Random Jottings 8 Random Jottings 8 “Watergate Considered as an Org Chart of Semi-Precious Stones” a fanzine by Michael Dobson

Michael Dobson, 8042 Park Overlook Dr., Bethesda, MD 20817, [email protected] Available for “the usual,” with PDF available from http://efanzines.com/RandomJottings/ . Copyright © 2013 by Michael Dobson under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license: some rights reserved. All written material by Michael Dobson except as noted.

Table of Contents

Yes, This is a Fanzine (More or Less) ...... 3 Watergate and Me ...... 5 Origins of a Scandal ...... 7 The Enemies List ...... 11 Hunt/Liddy Special Project #1 ...... 15 Watergate Considered as an Org Chart of Semi-Precious Stones ...... 17 Duct and Other Tapes ...... 37 Come Back to the Five and Dime Again, , John Dean ...... 39 Let’s Go to the Tape, Johnny! ...... 51 Saturday Night’s Alright (for Firing) ...... 55 By Hook or by Crook ...... 59 The Smoking Gun Goes Off ...... 63 “My Nixon Dream” by Steve Stiles ...... 67 Spider-Man® in “Mr. Jameson Goes to Washington” ...... 68 What Would Nixon Do? ...... 89 Random Jottings on Random Jottings (letters) ...... 94 Watergate Cast of Characters ...... 99 Watergate Timeline ...... 105 Acknowledgements and Credits ...... 111

- 1 - just before reading a statement concerning the release of edited transcripts of the White House tapes

“As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.” — Golda Meir

- 2 - Yes, This is a Fanzine (More or Less)

I’ve been planning the Watergate Special Issue of Random Jottings for a few years now, hampered primarily by my inability to find the original “Mr. Jameson Goes to Washington” script I submitted to Marvel back in the late 1970s. I planned to do it just like a regular fanzine, copied at the local FedEx Office and shipped to Corflu, just as I’d been doing for the last few years. But technology intervened. I started a new venture last fall, a projected series of 366 books covering each day of the year (February 29 included), using Amazon’s print-on- demand subsidiary, CreateSpace, for the physical copies — no inventory or upfront costs. I suddenly realized it would cost me just a bit more than half as much per copy, and that included a four-color perfect bound cover! The next step seemed fairly obvious. Extending the initial idea a bit, I also realized that this issue in particular also worked as a book. While it’s clearly not going to be the next 50 Shades of Gray (my own erotica hasn’t done nearly so well), it might well make a couple of dollars in the brave new world of online bookselling, and as I move closer to retirement age, every dollar counts. WATERGATE CONSIDERED AS AN ORG CHART OF SEMI-PRECIOUS STONES (this fanzine stripped of fannishness, such as it is) can be purchased from Amazon and other fine e-retailers as a perfect-bound 5.25” x 8” paperback with full color wrap-around cover, or as an e-book in all popular formats. Tell your friends. Book: https://www.createspace.com/4227033 Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/WatergateEbook Other ePub formats: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304349 The print version of this issue is available at https://www.createspace.com/ 4229410. * * * Given that I normally send copies to a number of people who aren’t part of fandom, a few additional words of explanation may be in order. (Trufen may skip the next part.)

