Richard M. Nixon: Smoking Gun Tape

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In their June 23, 1972, meeting, Nixon and Haldeman discuss how to prevent the FBI investigation from uncovering still more evidence that could undermine the president's reelection, and they agree upon a strategy to cover up White House involvement in the Watergate break-in. Their discussion begins with an idea proposed by John N. Mitchell, Nixon's campaign director at CREEP and his former attorney general, and by White House counsel John Dean. Because FBI agents working on the case believed that their Watergate investigation had uncovered a covert CIA operation, Mitchell and Dean propose in the Smoking Gun Tape that the president simply halt the investigation on national security grounds. When Haldeman says to Nixon that “the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, ‘Stay the hell out of this … this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on,’” he suggests that the president ask the CIA deputy director, Vernon A. Walters, to urge the FBI director, L. Patrick Gray, to halt his agency's Watergate investigation because it had uncovered a covert CIA operation. Nixon quickly agrees with this strategy (“All right. Fine”), understanding that this would effectively prevent the FBI from following any additional leads that might connect CREEP more deeply to Watergate or that might uncover additional “dirty tricks” initiated by the White House.

During this part of the conversation, Haldeman and Nixon reference Mark Felt—then associate director of the FBI—by expressing their confidence that he will support his boss, Gray, in halting the FBI's investigation of the break-in. However, Felt would later play a key role in Nixon's downfall by leaking confidential information about the Watergate cover-up to the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Their stories about the cover-up kept the issue in front of the public. Dubbed “Deep Throat” by the two journalists in order to keep his identity a secret, Felt confirmed that he was Woodward and Bernstein's source in 2005.

As the two men continue to discuss the cover-up, Nixon points out the vulnerabilities of the CIA and its director, Richard Helms. “We protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things,” Nixon tells his chief of staff. Then, rehearsing the case that could be made to Helms to call off the FBI investigation, the president maintains,

Of course … this is a Hunt … that will uncover a lot of things. You open up that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.

In this passage, Nixon raises the possibility of subtle blackmail if the spy agency balks at the cover-up. Because Cuban nationals and CIA agents were involved in the Watergate break-in, Helms would be warned that if the FBI investigation continued, it was likely to uncover CIA covert actions against Cuba. The “scab” and “hanky-panky” Nixon mentions was the CIA's Operation Mongoose, a top-secret plan initiated by President John F. Kennedy in late 1961 to topple the Cuban dictator Castro from power following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Under Operation Mongoose the CIA tried and failed throughout the 1960s to remove Castro through the use of political propaganda, the funding of insurgent guerrilla forces, and various assassination plots that included poisoned cigars and bombs concealed in seashells. Nixon clearly believed that Helms could be persuaded to cooperate with the Watergate cover-up to protect the spy agency from the public outcry that would surely follow the revelation that it had attempted to assassinate a foreign leader.

With the basic strategy to halt the FBI investigation agreed upon, Nixon then seeks to understand who or what is responsible for the break-in. “Well what the hell, did Mitchell know about this thing to any much of a degree?” he asks, referring to his campaign director, John N. Mitchell. When Haldeman ventures that Mitchell had only general knowledge of the Watergate operation, Nixon presses on, trying to determine who had concocted the scheme by which funds donated to CREEP had been funneled to the Watergate burglars through a Mexican bank. “Is it Liddy?” he asks, referring to G. Gordon Liddy, then the head of the White House Special Investigations Unit, or “plumbers,” Nixon had established in 1971 to halt the leak of classified information to anti-administration forces. Haldeman confirms that Liddy was responsible, adding that as Mitchell pressured him “to get more information” to aid the president's reelection, Liddy “pushed the people harder to move harder on … Gemstone.” Haldeman's answer thus reveals that the Watergate break-in originated in the secret plan Operation Gemstone, developed by Liddy and approved by Mitchell in 1971, to engage in a series of covert “dirty tricks” against Nixon's political opponents. Nixon's reply to Haldeman, “All right, fine, I understand it all,” indicates that even though the president had not approved the Watergate break-in, he was fully aware of the illegal activities that led to it.

Later on the tape, Haldeman's report that White House Special Counsel Charles W. (Chuck) Colson's interview with the FBI on June 22 had gone well bolsters their confidence that the cover-up will succeed. As they both knew, Colson was deeply involved in Watergate and other illicit campaign activities. He had a hand in the creation of the “plumbers” and in the White House discussions that led to Operation Gemstone. Despite his involvement, his FBI interrogators concluded that the Watergate break-in had not involved CREEP but was, as Haldeman notes, “a CIA thing.” With this knowledge, Nixon decides to go forward with the plan. He tells Haldeman to call in Helms and Walters:

When you … get these people in, say: “Look, the problem is that this will open … the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that” ah, without going into the details … don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no [White House] involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, “the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people [Nixon's political opponents] are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case,” period!

By setting in motion this plan to use the CIA to turn off the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in, Nixon attempted to obstruct justice, an action the House Judiciary Committee later determined to be an impeachable offense.