Following the Rules with Dita and Dick
Boyd, James
Following the Rules with Dita and Dick by James Boyd On February 29, 1972, Jack Anderson published a confidential memorandum written by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) lobbyist...
...Our fascination was not so much in the revelations as in the initial responses of ITT and the GOP...
...There are other methods for hiding damaging witnesses and incriminating papers...
...The Beard memo and the admissions it flushed out embraced a number of felonies that lay in the jurisdiction of several different Senate committees and subcommittees, and several more in the House-some of them unfriendly to the Administration...
...But, because of the indiscretions of lesser figures, matters had deteriorated to a more critical phase, in which the principals were called upon to testify...
...All the media jumped on this expose, but we at The Washington Monthly had a special interest...
...And the unpredictable Senator Ervin, who had some reputation as a jurist, said that the Republicans were asking the Democrats “to sit in judgment first and hear the evidence after...
...The senators cleared out, like abortionists at the first sign of a mortal fiasco...
...A target,” says Gallagher, “is one selected by our secret police society...
...Our conjecture is that by offering up Kleindienst, who was expendable, the heat was taken off people more vulnerable and closer to the President...
...The given explanation is that Kleindienst asked for the investigation, to clear away any cloud that might be over him before taking office as Attorney General...
...government from the few senators Immunity is a doctrine by which actually pressing the probe, notably the Legislative branch claims pro- Kennedy and Tunney...
...Chairman Eastland did not admit the tests, of course, but even the threat to intrude direct factual confrontation into a field that thrives upon vagueness and built-in escape hatches will tend to curtail the future use of exotic expertise...
...but Dita’s flight continued, placing her associates in increasing jeopardy...
...No legal plan that does not take into account the mistakes of clients, however, is worth much, and our Plan had a bail-out provision to cover even this situation: Feign illness and a sort of stunned vacuity, as if the indignity of it all is too much for your sensitive nature...
...selective admissions could then be made, but for now-nothing...
...The absconding witness appeared as a righteous mother, zealous for her and her family’s honor, “extremely anxious to testify,” lying in wait for senators who were now afraid to face her in Denver...
...She then reported that the $200,000 commitment* had James Boyd is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...
...But there was more to her than brass, courage, and experience of the world...
...man Eastland would sustain the proThe ITT-GOP propaganda teams test...
...A dozen persons were seriously implicated, including an Attorney General, five White House aides, an ex-governor, a lieutenant governor, a congressman, some officers of the Republican National Committee, several corporate officials, and various subordinates at the Justice Department...
...She would become so disoriented that she would be incapable of a legal act, such as signing a will or a contract...
...But the confederates knew they were coasting on this one...
...Transparent and ridiculous, you say...
...If he is confirmed, all are vindicated...
...journalism” and charging Q frame by A face-saving formula was therefore the ‘‘power-hungry media...
...You are being testify at all, but that position made persecuted by political enemies who the Senate look so futile that senators want to discredit you...
...Weeks passed after Herman’s lofty directive, but not a cent had been given back...
...but Fleming failed to cover his tracks in places, and it was needlessly revealed that he was on the ITT payroll and in cahoots with the Republican Party...
...on the contrary, the list of people to whom she had authenticated it was lengtheningITT officials, Brit Hume, Congressman Bob Wilson, and most recently, her doctor, Victor Liszka...
...vote could be politically hazardous At the outset, there were five since it would require the unanimous possible repositories of conclusive support of committee Republicans, proof against ITT-COP: Dita Beard, plus a couple of the less reputable the ITT files, the Justice Department Dixiecrats, leaving Democrats in the files, Securities and Exchange Com- happy and unaccustomed posture of mission records previously submitted backing honest investigation...
...We had provided a rule for trying to nail down an advantage before it eroded: If partial confession and restitution fail to stem the headlines, arrange a quickie exoneration from a semirespected source...
...The sacks of documents, he said, contained “tourist brochures, newspaper clippings, speeches, and drafts of legislation”-nothing of the sort that would link ITT’s gift with the Justice Department...
...Her condition was “serious...
...and that since the Judiciary Committee had held his confirmation hearings, it was the natural group to hear his explanation...
...To Anderson, kind and sympathetic in his private capacities, this sort of thing is just ritual to be gotten through, and he is no more deterred by it than is a surgeon by the sight of blood...
...David Garland, an osteopathic physician, who would not reveal how Mrs...
...And Murray Chotiner Nixon’s old campaign manager, came out of retirement to conjecture that “ITT might have been planning to make a $500,000 contribution to the Democratic Party...
...Since it was out in the open anyway, it was better to own up en masse rather than have the names extracted from Geneen one by one on the witness stand...
...There was conflicting testimony throughout the hearings about whether the amount of the pledge was $200,000, $400,000, or $600,000...
...the meeting had not taken place until September, two months after the settlement, and ITT hadn’t been mentioned...
...If so, after “refreshing our memory” or “consulting our records,’’ admit to these too, but to no more...
...At ITT, President Geneen, too, couldn’t be located, but ITT put out a statement: “There was no deal of any kind to settle our antitrust cases...
...The Plan, however, provided another way out: worked out whereby Flanigan could Claim constitutional immunity...
...For instance: After Mitchell told the press that he didn’t have the faintest idea about the ITT contribution to the San Diego convention, Lt...
...But we rush ahead...
...it cannot focus if, for every ball it identifies in the air, two more are thrown up...
...The New York Times immediately got in touch with a recognized document authority, Ordway Hilton, who disparaged the findings of ITT’s analysts, saying the methods they used would not have accurately dated the memo and “there has been no basic research on which to base this sort of conclusion...
...She is a woman who was once engaged to three men at the same time, who used up two husbands, and raised five children by herself...
...he was determined to bestow this honor on the folk who had witnessed his early struggles and thereby to give to the convention the proper note of apotheosis...
...Beard would be hospitalized indefinitely and that the committee would have to either interview her by mail or come to the hospital for a rigorously controlled session, designed to avoid upsetting the patient...
...Teetering and disheveled, she wept that her future was at stake and with Wagnerian importunity placed her existence in the hands of the gentlemanly Hume...
...The specific issue that Kleindienst asked to be heard on was: Had he lied to Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O’Brien when he wrote him that McLaren had “handled and negotiated exclusively” the ITT settlements...
...its taxpayers objected to their money being wasted...
...It contained 23 recommendations and described 88 historical precedents of their successful use, arranged seriatim...
...This wasn’t easy for witnesses who were known to be the core of Nixon’s political high command, especially after Lt...
...Dita Davis Beard was not normally a weak sister...
...Or Boss Kenney of Jersey City, who showed up for his extortion trial in a wheelchair, attended by a nurse...
...McClellan for using his political clout to promote his banking interests...
...Did you notice that in the midst of his recent bribery trial, Congressman Dowdy was rushed by ambulance to the hospital with a heart attack that turned out to be subjective chest pains, and that he blamed his prosecution on “homosexuals, urban renewal interests, and the Eastern liberal establishment...
...But San Diego didn’t want the honor and wouldn’t ante up the required money...
...Beard...
