Blind Ambition in the White House

...Blind Ambition in the White House by Charles Peters Blind Ambition* is John Dean’s story as told by Taylor Branch, a former editor of this magazine and of Harper’s and now Washington correspondent for Esquire...

...Already things have reached the point at the Carter White House where Evans and Novak are quoting a member of the staff as saying his colleagues are sitting with their backs against the wall at meetings so that they will at least be able to see the knives of their associates...

...The work was complicated and boring, but I had already sensed that it would produce new business...

...It was thus the culture of the White House that put the pressure on lohn Dean to expand the busine?s of the counsel’s office, and it was the character of John Dean that determined what he would do in response to that pressure...

...My theory is that you just threw the dice on it.’ “Mitchell turned to look at me for the first time...

...Tell him whatever you want.’ I hung up, feeling better...

...And the Ellsberg break-in was another cultural event...

...inter-office phone] , ‘John, what’s the latest report on the replacement for the Sequoia?’ “ ‘You’re putting me on, Larry!’ “ ‘No, I’m not,’ he said testily...

...Higby called on the 1.0...

...They usually react by stuffing their briefcases with news*Simon and Schuster, 1976...

...Things are different at the top, however...

...The secret is not to hire people to fill slots, as John Dean was hired to be special counsel to the President, but only to hire people when you have enough real work to keep them busy...

...Dean explains: “The discipline of Haldeman’s tickler was unrelenting...

...As one who has spent roughly half his Washington years in the government and the other half in an understaffed enterprise, I can say the difference is dramatic...

...Carter Is Better The pressures, at the White House remain the same...

...Leaking continues tn, be a sin...

...Carter has already announced that he plans to cut back on staff in the White House as well as throughout the executive branch...

...This would be the greatest revolution in bureaucratic history, and, if it comes ‘to pass, we can only hope there is no eternal life, for if there is, Chairman Mao will be forever wondering, in the hereafter, “Why didn’t I think of that...

...Culture determines the pressures, character determines the response...

...While Nixon hounded Ellsberg to the point of ordering both the break-in and criminal prosecution, Carter, having punished Schneiders, picked him from the floor, dusted him off, and gave him another, if less influential, White House job...

...Instead of condemning the Democrats for getting us into an impossible war, Nixon had to condemn Ellsberg...

...the staff is always wrong...

...Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...

...When a vacancy occurs, it is rare that the person with hiring authority asks whether there is a real need for the job...

...But the pressures were .typical of life at the White House...

...The leader is always right...

...Andrew says the five loaves and two fish aren’t enough to feed the multitude...

...But to convince the President we’re not just the only law office in town but the best, we’ve got to convince a lot of other people first...

...Magruder had been pressured by Colson in addition to Haldeman’s tickler...

...We advertised our office as the place wher...

...Remember that the search for work and the competition for available assignments were at least partially responsible for Dean’s original involvement in Watergate and for Mitchell’s and Magruder’s reluctant approval of Liddy’s espionage plan...

...Instead of repudiating the first dissenter who turns out to be right, as Kennedy did with Chester Bowles after Bowles said no to the Bay of Pigs, Carter should heap honor upon him...

...He had become bored with the Sequoia, finding all kinds of faults with it...

...He kept calling me and asking what’s going on...

...I had felt it with my first assignment, with its due date ‘Wednesday, August 5 , 1970, at 2:OO p.m.’ That one I had answered on time, but subsequently I spent too much time preparing my answers to a few action memoranda, let the due dates slide by, and discovered the consequences...

...Then there had been discussions with the owners as we bargained to find someone who would donate his yacht for the prestige and the tax write-off...

...Do you think you’re someone special?’ When I explained I was working on the response, Higby snapped, ‘Work a little harder.’ Higby was chewed out by Haldeman when the paper did not flow as the chief of staff wanted, so he leaned on others...

...But I think it’s possible to minimize-although I agree it’s impossible to eliminate completely -the vicious backbiting that has seemed constant among those who work in the White House...

...The dissenters are “ye of little faith...

...The real reason Greg Schneiders lost his job as Carter’s appointments secretary is that he was a leaker...

...We had already assumed the role in our conflict-of-interest investigations...

...Instead of imposing arbitrary ceilings on White House and other government employment, Carter should ask what work really needs doing, reassign present employees to do that work, fire the rest, and hire new ones only to the extent they are needed to do real work...

...In so doing, Nixon obeyed the cultural imperative...

...Many people feel this sort of thing is inevitable at the White House, just as they feel certain the place will always be full of yes men...

...I had sent aides to obtain blueprints of the best yachts in the world, and several White House offices had spent months going through them in detail, searching for a boat that would satisfy the President’s whims...