- 3 - In my misspent youth, I was semi-active in the science fiction fan world. Although science fiction conventions have, to a significant extent, turned into media shows, it was once the case that science fiction fans focused on the world of books and magazines, and often shared a wide range of diverse interests. These interests were often expressed in “fanzines,” a poorly chosen name for amateur magazines that, whatever else they may be, are seldom about being a “fan” of anything in particular. I was a pretty awful fanzine publisher back in the day, and after a few terrible attempts, I moved on to other pursuits, although I have kept ongoing relationships with many of the people I met in my brief fannish career. A few years back, I began to attend a convention aimed at fanzines publishers, known as Corflu (short for “correction fluid,” a substance all too familiar to people who worked with mimeograph stencils, once the lifeblood of amateur publishing), and my interest in “pubbing my ish,” as we fans say, flared up like a bad case of herpes. I was also attracted by improvements in printing. The venerable mimeograph, producer of generations of classic fanzines, is now used only by the purest of the pure (as the saying goes, “The Enchanted Duplicator is the one with the trufan at the handle!”). I had always enjoyed the writing process of fanzine publishing, but wrestling with the recalcitrant and often messy process of mimeography was one of the less pleasant chores of amateur publishing (second only to collating), so the move to photocopying was more than welcome. I could prepare a PDF, upload it to the FedEx Office website, and within days, neatly collated and stapled copies appeared with no effort on my part. (Except for mailing, of course. That’s still a pain.) For the 2003 Corflu in Madison, Wisconsin, I rebooted my 1970s era title, Random Jottings, after a mere 32 year gap between issues, with a long piece on name dropping, in which I listed my every brush with fame or notoriety, no matter how slight. A mere five years later, Random Jottings #3 chronicled my adventures with the Samaritan people. With the bug raging once again, only a single year elapsed before the next issue. Random Jottings #4, the “Alternate History Issue,” for the Seattle Corflu in 2009, allowed me to publish the material I’d collected in 1971 and 1972, which had been languishing in my files for nearly four decades, under the conceit that it was the long-lost issue from another dimension. Random Jottings #5 was published as an obituary for my father, Odell F. Dobson, who died in 2010. It contained his true-life adventures as a waist gunner on a B-24 during World War II. Random Jottings #6 collected my blog writings on cognitive biases. And last year’s Random Jottings #7, for the 2012 Las Vegas Corflu, anthologized several random articles along with a portfolio of art by noted cartoonist Steve Stiles. As has been my custom for the past few years, this issue is being released for Corflu XXX (Boom-Chicka-Wow-Wow), with a few copies going in the mail shortly thereafter. Back issues of Random Jottings are available in PDF form for free by visiting Bill Burns’ essential www.efanzines.com. While you’re there, look around. There’s a wonderful, vibrant world of amateur publishing waiting for you. See you next Corflu!

- 4 - Watergate and Me

The great professional obsession of my adult life has been figuring out how people and organizations work. I write business books and military novels because nothing fascinates me more than people struggling with impossible situations, especially of their own making. Believe me, I know what it's like to screw up, and so when I look at a complex scandal like Watergate, I don't see the politics, I see the Nixon caricature by Edmund S. Valtman people, and I feel their pain. I’m a big fan. I followed every minute of the Watergate hearings, and devoured every book by a Watergate player, no matter how obscure. No, I didn't figure out who really was, but I wasn't interested in the detective story that much. Oh, I admire Woodward and Bernstein and all that, but my heart goes out to John Dean, freaking out as his shredder jams on notebooks of evidence, realizing in his heart that he had become a criminal — without ever noticing the exact moment he had crossed the line. I marvel at G. Gordon Liddy, the closest thing to a real-life James Bond (or Heinlein Individual) imaginable, presenting, in those pre-PowerPoint days, a complete project management plan on poster board for schemes worthy of Dr. Evil himself. His plan would cost -- finger on pursed lip and a drumroll – two million dollars! (They bargained him down to a mere half-million – as long as Jeb Magruder could check out the houseboat full of hookers personally.) And, of course, I am enthralled by the man himself -- Richard Milhouse Nixon, forever typecast as King John to JFK's Richard, the dark heart of the American soul. In the movie You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks memorably observed to Meg Ryan that all the lessons of life are contained in the Godfather movies. With no disrespect to Don Corleone et al., for me the touchstone remains the richly and densely textured the . In it you can find echoes of any life lesson you choose, for Watergate is the very stuff of life.

- 5 - I was so into Watergate that when I auditioned for a job as a comic book writer at Marvel in the late 1970s, I submitted a Spider-Man story titled "Mr. Jameson goes to Washington," a very thinly disguised takeoff on the scandal with an even more thinly disguised G. Gordon Liddy as a first-rate (if I do say so myself) potential super . Marvel rejected it, saying, “It doesn’t seem aimed at our target demographic.” * * * This book does not pretend to be an exhaustive compendium of all things Watergate; it is simply a collection of various articles that cover people and incidents in the scandal to varying degrees of depth and toward different objectives. The pieces in this issue come from several sources. Besides the rejected Spider-Man story, two articles come from my book The Six Dimensions of Project Management (with Heidi Feickert), covering elements of Watergate from the perspective of project management. Others come from my blog at http://sidewiseinsights.blogspot.com, where for a while I chronicled Important Dates in Watergate History. The piece “What Would Nixon Do?” was part of a book proposal subtitled “13 Management Lessons from Watergate;” those lessons are summarized here. A few of the pieces, such as the scandal overview, are brand new for this publication. The material on Nixon’s treasonous sabotage of the Paris Peace Talks is taken from newspaper stories ranging from 2008 to just now — recently released tapes from LBJ’s archives reveal the whole story. If you can’t tell the Watergate players without a scorecard, check the Cast of Characters and Watergate Timeline in the appendix. You’ll also find a complete list of credits and acknowledgements. “My Nixon Dream,” is by the undeservedly Hugo-poor Steve Stiles.