...The hospital gambit, however, was working well...
...McLaren closed the circle by confirming to the press that he alone had handled the litigation with ITT without any involvement by Mitchell, Kleindienst, or the White House...
...Who’d want to have a convention in San Diego...
...Was it really necessary, on the way to his car, to brush past that reporter while a bodyguard pushed her out of the way, or to respond to her petitions with a gruff “watch your arm” as the car door slammed...
...But some of the less stalwart supporters of Kleindienst and Mitchell were troubled by the appearances of prematurity, especially since JXta Beard was still missing and unexplained...
...Lobbyist-in-chief for the most predatory corporation in the world, she was at 53 a tough, ribald operator who had made a career out of manipulating high politicians...
...Thus Kleindienst, the most personable of the group, contented himself with saying that as “an officer of the government” he had a duty to see people like Rohatyn, even five times...
...Meanwhile, newspaper reporters were still digging up stories, trying to blow the matter up, which encouraged the dissidents on the Judiciary Committee to draw up lists of prospective witnesses...
...Confess to what is known /by the other sideJ, evade what‘ is unknown...
...Thus was the low estate of Mrs...
...Scott’s most apt apprentice was Senator Marlow Cook...
...It was widely known, then, that it was he who was making political decisions...
...ITT should never have made the offer, he said...
...In simiwhile its former potency was excised lar fashion, crucial files and witnesses with a legal scalpel called “immuni- were systematically withheld by the ty...
...It now seems inevitable and natural that the Beard furor should have been resolved by a Judiciary Committee probe of Richard Kleindienst...
...The way Dole remembered it, Nixon favored some Midwestern town, maybe Kansas City...
...He held in his hand one of her memos, he said, and the age-old drama recommenced...
...But press stones began to, appear saying that Mrs...
...It was as though mystic hands were guiding an insoluble dilemma toward its only bearable solution...
...The official report that Dita had been admitted to the cardiac unit of an osteopathic hospital in Denver was anti-climactic...
...Admittedly, the Administration witnesses made heavy weather of it, with their admissions of earlier misstatements and all the “I don’t remembers...
...There were no positive findings from a physical examination, electrocardiogram, or chest x-rays...
...I did not know as of that time and still don’t know what arrangement the Republican Party had with San Diego or anyone else...
...p.33) crime that is related to the perform- The dissidents sought to avert this ance of his duties, and a presidential fate by motioning that the committee appointee cannot even be questioned pin down the perjuries patent in the unless the President agrees...
...The committee, on an 11-4 vote, would undoubtedly have impounded the files on the grounds that the Senate must not use documents obtained illegally...
...The working infantry was to be Senators Cook, Hruska, and Dole, while the chief Flannelmouth would be Senator Hugh Scott...
...As the other side trotted out example after example of ITT and Administration figures Kleindienst had dealt with on the suits-Ryan’ Walsh, Rohatyn, Flanigan, Solicitor General Griswold, Ramsden-the unabashed nominee merely confessed to what was now known and kept evading the unknown...
...Beard on March 3, the FBI was in hot pursuitwatching airports, trailing her children, staking out her pharmacists...
...Or Congressman Cornelius E. Gallagher, the favorite of our 1970 Plan: recently indicted for perjury and conspiracy, Gallagher began smartly by claiming he was a “political target...
...One could sense Dr...
...All are in deep trouble now, but none are in jail yet...
...Unless she were permitted to testify in the hospital and clear everything up, Senator Scott threatened to boycott “that circus...
...Beard would have to be rehabilitated...
...As agile as Dr...
...30) By the time Mrs...
...But how could the government account for its total accessibility to IT...
...Other than John Mitchell, Ed Reinecke, Bob Haldeman, and Nixon (besides Wilson, of course) no one has known from whom that $400,000 commitment had come,” she wrote...
...It seemed careless of his reputation for accessibility for Kleindienst to have said, “Letters like that are routinely handled by my staff...
...Such charges would be made daily by either Hruska, Mitchell, Kleindienst, Fong, or Ziegler in an effort to paint the press as part of the Democratic conspiracy...
...All traces of the FBI had vanished...
...With that, the dream of a San Diego convention began to fade...
...Pearl Tytell, a handwriting expert, and Dr...
...The photo was turned over to the eager Cook who distributed it to the press as support for his claim that Miss Ginn and Mrs...
...The revelation of an incriminating gift is always an embarrassment...
...A major gossip columnist printed a journalist’s recollection of how he had personally assisted Dita Beard during a previous heart attack she had suffered on a plane...
...he could take the Fifth, claim insanity, turn state’s evidence, plea bargain, or indulge in other devices of the guilty...
...And Congressman Bob Wilson of California was at that moment telling the San Diego Union that President Geneen had negotiated the $200,000 offer personally and that the famous memo had indeed been written by Dita Beard and received and read by Vice President Merriam...
...The only implication of misconduct, he said, “is in a memorandum written by a poor soul -it’s just a sad situation...
...Garland’s statement was a chiller...
...the panel duly reported back its opinion that no papers in that category had been destroyed...
...Its origin is said to lie in the We touch upon here the greatest need to protect the independence of boon in our legal system-the blocked each from the other, but it is most indictment...
...he was always willing to talk privately with businessmen about out-of-court settlements...
...All that the combined forces of the United States and ITT could come up with, however, was an old photo of Anderson’s secretary, Opal Ginn, posing with a group that included Dita Beard...
...Our Washington and New York offices were Panicksville,” Mrs...
...Smith had raised millions for Nixon in the past and now sent out a pep-talk letter to area businessmen...
...With a stockholders’ annual meeting coming up in three weeks, he couldn’t let that stand...
...Hruska for investments in pornographic movies and for being in bed with the drug industry...
...Beard was seriously ill and unable to testify...
...Mitchell is definitely helping us but cannot let it be known...
...Beard “met often for drinks” at the Sheraton-Carlton, and were “close friends,” obviously now allied in a conspiracy...
...the offender is removed, the public appetite is satisfied, and the rest is forgotten...
...There is no appeal from often used today as a shield against the prosecutor who refuses to proseexposure...
...And so the rule: If it looks like a one-shot affair, hide till it blows over...
...Mitchell again went them one better, rising to the pinnacle of invincible ignorance...
...Helpless tears come and hysteria ferments...
...Jt was important to appearances that the new Mrs...
...But an insensitivity to overkill, sloppy staff work, and a lack of cohesion in the ranks poisoned the victory that was within grasp...
...The practical result is that a cute or the investigating committee congressman cannot be tried for any which refuses to investigate...
...Or Tony Boyle, who, confronted with Mrs...
...He took on part two of the decoy campaign-the traditional lament that the press is misleading the public...
...Oftenbmes that tactic alone will cause a scandal to peter out for lack of nourishment, especially if the accused parties control the law enforcement machinery...
...The good doctor laid the scientific base: Her “irrationality,” which sometimes affected her thought processes, and her actions and sentences, could be caused by the heart’s failure during a sudden attack to pump enough blood to provide oxygen for the brain...
...A major rebuff loomed...