...I need a report.’ “For nine months the tickler had been after me to find a replacement for the President’s yacht...

...Jealous and Leery “ ‘That explains it,’ [Dean] thought...

...Everything that had happened since the February 4 meeting was falling into place...

...It would have been possible to resist Hunt’s blackmail if all Hunt could tell was the story of the Watergate burglary...

...Again it’s the culture of the White House...

...Once a staff man was nailed with responsibility for the slightest project, the tickler would keep pestering until it was fed something: a status report, a piece of paper, a bit of information to chew on...

...It seems that when you really get to know a man’s personal financial situation,’ I said, ‘and then candidly discuss his job here to determine if helhas any conflicts, you can end up in his confidence if you play it right...

...From a political standpoint, the Pentagon Papers presented Nixon with a marvelous opportunity to blame the war on the Democrats...

...He would not have gotten into intelligence if he had not felt he had to expand his role at the White House...

...Indeed, there is no better example of the influence of culture than the Ellsberg case...

...If there is a danger that a supervisor will notice they have nothing to do, attention will be paid to creating the appearance of activity...

...He knew Mitchell was jealous and leery of Colson, so he had pushed Mitchell’s ‘Colson button.’ And here’s Dean talking to Mitchell : “‘Well, I have had a lot of theories,’ I began...

...But for Watergate, the important thing is that the tickler was still going strong in the spring of 1972...

...The responses of the Nixon crew were generally grotesque...

...Although I had all but relinquished my title to Fielding because of Watergate pressure, official calls kept coming to me...

...papers and paperback novels to help pass the time...

...Although Johnson and Ford knew the Congress well, we have not had a President since Eisenhower who understood anything about the culture of the executive branch...

...Perhaps there should be a public subscription to purchase for the President the Iliad and the Odyssey and the two-volume set of The Complete Greek Dramas...

...And we had Jack Caulfield, who knew such waters...

...But presidential character makes a difference in the nature of the response...

...Peter doubts that his belief can make him walk on water...

...But what comes to its rescue...

...Here’s Magruder explaining to Dean : “ ‘Well, yeah, after that second meeting [in which Liddy pushed for approval of a modified intelligencegathering plan], I felt I had to bring it up with Mitchell again because Colson was just pushing me like mad...

...In the White House and at the higher levels of the executive agencies, ambition for power is the main motivation...

...Rarely does a ghost-written book attain distinction, but in the case of Blind Ambition, the combination of Branch’s narrative skill and Dean’s remarkable memory has produced a work of genuine merit...

...So Carter is better than Nixon...

...So when John Dean found he didn’t have much to do, he called in his new assistant, Fred Fielding, and told him: “ ‘Fred, I think we have to look at our office as a small law firm at the White House...

...But in the culture of the White House, there is no greater sin than leaking and no greater sinner than the leaker...

...Carter needs to learn to understand the various cultures of the government, so that he can anticipate their influences and avoid them when they aren’t in the public interest...

...And another cultural factor came into play: fear of the other guy taking over one’s turf...

...We have to build our practice like any other law firm...

...I encouraged this new specialty, figuring that intelligence would be more’ yalued by the policymakers than would dry legal advice...

...No one could ignore the tickler, because no one could afford to ignore Haldeman...

...Back to Mitchell’s office...

...As dissenters, the disciples are a bunch of turkeys...

...To understand how the tickler helped resurrect Liddy’s plan, you must understand how the tickler worked...

...Our principal client, of course, is the President...

...Dean’s political intelligence work took him, in January 1972, to John Mitchell’s offike,‘ where he watched Gordon Liddy give his flip-chart presentation ef his plans for spying on the Demoqats, featuring among other things floating call girls at the Democratic convention...

...The scriptures, while edifying in most respects, are a dismal guide to sound public administration...

...More particularly it’s Bob Haldeman’s tickler, his method for making sure assignments are not forgotten...

...Liddy’s proposal strikes everyone as extreme...

...I know you weren’t too excited about it, but I figure you finally said what the hell and approved it to get them off your back...

...He was holding his pipe in his hand, leaning slightly forward in his chair...

...The tickler continued to whir along even as the ship was going down and the crew was beginning to gurgle: “Even during the strain of my first week of meetings with the [Watergate] prosecutors, the chaos of normal White House business continued...

...This is not an uncommon experience for government workers...

...One hears the piteous moans of the weary around this magazine, but never the jealous, competitive verbal stab in the back...

...The boss, Jesus, is never wrong...

...Here’s how we can do it.’ “Our conflict-of-interest duties were the key, I explained...

...The White House is insane, I thought...

