Read Online Blind Ambition: The End of the Story by John W. Dean - Free Book Online Page B

from me.” I was trying to sound calmly in command. “And whatever you do, don’t talk to Colson.”
    “I won’t go near him, John,” he said. His face portrayed fear, relief, embarrassment, gratitude, and uncertainty that I would be able to save him.
    I stared out the window and wondered if the President’s mind was as cluttered as mine when he stared out his window. Garbage and tension, I thought. I knew I had to get out of this thing. It was out-and-out street crime. I saw fat burglars wearing stocking masks slipping behind firemen and felt a rush of revulsion. And now I was trapped. Caulfield was on my staff, and I knew the plan before the fact. In order to escape, I would have to stop it. I suppressed a dart of anger at Caulfield, and then at Colson, before focusing on strategy. I thought about going straight to Colson, but rejected the idea. He was too fired up about Halperin’s papers and too forceful. He might pull out all the stops to break me down. He was powerful, and he might squeeze me to choose between this break-in and my job as counsel. Then I thought of Ehrlichman.
    Ehrlichman was in San Clemente with the President. By now I could get him directly on the phone, although I did so sparingly. “John,” I said, “something’s come up here that requires your firm hand.” I was trying to make light of it. “I can’t talk to you about it on the phone, so I’d really like to come out there and see you for a few minutes, if you can work me in tomorrow. It’ll only take a few minutes.” He could tell I was rattled, and I worried about it; being rattled was not an admired state in the White House.
    “Okay,” he said evenly. Ehrlichman did not waste words.
    That afternoon I flew to San Clemente on the C-135, a courier flight, and Bob Mardian sat beside me. I asked him why he was going out to San Clemente, and he replied that he had to speak directly with the President about a matter so sensitive he couldn’t tell me a thing. (He was worried, I learned later, that J. Edgar Hoover might blackmail the Administration with his knowledge of the President’s special wiretaps against newsmen and employees suspected of leaking.) I was impressed and bested, since I could say only that I had to speak directly with Ehrlichman on a matter so sensitive I couldn’t tell Mardian a thing. We chatted and played gin rummy. Mardian, an old Arizona colleague of Dick Kleindienst and Senator Barry Goldwater, was considered tough as nails in the Administration. His shiny dome and huge hands were his most striking features. He had little sense of humor, but he tried hard to be sociable.
    On the following morning I had the first of what would be many encounters that revealed John Ehrlichman to be unflappable. I was quite exercised in his office, giving him a speech about an outright break-in, which was hardly a run-of-the-mill affair. I kept waiting for him to interrupt me with some sort of question or exclamation, but he never did. He just sat there, staring out over the top of his half-rimmed glasses like a professor. The only sign of interest he gave was an occasional slight twitch of an eyebrow. Meanwhile, I offered every practical argument I could think of against the scheme: criminal statutes that would be violated, the likelihood that Halperin had other copies, the security around the safe, the exposure of Caulfield, on and on.
    “Yep, okay,” he said finally, nodding. “I’ll take care of it.”
    He picked up the phone and called Colson. “Chuck, that Brookings thing. We don’t want it anymore. I’m telling Dean to turn Caulfield off. Right. Goodbye.”
    I felt a great weight lift off me, and I admired the ease with which Ehrlichman had removed it. I also admired the skill with which he had handled me. He showed no hint of a reaction—no surprise, no argument, no demonstration of his knowledge. Impulsive reactions could be telling, and Ehrlichman had protective instincts. I wondered then if this thing had