...Then, down around the righteous McLaren’s ears came tumbling all the facts about Kleindienst’s many interventions...
...So high had Mrs...
...McCrone, including an unfortunate statement by a federal judge that McCrone had given answers that “tend to impeach him...
...Part three was the villification of Jack Anderson...
...No, but there was a difference...
...It began with some boiler plate from Senator Fannin, written by the Republican National Committee, accusing Anderson of “trivia, innuendo, distortion, or untruth to make a headline...
...Liszka shifting gears and moving into high...
...Having lost the facility of judgment-putting things together in an uncontrolled fashion-she could have written an inaccurate memo...
...There would be some camouflage about labor costs and carpenters being behind schedule, and suddenly the convention was going to be in Miami Beach...
...Kleindienst led off with the burden of defending his statement’that he had neither negotiated nor handled the ITT cases...
...Then it turned out that the accommodating Liszka had been on the payroll of ITT, that he was being investigated by a federal grand jury, as was his doctor-wife, for Medicare frauds (Liszka was later cleared, his wife indicted), that he had conferred with the Justice Department before his testimony, and also that he had reported to ITT for years about Mrs...
...But the imperium of President Geneen was demeaned by all this nonchalance...
...During the hearings, the other side will undoubtedly come up with a few new embarrassments...
...The only way left to freshen up the hearing room was to move the convention out of San Diego...
...The President helped by having Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler remind the nation that the function of White House aides was to hear the complaints of all walks of life...
...Among ITT witnesses, President Geneen was granted the same peak of Olympian isolation from dirty details that was accorded Mitchell on the GOP wing...
...He would have the conflicting testimony changed to conform to his, which perhaps attests as much to his power as his style...
...Beard regally awaited the interview by senators, who were intimidated into hushed deference by all the medical trappings...
...Ed Gillenwaters, Reinecke’s companion at the conference with Mitchell, corroborated this story to still other reporters...
...What decent motive could ITT have for giving $200,000 to the Republican Party...
...Mrs...
...And so it is...
...tection from prosecution by the With the investigation on its back Executive and the Executive claims and scarcely wriggling, the moment sanctuary from investigation by Con- had arrived for the coup de grace...
...and surely by now ways must be known by which lawyers can have meetings with I-Iruska and Scott in places where they will not be observed...
...37) The decoys are always floated by what we call the Party Flannelmouths...
...33) To use this approach, it was necessary to claim ignorance of the $200,000 which made the San Diego convention a possibility...
...And the Plan is very busy...
...Worse, there were indications of bad blood between her and rival executives at ITT, the kind of venom that sometimes rises above material considerations...
...the abandonment and betrayal of poor, widowed Dita by ITT superiors...
...30) This rule presumed an implicit subtlety: in the hour of accusation an official might drop out of sight or otherwise avoid being drawn onstage until, with no fresh winds to feed upon, the tempests would subside...
...But sour comment like that missed the larger logic of our rule: Better to fumble around and be thought incompetent than to answer correctly and be found guilty...
...And they are right...
...Before the session ended, Bayh bloated the probe beyond recognition and Kennedy had walked out, exasby pumping in artificial exhibits, perated with the Constitution...
...Nunn, too, was rendered a dubious witness when it was revealed that he had first told the press that he could not remember if Mrs...
...Thus it came to pass that the ITT incident was closed down without serious harm to any of the defendants...
...The Plan, however, intended such performances for carefullyscreened juries, or congressmen, or others who naturally identify with defendants...
...The late Drew Pearson [Anderson’s partner and mentor] made a marvelous decoy because so many congressmen had been burned by him...
...Beard was an old acquaintance, Nunn said, who drank heavily and had become “obsessed” about losing her job...
...The bidding rules were waived, the competition rigged, and other cities snubbed in order that San Diego might qualify to win...
...Beard’s memo...
...Geneen observed our rule, too, and even improvised effectively...
...Kleindienst set the pace...
...If the accused politician were an ordinary criminal defendant, he would have no need of our Plan...
...Nunn was the host of the party at which Mrs...
...They had made “microscopic, ultra-violet flourescence and highly sophisticated . microchemical analyses,” and concluded that the June 25 memo printed by Anderson had to have been typed on a date later than June 25, six months later, in fact...
...Beard’s written response was one of protest that security had been violated...
...Then Mrs...
...The mission was to deny that any Administration figure had participated in both the suit settlement and the solicitation of the $200,000-or even knew about both...
...They’re frankly afraid of hearing the truth...
...How does one explain such attentiveness...
...Tytell $1,000 a day and about previous debacles involving Dr...
...An uncooperative waiter at the purported rendezvous popped up to say that the picture was taken at his retirement party and that in his 25 years as a waiter there, he had never seen the two together before...
...Joseph Snyder and Ray Pryor, two Denver cardiologists chosen by the president of the Denver Medical Association to make an independent examination of Mrs...
...For a time, the plan was to tie in Chappaquiddick as a sort of grand finale...
...And having the Judiciary Committee as the tribunal has many advantages...
...both its majority and minority leaders judged that one day would be enough to establish the nominee’s fitness...
...Kleindienst, while espousing his duty to meet daily with ITT officers, revealed that he didn’t bother to even look at mail from parties representing the public in the same dispute-e.g...
...Thus, she must be regarded as potentially the most damaging witness and dealt with accordingly...
...Liszka was with diagnoses, he attributed her collapse to a combination of exhaustion, her heart ailment, and alcohol...
...Each of these careless admissions created headlines and stimulated a hundred reporters to search for more...
...To offset this reality, witnesses must claim an ignorance most profound, and stick to it...
...Inevitably, between the early denial and the first testimony under oath, a certain corpus of facts will come out which discredits the original disclaimers...
...It is all wasted on Anderson and his jaded men, who are accustomed to having tycoons, senators, and cabinet types appear before them, at the 1 1 th hour before publication, with the most harrowing of pleas: their families, their careers, their health, the national interest are always at stake, all because of just one little inadvertence...
...Reinecke, in three separate interviews with three different reporters, said that he had briefed Mitchell on the $200,000 offer in May, 197 1 , two months before the ITT suits were settled...
...You have got to play it super-clean and super-safe and just say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ ” Governor Reagan then announced the return as a fait accompli...
...Beard later recalled...
...The Times then escalated the prognosis: Mrs...
...We knew what was coming, because for days before Mrs...
...He may have felt that as minority leader he had special responsibilities to the Party, but he is also one who fancies himself a wit, with a flair for invective, and as the days passed, he seemed to warm to the task...
...Also, the Democrats’ 1968 Chicago debacle had made it part of the common lore that the choice of a convention site is of crucial importance and might even determine the outcome of an election...
...Fleming bounded out to the press, muttering darkly of a “near massive heart attack” brought on by vicious, unworthy men...
...indifference to such a matter is scarcely credible...
...Good form, however, barred this recourse when the Justice Department was itself the defendant-at least at this stage of the proceedings...
...This version squared Geneen with his stockholders, but it sadly deflated the magisterial presence Nixon had planned to affect at the convention...
...But we urge the committee to remember this: Until this memorandum leaked out, Mrs...