- 6 - Origins of a Scandal

While the Watergate burglary took place June 17, 1972, many of the threads in the scandal stretch back much farther — although its exact beginning is subject to interpretation. In one way, the November 1968 election of Richard Milhous Nixon, a 55-year old former vice-president and unsuccessful candidate for Governor of California, could reasonably be considered the beginning. But the summer of 1968 might be considered a better one. It had long been rumored that Nixon deliberately sabotaged the Paris peace talks aimed at ending the Vietnam War, fearing that premature peace would derail his campaign for the Oval Office. Tapes from the LBJ White House declassified in 2008 confirmed the rumors. Nixon had arranged for Anna Chennault, widow of Flying Tigers commander General Claire Chennault and a noted conservative, to speak privately to the South Vietnamese ambassador to the peace talks. She told the South Vietnamese that they should withdraw from the peace talks, refuse any entreaties from LBJ, and in return, if Nixon were elected, they would get a much better deal. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassador’s phone and sent transcripts of Anna Chennault’s calls to the White House. “This is treason,” Lyndon Johnson told Senator Everett Dirksen in a back-channel message to Nixon, forcing him to back off. But Johnson did nothing else about it. Revealing the treason would also necessarily reveal the bugging of the ambassador. He told , Nixon’s opponent, about it late in the campaign, but Humphrey, too, elected to remain silent. He was, after all, gaining in the polls, and his advisors, much like Mitt Romney’s in another year, were predicting confidently he would win that November. This turned out not to be the case. In a squeaker, Nixon reached the Presidency with less than a 1% margin in the popular vote. A year or so after his election, Nixon approved the , a far-reaching expansion of domestic intelligence gathering — only to rescind that approval a few days later. But on June 13, 1971, the Times began publishing the classified , a US Department of Defense secret history of the Vietnam War.

- 7 - Oval Office meeting with Richard Nixon and chief advisors. From left to right: H. R. Haldeman, chief of staff; , deputy assistant to the President/ appointments secretary; John Erlichman, assistant to the President for domestic affairs; Richard Nixon, President of the

Although the history primarily criticized his Democratic predecessors, Nixon’s reaction, by all accounts, was apoplectic. He concluded that the release of the Pentagon Papers was evidence of a radical left-wing conspiracy, aided and abetted by the media, to destroy the Nixon Administration and by extension, the nation. He decided to fight this “conspiracy” with everything he had, and that involved rethinking his attitude toward domestic intelligence gathering. Rather than delegate responsibility to the FBI and CIA, Nixon adopted a do-it-yourself approach.

On Friday, July 1, 1971, White House staffers and wrote a memo suggesting the establishment of a secret White House investigations unit in response to ’s leak of the Pentagon Papers. This organization was first named ODESSA, for “Organization Directed to Eliminate the Subversion of the Secrets of the Administration,” by G. Gordon Liddy, but it eventually became better known as the , from their office location in the basement. The Plumbers would begin their career with the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, hoping to gain information to discredit him, and branched out from there, including (under Liddy’s direction) supporting the “dirty tricks” operation in support of Nixon’s campaign organization, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP in their usage, but commonly referred to as “CREEP”).

- 8 - The “third-rate burglary” in the Watergate Office Building in downtown Washington, DC, that caused the entire thread of the Nixon Administration to unravel was only a small part of the operation. At the end, Nixon’s former attorney-general, John Mitchell, would describe the total operation as the “,” an extensive list of crimes that eventually convicted nearly 70 people — not including the “unindicted co-conspirator,” Nixon himself. Some of the crimes related to Watergate included: Burglary and Break-Ins • Office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist • Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate • Establishment of the “Huston Plan” to have CIA, DIA, and NSA commit “black bag jobs” against Nixon enemies • Illegal wiretapping Conspiracy to Commit Kidnapping and Murder • CREEP’s Operation GEMSTONE had procedures to kidnap students who might disrupt the Republican convention • Liddy also proposed hiring organized crime figures to assassinate particularly troublesome opponents • Liddy developed numerous schemes to kill or silence columnist Anderson Fabrication of Documents • Fake documents implicating JFK in the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem • Proposal by Nixon to manufacture evidence in the form of a missing dictabelt tape Obstruction of Justice • Watergate investigators gave John Dean secret grand jury testimony • FBI gave Dean access to all FBI investigation files • Hush money paid to Watergate break-in defendants • Promise to clemency to Watergate break-in defendants • Offer of clemency to John Dean to keep him from talking • Offer of clemency to E. Howard Hunt, ditto

