday afternoon—Rob returned to my office. I was alone, sitting at my desk, brooding. I was still trying to unravel the Nicaraguan mess. Only one small light was on. The fading afternoon light flickered through the window blinds. Rob sat down and faced me. His face was somber. He said, "The CIA was directly involved in the mining. Casey withheld the information from us. The President personally gave the go-ahead to start the mining in the fall of 1983. Casey and McMahon admitted it. They claim they told us." I swallowed hard several times, but a lump kept popping up in my throat. I couldn't speak. I was devastated. "Casey said he mentioned it in two hearings," Simmons continued. "I checked the record. In each case, Casey buried it in a single sentence near the end of more than fifty pages of testimony. He mentioned that mines had been laid at three Nicaraguan ports. But the reference was in the context of Contra activities and later Contra funding. There was nothing to indicate the CIA had laid the mines."