...the Derby Day conference with John Mitchell at Governor Nunn’s mansion, complete with mint juleps...
...The only fault we found here was an unfortunate inconsistency of imagery when the question shifted...
...that would be cannibalism...
...Long before publication, Dita could have been whisked to one of those sanitariums that Supercorporations maintain for overworked or troublesome executives...
...The Plan prescribed two general rules for such situations...
...Bellicose from booze, she repeatedly pursued Mitchell, who never left Nunn’s side and who rebuffed Mrs...
...Beard risen in GOP esteem in the two weeks since they had presented her to the world as a dipsomaniac, that her word alone was now held to be definitive...
...The crowd seemed to be on Anderson’s side when he said, “ITT is planning an all-out effort to discredit Mrs...
...And so she awaited the approach of the Monster’s legman in disarray, with only a garbled sense of her mission...
...But not Mitchell...
...We had a proposal for defuzing that danger, channeling it, and bringing it under control: If newsmen persist, bolder moves are advisable: issue a statement requesting an official investigation...
...After a period of soft and inconclusive question, she fell backward, moaning, her face contorted, her arms outstretched to her doctors...
...Each witness reflected this benevolence in his testimony and adopted the formula that the more inaccessible he was reputed to be, the more vehement should be his protestations of friendliness to all comers...
...But the spirit of skepticism needlessly aroused by the document shredding, the flight to Denver, and the long wait before disavowal of the memo, would continue to rob every device of half its impact...
...Such monarchical yearnings are not lightly dismissed by underlings...
...its quiet burghers did not welcome a noisy rabble...
...Ramsden...
...It almost worked...
...Beard, and it got out, too, that his Wqshington office was also the office of the Republican National Comitteeman there, attorney Carl Shipley . Further, shortly before the “tragic” hospital room confrontation with the Senate, Fleming had been seen discussing strategy with Republicans on the Judiciary Committee...
...His predecessors on the stand would take a position, and when it was undermined by other testimony, they would refresh their memories and then change their position to conform to the evidence-our standard recommendation...
...vulnerable witnesses and threatening documents could be sealed off, and politicians protected, by other stratagems of the Plan...
...But now that the proceedings have been concluded, let us for once see that the legal strategists get due notice...
...make them carry the entire burden of digging out the truth...
...If it does not seem strange, then, that the sole official response to massive pressure from the press was a probe of Kleindienst by the Senate Judiciary Committee, it is testimony to artifice of a consummate order...
...That is to be expected and should not cause alarm...
...One ern to think that the lawyer in such a case as this expects any of his tactics to achieve a clear victory, or the totality of them to convince the public or the tribunal...
...She used one, but in the wrong context...
...Nine times out of ten they will not be able to do it, especially in situations like the present, where the accused side has all the sensitive papers classified and can prevent the most vulnerable witnesses from testifying at all...
...And the ITT testimony was-even in the view of the favorably disposed Senator Sam Ervin-“the worst presentation I have ever heard...
...Mitchell’s designated successor, Richard Kleindienst, was unavailable, also...
...he wants to stay in office...
...The only indication that Mrs...
...Incident closed...
...On that day a statement was released by Drs...
...To become angry, the public must be able to concentrate...
...30) As noted, right after the Anderson blast each of the principal accusantsK1 ei n die n s t , Mi t chell, McLaren, Geneen, and Flanigan-issued pro foma denials of all improprieties ascribed to them...
...They obviously don’t want her to testify,” charged the unabashed Fleming...
...He had been left in the posture of a woolly-head, a squanderer of stockholders’ money among heedless men...
...They were Mrs...
...In the political vocabulary, this is far from an invidious term, but rather one that denotes an element of selflessness and statesmanship...
...Geneen has a reputation for almost demonic mastery of the operations of his empire, but on these matters he seemed terribly out of touch...
...41) Every big political scandal eventually produces the paid expert, and in doing so reveals to the public exotic fields of expertise that were heretofore little known...
...Realists will consider the many other clouds over many other heads that were now to go unexamined while Kleindienst defended his grammatical use of the word “exclusively...
...32) An unfair irony surfaces here...
...Gilly’s confession that the Union ordered the murder of Joseph Yablonski, pooh-poohed it all as “a conspiracy of extremists...
...The company could have turned them over to the FBI in a grandiose pretense of openness, all the while knowing the papers would automatically become part of the Bureau’s “investigative files,” and thus pass beyond the reach of any private or public person...
...Even while ITT was on the boards, other clients were in need of the Plan’s counsel, and got it...
...This was at the stage when Dita was being discredited...
...37-38) The Plan provided examples in which chief witnesses of the past had been successfully maligned...
...For a time The routine decoy is the opposithe President refused to let Flanigan tion political party...
...But had not Reinecke and Gillenwaters told him all about it in September, if not in May...
...Beard had claimed to have negotiated with Mitchell about the ITT suits...
...Since the retirement of Speaker John McCormack, known for his promptness in squashing investigations into the affairs of public men, the Justice Department itself had become the favorite source of exoneration...
...President Geneen of ITT admitted the $200,000, and we are using his conservative figure...
...Doctors, who normally don’t contradict a colleague no matter what he says, were appalled by Dr...
...35) For this to have plausibility, a misimpression had to be corrected...
...And so, however preposterous the stunts may look individually-the three Beard memos to confuse the real one, the opposed medical reports, the conflicting document analyses, the ATT gift to the Democrats to balance the ITT gift to the Republicans, explanations that a thousand conventions are “bought” each year all over America-when viewed collectively, they succeed...
...But failure to instantly communicate the Plan to fringe figures undermined this performance at the top...
...Beard be regarded as acting independently and not in collusion with anyone...
...The motion was set aside temporarily, thus making speeky exoneration impossible...
...But the headlines were to be short-lived...
...The new tactic, consistent with the old, is to admit to all that has been found out since the first denial, but admit to nothing else...
...Beard as a crackpot and a drunk...
...Gurney for taking contributions from neo-Nazi fronts...
...The people helping out in the shredding didn’t even know about the Beard memo, except for two, he said, a number that increased to five as the day wore on...
...The next morning, Senator Marlow Cook asked leave to interrupt the regular order and bring on former Governor Nunn who was “eager to be heard...
...For way back in 1970 we had published a plan of legal and public relations defense expressly designed for victims of Jack Anderson (“The Ritual of Wiggle: From Ruin to Reelection,” September, 1970...
...it was a matter of proportion...
...By the time the photographs appeared on the front page showing Mrs...
...The Senate committee seemed to believe the witnesses about their not being influenced by the gift...
...Mitchell, too, after enthusing about his open-door policy for businessmen and his availability for philosophical discussions with troubled visitors, slipped out of character as soon as he left the stand...
...He knew nothing about the document shredding, no thing about Mrs...
...Scott for aid and comfort to the influence peddler, Julius Klein...
...A succession of dark hints was made linking Anderson in a plot with Senator Kennedy...
...Leonard couldn’t be reached for comment that day, but the next day he agreed with Mitchell, saying he had been “imprecise” in his memo...