...Indeed, risktaking is inevitable, because you’re swimming in a sea of sharks...

...and Albanian moth control, while once a vitally important matter is, due to the demise of all Albanian moths, no longer a pressing public concern...

...But he knew something else: He knew about Ehrlichman’s responsibility for the Ellsberg break-in...

...When John Dean became White House counsel, he found that his new job required him to do little...

...While its personae are a unique mixture of Jaycees and SS, the daily pressures it describes at the White House during Watergate still exist under Carter and almost certainly will continue to influence administrations to come...

...Still, if his response is less vicious, more merciful, he’s responding blindly to the same pressures...

...And once you’re in his confidence, he sends you business.’ ” Whag a Tangled Web We Weave In building this practice, Dean took his first steps down the road to Watergate: “It did not take long to notice that the counsel’s office could perform intelligence work for the White House...

...As happens all too often, the position of special counsel had originally been created to sound like a nice title for someone the White House was really depriving of all power and function...

...Even Mitchell and Kissinger were subject to it...

...Many people feel this tendency is so strong that it is inescapable-and without doubt it very nearly is...

...There’s considerable risk-taking in this world...

...questions would be answered...

...Neither does his religion...

...Just as there is a culture of the bureaucracy and a culture of the Congress, there is a culture of the White House-and Blind Ambition is the best book that has been written about it since George Reedy’s Twilight of the Presidency...

...If people are overworked, they do not reach out and try to steal more work from their associates...

...While Eisenhower understood only the military, that was enough to keep us out of war for eight years, which is an indication that the subject is not unimportant...

...First a secretary in the staff secretary’s office called my secretary, asking where the answer was, and when the explanation was found unsatisfactory a very bitchy Larry Higby called to say, ‘What’s the matter, Dean, can’t you meet a deadline...

...It seems doomed...

...My strongest one is that Colson was all over you on the Liddy plan, and Haldeman was sending down pressure through Strachan...

...John Dean would not have been at that meeting had he not gotten invoived in intelligence work...

...It reached everywhere...

...As we have pointed out before, Carter’s experiences in the Navy and running his own small business successfully without a staff are not the sort of thing that teaches a man to value dissent...

...Haldeman’s assistant, Gordon Strachan, kept asking Magruder: “What are you doing about getting intelligence on the Democrats...

...Haldeman, Ehrlichman and the otherswho surround the President...

...I don’t have any goddam idea what he’s doing, and I really don’t care.’ “ ‘You want me to tell Bob that?’ Higby gasped, as if a priest had just threatened to spit on the Bible...

...These splendid works, while perhaps otherwise inferior to the scriptures as spiritual guidance, are full of Cassandras, seers, and priestesses who tell the hero, “Don’t do that or there’s going to be trouble,” and turn out to be absolutely right...

...This is true of those in the middle and lower rungs of the bureaucracy who have risen as far as they think they can or want to go and whose main goal has become bureaucratic survival...

...Larry, I’ve turned this damn project over to Kalmbach,’ I said impulsively...

...If we must remain doubtful that Carter will act to encourage dissent, we can at least have hope that he will do something about the problem John Dean found when he entered upon his duties at the White House only to find that those duties involved very little real work...

...Aggression is not merely a desirable trait, it is indispensable...

...Your theory is right,’ he said quietly, ‘except we thought it would be one or two times removed from the Committee.’ ” Culture was equally important in dictating the cover-up...

...That is why it is so important for a President to signal with the greatest clarity that he wants no men, men who will tell him when they think he’s doing wrong and who will resign and tell the world if he continues to do wrong...

...In the executive branch as a whole, a central problem is that people are hired to fill slots like Special Counsel to the President or Director of Albanian Moth Control...

...Just as Vietnam was less the product of American imperialism than of the culture of our military and foreign affairs bu,&aucracies interacting with the +aracter of Lyndon Johnson a,d thf character of Richard Nixon, Watefgate was the product of the character of Richard Nixon and the character of his key subordinates reacting to pressures that are a continuing part of the culture of the White House...

...I said, “Listen, if we don’t take care of this, Colson’s going to take it over...

...The best-known characteristic of the culture of the White House is its tendency to produce yes men-men who will click their heels and salute in obedience to the tickler no matter what it tells them to do...

...One of them pushed me over the edge, causing me to buck the tickler for the first time...

...Each call was recorded meticulously on the tickler scorecard, on which reputations were made and broken in Haldeman’s eyes...

...The Devil’s Workshop When there is not enough real work to do in the White House, mischief is the likely result...

...So I went to Mitchell and I told him...

...There he had direct evidence on no one higher than Liddy...