American Experience

John Ehrlichman on the Watergate hearing

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You have to bear in mind that the Watergate break-in took place just before the '72 election. It took place in June and the election was going to be in early November. So there were not very many days in there. And I think everybody in the White House and probably the committee to re-elect felt that this break-in was potentially embarrassing regardless of how it happened and nobody really knew how it happened. But the feeling was that whatever was going to happen about that break-in had to happen after the election so that it didn't impair the President's re-election. Moreover, Richard Nixon was passionately desirous of having the largest plurality in the history of the presidency. So he didn't want anything to get in the way. So the cover-up really was not a cover-up, it was a question of timing and the desire that this potentially embarrassing trial, if there was going to be a trial of these burglars, take place after the election. At the same time, we had a lot of discussion with the President about the fact that this was an episode that occurred because of something that happened over at the Committee to Re-elect the President. It didn't happen because of anything in the White House. So if we could be successful in keeping it out of the White House and away from the President, it ought not to be a political embarrassment for him. So those were really the two legs of the effort to control the Watergate problem right after the break-in.

I suppose the break-in affected the election results marginally. McGovern kept pounding away on it especially in the last couple weeks in the campaign. But those two efforts to postpone the trial and to keep it out of the White House failed. The trial was postponed, but Richard Nixon pulled it into the White House. He couldn't leave it alone. And so within a week after the break-in, or maybe two weeks, he had personally involved himself in the intrigue of the whole thing. And the famous smoking gun tape, which was what six days after the break-in, was Richard Nixon involved in this plot to get the CIA to forestall the FBI investigation on the theory that CIA assets were involved and all that kind of thing. So Nixon sealed his fate, as in terms of keeping away from the tar baby, on the 23rd of June.

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