...Spontaneous, uncontrolled investigation of this sort is the most dangerous thing that can happen at this stage...
...The Republican National Committee started off smoothly enough when spokesman R. L. Herman made a dignified statement that while there was no wrongdoing involved, the ITT money could not be accepted after all...
...Finally, Anderson took a step which might end the “partial expert” device altogether...
...4 1 ) The reader cannot appreciate the process that transformed Dita Beard from termagant to invalid unless we jump ahead of our story six weeks to April 15...
...This is done through the Diego convention...
...If so, he immediately forgot, Mitchell said, because “it made no impression on me, I having no interest in it...
...What could we make, then, of the headlines announcing that Dita Beard had become a fugitive from justice, hunted in five states by 24 FBI agents...
...Beard was suffering from “angina pectoris, an insufficiency of arterial circulation to the heart...
...But ITT had hotels in Miami Beach, too, where the Democrats were convening...
...Beard was experiencing chest pains, which can be subjective data...
...Better rewere humiliated and threatened to sults are obtained by crying “yellow vote against Kleindienst in retaliation...
...Its use here would kill the investigation...
...The Washington Post elaborated, saying that sources close to the committee revealed that she “has a heart ailment and is under the constant care of her personal physician...
...But what to do with her now...
...They decide he must be eliminated and then invent a crime to eliminate him...
...Beard, the ITT panel, and the microchemical authorities, and he challenged others to take the same tests...
...Beard had been at his party, or whether she had talked at all to Mitchell...
...not even her family has been allowed in the room...
...Liszka said, Mrs...
...Reinecke said, “Mitchell was, you might say, the political arm of the Administration...
...Similarly, a memo from Justice Department official Jerris Leonard was uncovered directing that an action against a California firm be postponed because Mitchell knew the top people there and didn’t believe the charges...
...to the envious, its existence alone is proof of evil...
...Over the years, the Nixon Administration’s accessibility to the public had been unappreciated...
...The failing employee obsessed with fears of being fired was now seen as the victim of a frame-up by jealous ITT rivals resentful that she had eclipsed them...
...The counterattack was on...
...It will do so only to assuage an angry public...
...Following the Rules with Dita and Dick by James Boyd On February 29, 1972, Jack Anderson published a confidential memorandum written by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) lobbyist Dita Beard to her immediate superior, Vice President W. R. Merriam...
...invariably they weep-actual tears...
...Campbell Moses, medical director of the American Heart Association, said it was “nonsense” and added sarcastically that nobody writes memoranda during an angina attack...
...There is no completely graceful exit from this predicament, but we had a rule that the Administration witnesses now found serviceable, if awkward: Use the ‘stranger in paradise” routine: You can’t help it if goodhearted friends have an urge to shower you with gifts or if lucky fate strews your path with roses...
...it was an admirable beginning...
...The memo itself must be made the scapegoat-and before that could be attempted, Mrs...
...Its hotel operators said they were loath to displace respectable tourists for a bunch of politicians...
...4 1 ) Maybe she thought being a woman in distress would help...
...That way, you will be constantly attended by doctors, and subsequently remembered, not as a jailbird, but a patient...
...Beard from the hospital, whereupon she would be brought back to Washington under subpoena to testify, thus reviving the old images of flight and of the Liszka and Nunn testimonies...
...It worked this way: When he The process by which a congres- was asked something he did not want sional investigation ultimately becomes to answer he would remain silent, a confused and muted resembles that cue whereupon Roman Hruska or a which changes a rooster into a capon: colleague would protest that the its digestive apparatus is stuffed to question was out of order and Chairexcess while its vitals are castrated...
...GOP National Chairman Robert Dole began to pooh-pooh the notion that the President had ever considered it...
...it was his “lucky city...
...he left the clear impression that Kleindienst’s only role was to approve the settlement McLaren had worked out...
...It was all “political jackassery,” Scott complained, and he promised daily discussions involving “Democratic fat cats’’ and improprieties...
...The company was just pursuing its standard “record retention policy,” which seeks to combat “man’s squirrel-like instinct to keep everything...
...The first use in this case was when ITT Vice President Aibel formed a “panel” of four ITT lawyers to investigate the matter of che shredded documents and to ascertain if any papers had been destroyed that the Senate or any other government agency might have otherwise subpoenaed...
...We had a rule that fit: Insist that you would have done the same favor for any constituent...
...As the hearings opened, the public posture of Kleindienst, Mitchell, and Flanigan was that they had nothing to do with either activity...
...Louis Post-Dispatch named several Administration leaders Geneen had met with during the critical period...
...enough to publicly deride U. S. Senators as a “bunch of little bums,” and to see through the feared antitrust posturings of Assistant Attorney General Richard McLaren as somuch “mickey-mouse,” not worth worrying about...
...Gentlemen were repelled by the sins against chivalry...
...And so it was...
...All in all, the confederates were making the best of a hairy situation...
...But the cabinet member or corporate manipulator wants more than merely to stay out of jail...
...Or, ITT could have arranged to have the Fdes “stolen” and then turned over by an anonymous thief to the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...Had he made any “investment” in them...
...by her own statement, she was steeped in hysteria, liquor, and drug pills when Hume arrived...
...Loss of weight, a sickly pallor, a cane, the general look of a man about to break, are mandatory if one is to create the ‘%hasn’t he already suffered enough” atmosphere...
...It is the moment of maximum hazard to a political career...
...The rule Dita used, ill-betimed, was: Abandon all dignity and beg for mercy...
...A farranging plan was revealed by Sanford Ungar of The Washington Post, involving the White House and the Justice Department, which were using government resources in an attempt to uncover something nasty about Anderson...
...Instead of calming her, they traumatized her by hinting she was to be cut adrift...
...Fleming arranged public performances for Mrs...
...Her doctor lost no time in pronouncing a life pard on : “She will probably never be able to testify as long as she lives...
...He had been unable to find a single ITT executive who had heard of it or read it prior to Anderson’s story...
...more likely they were all getting the bends over it, until ITT stepped into the void...
...A general fishing expedition, up a dry creek, I might add, would serve no purpose,” Senator Scott declared...
...29) In Dita Beard’s case, the phone call came directly from Jack Anderson’s office-in the person of assistant Brit Hume...
...Such a was widespread...
...When we left Mrs...
...The opposition could prove that meetings had taken place, but they could not know what was said at the meetings, and on this Kleindienst remained inscrutable-he had conferred, he said, but he had not negotiated or handled...
...In such a crunch, it didn’t seem too credible that Justice Department politicos like Mitchell and Kleindienst, or White House courtiers like Flanigan could be indifferent...
...Byrd for junketeering around the world at taxpayers’ expense...
...Attorney Fleming charged Anderson and Kennedy with conducting “a purely political game” and of “cruel harrassment” that was the direct cause of Mrs...
...Yet, even as she fled across the continent, omens began to issue of a more skillful strategy than mere escape, a strategy according to the Plan...
...To the lawyer’s eye, the only hard information in that statement was that Mrs...
...Reinecke, the early apostle of the ITT arrangement, joined in...
