Read Online Blind Ambition: The End of the Story by John W. Dean - Free Book Online
Authors: John W. Dean
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statement that the President anticipated a normal business day, but the President, in fact, wanted reports every half hour, and my office was responsible for gathering the intelligence. Direct lines had been installed between my phone and the command posts at the FBI, the Metropolitan Police, the Secret Service, and the Justice Department. When I picked up any of those lines, a special White House light flashed in the command post. My staff would call each command post for its latest word—what bridges were open, how much violence there was, how many people had been arrested, the general outlook. We would write a hurried report, fire it off to the President, and begin immediately on the next one. We were an information conduit only, making no decisions, but we got a great deal of attention.
Ehrlichman kept calling for information, and Colson popped in and out of the office with questions. Colson’s intrusions became so annoying that Fred Fielding finally suggested in jest that he send a crate of oranges to the demonstrators locked up in jail. Senator Edmund Muskie, his Presidential campaign already under way, had a custom of sending oranges to his volunteers. The idea was that Muskie would be identified with violent antiwar radicals.
“Yeah, Chuck, that’s a great idea,” I chimed in, laughing.
To our surprise, Colson stopped, looked around, and then smiled. “You’re right,” he said, “I’ll do it,” and he dashed out the door. A few hours later he strolled back in. “I sent the oranges,” he said proudly, “and I tipped off the press.”
There were high political stakes involved in the handling of the demonstration, but we were quite distant from the passions and fears as we monitored numbers and information. Distant enough to play war games. On Mayday, I did something I could never have hoped to do when I first became counsel. I asked for, and got, a military helicopter to fly me over the city for a firsthand view. At the last minute I asked Ehrlichman to go with me, and I considered it a coup when this powerful man accepted. Taking various assistants with us, we took off from the Ellipse, and the pilot banked and rolled in the air as we passed over knots of people on the ground. We saw burning cars in Georgetown, a confused maze of little figures running through the streets, and conclaves of demonstrators on university campuses. Flashing police lights and pitched rock battles blended into a general scene of chaos. Ehrlichman, busy with his home movie camera, said little on the flight. When we finally circled back to land at the Ellipse, the ground there was crisscrossed with demonstrators and with blue uniformed police giving chase. We could not land there, said the pilot, so Ehrlichman ordered him to set down on the south lawn of the White House. That pad was strictly reserved for the President, and Ehrlichman later smilingly said he had been chewed out by the First Lady.
By the next day the violence had subsided, and the recriminations began. Critics of the Administration denounced the mass arrest of some ten thousand demonstrators, who later won a court ruling that the arrest methods were illegal. The President announced that he was proud of the government response, and I ushered Chief Wilson and the generals of the Mayday command into his office to receive congratulations.
The Mayday demonstration was at once gruesome and sporting for the officials involved on the inside. It was one of a series of crises that year, many of which served to slowly advance the importance of the counsel’s office. When Lieutenant William Calley was convicted of murder for his part in the mass killing of civilians in the Vietnam village of My Lai, we called all over Washington to order delivery of documents on military law, inundated ourselves, talked with other experts, and became instant experts on the procedures of military courts. (For both legal and political reasons, spelled out at great length, I recommended
Ehrlichman kept calling for information, and Colson popped in and out of the office with questions. Colson’s intrusions became so annoying that Fred Fielding finally suggested in jest that he send a crate of oranges to the demonstrators locked up in jail. Senator Edmund Muskie, his Presidential campaign already under way, had a custom of sending oranges to his volunteers. The idea was that Muskie would be identified with violent antiwar radicals.
“Yeah, Chuck, that’s a great idea,” I chimed in, laughing.
To our surprise, Colson stopped, looked around, and then smiled. “You’re right,” he said, “I’ll do it,” and he dashed out the door. A few hours later he strolled back in. “I sent the oranges,” he said proudly, “and I tipped off the press.”
There were high political stakes involved in the handling of the demonstration, but we were quite distant from the passions and fears as we monitored numbers and information. Distant enough to play war games. On Mayday, I did something I could never have hoped to do when I first became counsel. I asked for, and got, a military helicopter to fly me over the city for a firsthand view. At the last minute I asked Ehrlichman to go with me, and I considered it a coup when this powerful man accepted. Taking various assistants with us, we took off from the Ellipse, and the pilot banked and rolled in the air as we passed over knots of people on the ground. We saw burning cars in Georgetown, a confused maze of little figures running through the streets, and conclaves of demonstrators on university campuses. Flashing police lights and pitched rock battles blended into a general scene of chaos. Ehrlichman, busy with his home movie camera, said little on the flight. When we finally circled back to land at the Ellipse, the ground there was crisscrossed with demonstrators and with blue uniformed police giving chase. We could not land there, said the pilot, so Ehrlichman ordered him to set down on the south lawn of the White House. That pad was strictly reserved for the President, and Ehrlichman later smilingly said he had been chewed out by the First Lady.
By the next day the violence had subsided, and the recriminations began. Critics of the Administration denounced the mass arrest of some ten thousand demonstrators, who later won a court ruling that the arrest methods were illegal. The President announced that he was proud of the government response, and I ushered Chief Wilson and the generals of the Mayday command into his office to receive congratulations.
The Mayday demonstration was at once gruesome and sporting for the officials involved on the inside. It was one of a series of crises that year, many of which served to slowly advance the importance of the counsel’s office. When Lieutenant William Calley was convicted of murder for his part in the mass killing of civilians in the Vietnam village of My Lai, we called all over Washington to order delivery of documents on military law, inundated ourselves, talked with other experts, and became instant experts on the procedures of military courts. (For both legal and political reasons, spelled out at great length, I recommended
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