...Beard from a “poor soul” into a stricken lioness...
...Fly paper every where...
...Therefore, the famous memo was scientifically proved to be a hoax...
...the recruitment and instruction of Ramsden, McLaren’s key financial consultant in the case, not by McLaren, but by Flanigan...
...The investigation, then, was in favorable hands...
...41) We were not surprised, therefore, by the announcement that Mrs...
...Now, in his benign processions through the halls, he would be seen by some as a glorified sandwich-board man with no loftier purpose than to promote the tourist trade for ITT...
...At the White House, Peter Flanigan’s secretary told The New York Times that he was out of the office temporarily...
...Only he could know what pressures caused him to reverse his position on the ITT matter, and he wasn’t admitting to any...
...Flanigan to secure the services of Mr...
...The cheerless Mitchell raised this duty to the level of a blanket invitation...
...These Democrats were described by Scott as somewhat akin to Weathermen“militants on the Committee who are knee-deep in nitpicking...
...But it was not to be...
...Lieutenant Governor Ed Reinecke of California blurted out that he had briefed Mitchell fully on the ITT convention gift way back in May, just before the suits were settled...
...in the present case the application was obvious: the memo must be seen as the fantasy of a neurotic, alcoholic, drugged paranoid, who was subject to making statements that bore no relation to reality...
...At least the business of the files was done and over with...
...Critics complain that government is debased, the public disillusioned, the fabric of society unraveled by such exercises in cynicism...
...Nader lawyer Reuben Robertson, who was contesting the ITT merger in court and who wrote Kleindienst to question the effect of the ITT gift on the settlement of the government suits...
...Since conflicting testimony and explore the members of both branches regard this many leads that had been left in immunity as vital to their liberty, each mid-air...
...Leonard was entirely mistaken...
...Cook for sabotaging campaignspending reform...
...To speed the restitution, the committee turned to San Diego’s Big Daddy, C. Arnholt Smith...
...Then Fleming issued, through the ever-helpful Senator Hugh Scott, a statement branding the famous memo as a forgery, a fraud, and a hoax...
...Beard...
...As for the Beard files, there were alternatives to chopping them up in desperation...
...Where I am going they won’t be able to find me, and I won’t be able to talk to them,” Mrs...
...But Geneen responded that if the President didn’t appear at the hotel as per the agreement, he would cancel the contribution...
...Readers will remember that the Plan was intended to aid the poor mountebank of the sort that abounds in Congress, the lone entrepreneur of limited resources suddenly caught redhanded by the press and confronted with the vast apparatus of the State...
...From the start, the top defendants at Justice, ITT, and the White House were uniformly admitting nothing until the full scope of what was known and provable by Anderson could be determined...
...It fell to ITT Vice President and General Counsel Howard Aibel to defend the shredding of those sacks of ITT papers...
...Beard had been drinking excessively when under tension and had suffered from periodic “distorted and irrational behavior...
...Bayh for vacationing in Florida at the expense of special interests...
...It is not a group of men noted for its sensitivity to impropriety...
...What must be changed, first of all, was the announced intention to release Mrs...
...The committee had already approved Kleindienst 13-0 and had a ready-made majority for him...
...The specialists said they could find no evidence of heart disease...
...A vote to reject these motions indulges it in the other...
...Only a minor flaw or two detracted from Fleming’s audacious performance...
...he did not return the call...
...Better still, she could have been flown to a remote ITT outpost in Africa or Asia where telecommunication with the West is still spotty-there to dedicate an infiiary or other charitable work of the company, then to be stricken with an exotic bug that would hospitalize the angel of mercy, beyond the feeble reach of the Senate Judiciary Committee, until the flap had petered out...
...And he wants to retain the esteem of that segment of society which still honors our governmental and corporate rulers...
...But “if it gets too much publicity you can believe our negotiations with Justice will wind up shot down...
...It apprehends that it is being purposely confused, but it wearies anyway, and is at length diverted to other things...
...John Mitchell, while observing the rule in essence, provided another change of pace, which by this time was needed...
...if he isn’t, he suffers alone...
...As it turned out, Dita Beard was on television a few days later and would soon check out of the hospital...
...This confirm’ed fears that the San Diego convention was dependent upon ITT’s bankrolling...
...The key to the San Diego deal, he said, was that President Nixon was to stay at the new ITT hotel during the convention, thus furnishing “unbuyable publicity...
...Fleming’s version was that of a fearless heroine, dragging wounded pilots out of burning airplanes...
...Beard was through pointing out the harmlessness of her memo, she had not only confirmed its authenticity, line by line, but had also given up those further revelations that transmogrified an embarrassment into a vintage Andersonesque drama: the ITT Gestapo invading Dita’s office with a document shredder and destroying before her eyes the record of her life’s work...
...gone a long way” toward getting the Justice Department to settle the antitrust suits on terms agreeable to ITT...
...Beard was regarded as one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington...
...Presidential spokesman Ronald Ziegler hastened to banish that image, saying, “The President has no plans to stay at the Sheraton...
...based on fraudulent documents...
...Cook rebounded from the photograph fiasco to accuse Kenne’dy and Anderson “of conspiring to discredit government officials...
...use of decoys, and the GOP must have The case of Peter Flanigan is illus- studied carefully the three-stage plan trative of both the flexibility and we had laid out: rigidity of the immunity...
...The object, said Senator Cotton, was to “distract the country at the beginning of a presidential campaign...
...Only halfvictories are sought, and the goal is not to convince, but to confuse and then to weary...
...They hadn’t revealed a single convictable fact...
...Fleming had written a letter to ITT demanding $1 5,000 (successfully) as his starting fee for taking on Mrs...
...The FBI added to the confusion with its own analysis, which backed up Anderson...
...Credit the shock wave of an Anderson expose that this harridan was reduced to the standard reaction we had warned against: She panicked and placed her fate in the hands of her ITT superiors, weak men who caved in too...
...She went on to remonstrate about loose talk between secondary figures at ITT and the White House...
...Senator X phones his office one morning and young Foster tells him in a squelched voice that Jack Anderson has exploded a stinkbomb in his 600 newspapers-the slush fund, the Swiss bank account, the wprks...
...He confessed to the known (“It now appears that I requested Mr...
...Then, on March 25, ITT announced that “document experts” hired by it and operating independently of one another had branded the Beard memo a fraud...
...Confronted with the memo on the witness stand, Mitchell said, “I’m afraid that Mr...
...Beard when her two old friends finished testifying...
...To do this he must maintain a semblance of credibility which would be dented if he were to plead insanity...
...And although the odor of the $200,000 continued to intrude upon the proceedings, discommoding the witnesses and giving comfort to the detractors of the Justice Department, the Plan had anticipated this circumstance, too: If at all possible, give the money back...
...Beard, the gravest danger had now been avoided...
...Beard disowned her memo, Attorney Fleming had been speaking mysteriously of documentary proof he would soon offer that would blow the case wide open...
...Senator Dole got headlines for a day with a claim that the Democrats’ failure to pay their phone bill to AT&T constituted an illegal gift by that company, but the story fizzled when an unkind reporter pointed out to Dole that the Republicans had been in arrears for their phone bill almost as long as the Democrats...
...A clairvoyant on the Judiciary Committee staff told The New York Times that “Mrs...
...Beard had a heart condition, they said, was based entirely on her own descriptions of chest pains, “which is subjective information...
...We had warned that the first hazard to avoid was the initial tendency to panic, or as the Plan stated it: Usually it begins on the telephone...
...The attack on Mrs...
...It’s like slapping someone in the face,” he said...
...Fong for nepotism and for having as his chief aide a man who used that office to solicit a $100,000 bribe...
...Beard for her importunities...
...Then an airline reported than an unidentified woman, who might have been Dita Beard, had a “spell” on board a plane to Denver and asked for oxygen, but when the plane landed she refused medical treatment, saying, “I don’t need a damned doctor,” and disappeared...
...The whole top layer of the Nixon Administration was immobilized for weeks listening to seminars and man-to-man cozenings by ITT representatives...
...She was “mad and disturbed,” he said, when she wrote the memorandum...
...nor did he figure at all in the disclosures by Reinecke or Ramsden or Wilson...
...a delay in filing suit in the Supreme Court, arranged by Kleindienst and Griswold without a byyourleave to McLaren...
...the memo itself, whose authenticity she had left unchallenged for almost a month, would be the target for demolition...
...Her extrication from all legal danger was near at hand...
...Aibel or Merriam or Griswold or Reinecke or Dole or Liszka or Nunn or McCrone or Scott or Cook or Hruska may look idiotic for a day, when their ball is shot down, but their embarrassment is temporary and their victory comes at length when the crowd tires of keeping track...
...There by ITT, and the testimony of Emu- was, however, a way to blur this tive branch witnesses, particularly unfair distinction by showing that the White House aides who involved them- whole affair was politically motivated, selves in the merger suits and the San and worse...
...He can’t be faulted for not being able to hide his office address, but a little trust between allies, a little class, would have permitted verbal haggling with ITT, which would not have left a paper trail...
...The tip-off came when Fleming started referring to it as “that alleged memo.’’ He let a week pass, for reentry adjustments, during which there were general denials of wrongdoing, with rumors of a surprise to come...
...this glazed mien is a must as groundwork for a convincing loss of memory when you take the stand...
...But a previous Kleindienst statement was available for quotation, claiming that he, too, had had nothing to do with the suit settlement, which “was handled and negotiated exclusively” by McLaren and the Antitrust Division...
...Kleindienst, the deputy to Attorney General Mitchell, was not mentioned in the Beard memo...
...only McLaren had taken part in the settlement and he, like the other three, hadn’t heard a whisper about the $200,000...
...At such times, “her thoughts do not flow in logical order...
...On the ITT wing of the defense, the Plan was being interpreted with less skill...
...McLaren readjusted to the facts...
...half the procedures of the government seem dedicated to that end...
...The $200,000, he said, was an investment-“a damned good business investment, and not by any means a political contribution...
...The first alternative was preferable, but that would require Mrs...
...At the moment she was isolated in the coronary ward, but one of two decisions must be made by the ITT-GOP defense: either destroy the credibility of the Beard-memo, or destroy the credibility of Mrs...
...Beard had come into his hands, except to say it was through “friends...
...A young economist named Richard Ramsden informed the press that he had worked on the ITT case, and had operated not through McLaren, but through Flanigan at the White House...
...But lawyers are supposed to be concerned with their clients, not with apocalyptic vaporings...
...Some pundits took excessive glee from this, snuffling that if the witnesses were to be believed at all, they had shown themselves too stupid and negligent for posts at the highest levels...
...For many days, while the Administration was pushing its “McLaren handled the ITT negotiations exclusively” version, Geneen had kept his silence about his personal role in going over McLaren’s head to lobby ITT’s position with top Administration figures...
...Ten of its 15 members have themselves been the victims of exposes by Jack Anderson: Eastland for profiteering from agricultural subsidies...
...Beard had backfired...
...John Mitchell has certainly kept it on the higher level only, we should be able to do the same...
...only outside money could rescue the President’s heart’s desire...
...Beard with CBS and Time...
...when pressed, he said that it was just a “possibility” suggested to him by the fact that Larry O’Brien had been saying nothing during the hearings...
...Beard did inestimable violence to the Plan, which advises: Admit nothing until you know the worst...
...A host of misunderstood officials, corporations, and political contributors had been exculpated in recent years by simple statements from the Justice Department that there was insufficient evidence to proceed...
...Such was to be the pattern of the ITT-GOP testimony when the hearings began...
...But Phil Phillips, the convention man on the scene in San Diego, demurred from such abnegation...
...But there awaited her, instead of renewed testimony and possible perjury charges, only a long and pleasant sabbatical...
...Beard had had heart trouble for nine years...
...Charging the press with “total and complete irresponsibility,’’ Cook said that the situation “ought to be enough to frighten the American people...
...The Plan had a rule for this extremity : The scapegoat is the sine qua non of all major political scandals...
...Beard “has suffered from a chronic heart ailment...
...And so the Judiciary Committee was pressed to shut down the investigation it had just begun...
...It came via ITT, from Dr...
...The advantage of focusing the inquiry on Kleindienst’s fitness to be Attorney General, rather than on someone’s criminal guilt, is obvious...
...The Senate majority does not want to devour Kleindienst or Flanigan or ITT...
...38) A scheme of defense operates at its best when there is the least appearance of contrivance: its coups should always appear as the inevitable results of natural causes...
...At that point the investigation can be ended by a party-line vote, with minimum backlash from the public...
...31) The history of these things is that it’s seldom easy to give the money back...
...he testified that he had no recollection of even discussing the ITT affair with Peter Flanigan or anyone else at the White House...
...Sound principles were being literalized to death...
...The tenor of Mrs...
...Moreover, San Diego was known to be President Nixon’s personal choice for his coronation rites...
...We had thought to equalize the contest by furnishing the accused a compendium of the ruses and dodges used over the years by gifted predecessors...
...If the investigation were to be killed by Republicans, it must be shown that it was started by Democrats for political purposes...
...McLaren started out with the position that he had never been in any way pressured by the Administration to agree to the pro-ITT settlement that finally emerged...
...An ITT director, Felix Rohatyn, had already told Anderson that he had conferred several times on the settlement, not with McLaren, but with Kleindienst...
...One of the Plan’s key recommendations was intended for victims of less than major prominence, who can often ride out a scandal just by disappearing for a while...
...With Smith pinned down, the San Diego locals were helpless...
...Our Plan had a proposal for just such an impasse: Employ the ‘bartial expert”-the hired C. P. A. to give a tidied statement of your net worth, the paid handwriting expert to testify that it was not your signature after all, the tax consultant (retired) who will swear he told you not to list those testimonial purses...
...The Party Flannelmouth must be willing to make himself look partisan, argumentative, and occasionally foolish for the sake of his party, and in this age of atomized politics and universal narcissism, the man who is willing to play the fool for his party is to be valued...
...For such contingencies the Plan recommended that once a defendant has established an illness, all adversary proceedings by the State should take place right in the hospital...
...Kennedy for Chappaquiddick It would be difficult to conceive of a jury with as much reason for personal hostility toward a claimant as this group had with regard to Anderson, whose professional reputation was now on the line...
...Aibel has a handsome face, lighted by a roguish glint of perceptivity that denotes a capacity for amusement at the preposterous antics his post sometimes requires of him...
...ideally, they should be old friends of hers, A doctor would be perfect, but could a doctor be found who would commit such mayhem upon the reputation of his patient...
...Then, shortly before Geneen was to testify, the St...
...When Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland told the press that we would soon be hearing from “surprise witnesses,” who would clear things up, we assumed that the requisite old friends were primed and ready...
...gress...
...Rohatyn, though an ITT director, had “never heard of the pledge of funds for the convention until it came out in the press...
...They say that when twice as many people believe Jack Anderson about ITT as believe the government of the United States, which a Gallup poll shows, free government is undermined...
...Lt...
...A promising new figure had taken charge at Denver, a young lawyer named David Fleming, whose deficiency in suavity was compensated for by the gusto he brought to the task of recasting Mrs...
...Beard should be as remote from the defense as possible...
...Gov...
...It remained for the elusive Flanigan, emerging momentarily from behind his barricade of immunity, to elevate ne@borliness to the status of a constitutional imperative: I believe that when people petition their government to redress a wrong, exercising their constitutional right, it is my responsibility to find out whether there has been a wrong, and if so, to attempt to redress it...
...the other she violated so terribly that only perfect adherence to it by the other major defendants prevented an irretrievable disaster...
...We saw other signs, however, that our recommendation was being followed to the letter at the higher levels...
...The memo had been occasioned by an inquiry from the White House: Was ITT’s contribution to go directly in to President Nixon’s campaign chest, or to the Republican national convention...
...Beard with oxygen tubes in her nose and wires leading from her person to a menacing machine, with doctors poised to plunge into emergency treatment at the first untoward flutter, she was the most authenticated heart patient in America...
...We are trying to prevent a coronary thrombosis right now...
...Then they pushed her over the precipice, forcing her to meet with Anderson’s man to attempt to con him out of publishing...
...To Kleindienst, this explained everything...
...Before the second day’s session could begin, the Republicans moved to cut off the hearings and clear Kleindienst...
...He said that anyone who had a legitimate reason could come in and talk over their antitrust problems with him, as Geneen did...
...They “laid her out on the floor,” Nunn said...
...No-to survive as a viable public figure he must, when accused, appear to be boldly confronting his accusers with all the candor of one who has nothing to hide...
...he didn’t know anything about the ITT rescue mission, he said, until he happened to read about it in the newspapers, five months after the fact...
...Beard’s heart condition...
...Then Robert Walters of the Washington Evening Star, who almost daily had undermined the confederates’ most promising stratagems, wrote a piece about ITT paying Mrs...
...Geneen immediately released a list of more than 20-including Mitchell, John Connally, Maurice Stans, John Ehrlichman, Peter Flanigan, Peter Peterson, John McCracken, Arthur Burns, and on and on...
...ITT had several days to manufacture the disappearance of Mrs...
...She had spunk, judgment, and perception-enough to describe ITT President Geneen, in a company memo, as a double-dealer with a big mouth...
...Previous reports of her Red Cross days in World War 11, for instance, were in terms of the whiskey bottles in her suitcase and skyriding on the laps of malingering pilots...
...People tended to identify its reception of aggrieved petitioners with locked doors, tear gas, mass arrests that were later declared illegal, and remarks from the Justice Department balcony about demonstrations resembling the Bolshevik Revolution...
...He presented to the Judiciary Committee the results of five lie detector tests undergone by Brit Hume which flatly contradicted the statements of Mrs...
...Walter McCrone, a chemist...
...Beard either to deny or to recant the memo...
...a meeting presided over by Kleindienst where ITT officials lectured McLaren and his aides on the horrors McLaren’s announced course of action would cause...
...Propped up like the Queen Mother, surrounded by attendants and ministrations, Mrs...
...Such impressions had to be dispelled if the public were to believe that the welcome mat for ITT was but an instance of a general hospitality toward all Americans...
...It’s to tally political...
...ITT persuaders were at work on her, but crucial days had passed and she had not denied the memo...
...But for less committed judges, more proof than Dita’s word would be needed...
...It was handled strictly by the book, as an internal matter within the Antitrust Division...
...Once the case reaches the hearing room or the courtroom, a personal scapegoat must be arraigned-the chief witness for the state...
...They turned out to be her doctor, Victor Liszka, and former Governor Louie Nunn of Kentucky . For several years, Dr...
...Under different circumstances, this exhibit might have had a telling effect...
...Beard’s health without ever mentioning any emotional problems...
...a too defiant denial, a tell-tale dodge, an injudicious admission can in a flash proliferate into a major investigation and undo 30 years of patient conniving...
...The makers of such charges against Mrs...
...at least 10 days passed between the time they learned that Anderson had the memo and the issuance of the first subpoena...
...Beard collapsed in a stupor, Nunn testified...
...Husky voiced, amply built, she cursed, drank, hunted, rode, and lied like the men of her station...
...Suddenly Smith himself was the center of a new expose, a Life charge that he had used his influence with Nixon to squelch a Justice Department probe of alleged illegal corporate gifts by Smith associates to the 1968 Nixon campaign...
...They would never be seen again, yet ITT would be credited with having done the right thing, proving it had nothing to hide...
...side issues being agitated by the press and the dissidents could be looked into at a later investigation...
...Remember that the celebrated Dodd files were turned over to the FBI and the Senate in 1966 and have been under lock and key ever since...
...Time was needed so that a new and sympathetic image could grow and take hold...
...testify without answering any questions, or at least any sensitive questions...
...The idea is to give nothing free to the other side...
...McLaren first learned of it from the same newspaper stories...
...Liszka’s facile solution to the memo problem...
...Beard...
...It would be improper to take such a disproportionate share of the Republican Party’s convention needs from a single source...
...His apt pupil, Hume, persisted with remorseless questions, and it was here that Mrs...
...Pressure continued from Washington, but Phillips was faced in San Diego with deadbeats who had never been enthusiastic anyway and who were now in default on their pledges, leaving the host committee $300,000 short...
...At Justice, Attorney General Mitchell merely pointed out that he had long ago removed himself from any connection with the antitrust case, and he added, “I don’t know the faintest thing about the Convention financing...
...Beard told Congressman Wilson...
...Then you misunderstand the process...
...Scott’s Denver collaborator, Attorney Fleming, announced that the whole thing was a Democratic plot to get President Nixon’s China trip off the front page...
...A phone call from Mitchell’s office brought Reinecke and Gillenwaters to their senses...
...It would boost business for his hotels in San Diego...
...The idea is to bring the public to a point of bewildennent at which people will say, “it’s all political...
...With the rescue of Mrs...
...But ill luck continued to dog the effort...
...No one asks why it took that form...
Vol. 4 • July 1972 • No. 5