- 9 - Perjury • Ehrlichman denied advance knowledge of the Ellsberg break-in, later shown to be a lie Political Espionage and Sabotage • Operation SANDWEDGE, a massive spy campaign against the Democrats • Operatives posed as reporters to uncover information related to Chappaquiddick to discredit Prostitution • Operation GEMSTONE had provisions to provide prostitutes to compromise Democratic politicians Suppression and Destruction of Evidence • White House directed the FBI to take possession of E. Howard Hunt’s private files to keep them secret from prosecutors; Gray later destroyed them • Dean shredded evidence from Hunt’s safe • Ordering FBI to cease investigating the Ellsberg psychiatrist break-in on national security grounds That’s not a comprehensive list, mind you, but it does cover the highlights. The actual Watergate break-in was comparatively small beer indeed. This also explains the dimension and passion of the cover-up. Had the Watergate burglary simply been the result of a few aides going crazy and exceeding their authority, the embarrassment could have been contained without too much trouble. But the links between the burglars, notably Hunt and Liddy, and the Plumbers were toxic.

The great New York builder Robert Moses famously observed, “If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?” In one sense, ends necessarily justify means — the means that are appropriate to deal with a given situation must relate to the end being sought. But in practice, “the ends justify the means” is used as a blanket statement permitting anything at all, as long as the end is achieved. Although there were a few sincerely held beliefs involving national security at stake, in the end much of the criminality of Watergate turns out to be rather petty and selfish. When Woodward and Bernstein’s infamous source Deep Throat, later revealed as FBI Associate Director , called the Watergate crew “stupid,” he wasn’t just whistling Dixie.

- 10 - The Enemies List

While the establishment of the Plumbers Unit on July 1, 1971, often marks the official beginning of the Watergate scandal, several important bits came earlier. On June 24, 1971, John Dean issued the very first version of what grew into the Nixon Enemies List. It wasn't originally part of the Watergate scandal, though, and only turned into a criminal action on August 16, 1971, as we’ll see. Over time, the Enemies List grew, eventually numbering 576 names (though a few were duplicates). The first version, known as the "Opponents List," consisted of a mere twenty names, in order of importance.

1. Arnold Picker (United Artists) 2. Alexander Barkan (AFL-CIO) 3. Ed Guthman (LA Times) 4. Maxwell Dane (Doyle, Dane and Bernbach) 5. Charles Dyson (Dyson-Kissner Corporation) 6. Howard Stein (Dreyfus Corporation) 7. Allard Lowenstein (Nassau County congressman) 8. Morton Halperin (Common Cause) 9. Leonard Woodcock (UAW) 10. Sterling Munro (AA to Sen. Jackson) 11. Bernard Feld (Council for a Livable World) 12. Sidney Davidoff (aide to Mayor Lindsay) 13. John Conyers (Detroit congressman) 14. Samuel Lambert (NEA) 15. Stewart Rawlings Mott (Mott Associates) 16. Ron Dellums (California congressman) 17. Daniel Schorr (CBS) 18. S. Harrison Dogole (Globe Security Systems)

- 11 - Page 1 of the Enemies List, authored by John Dean

- 12 - 19. Paul Newman (actor, not yet a food manufacturer) 20. Mary McGrory (WaPo columnist).

Discrediting, embarrassing, and distracting these people would become a central political objective of the Nixon administration. That's not necessarily or automatically wrong. Identifying and fighting your political opponents is perfectly normal, and many tactics are perfectly legal and legitimate. Using the power of incumbency to harness the Federal government to attack them for you, however, is not. The Enemies List entered the Watergate scandal on August 16, 1971, when White House counsel John Dean explained in writing what the list was for, and how it was to be used. Here's Dean: "This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." (Emphasis added.) From that point on, it was a crime, and as such fell into the cover up, a project managed by John Dean. (Much of the Watergate cover up had little to do with the actual break-in, but rather trying to keep the lid on the many other illegal activities of the White House staff, most notoriously the Plumbers Unit.) Ironically, it was Dean himself who first revealed the existence of the Enemies List during his marathon testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. Daniel Schorr managed to get a copy of the list and read it on the air — unaware that he himself was on it until he came to his own name. Interestingly, for all the political and moral fallout from the Enemies List, it turns out that nothing much actually happened on the “screw our political enemies” front that used Federal resources. The Congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation concluded that people on the list had not been subjected to an unusual number of tax audits. Deep Throat famously told that his opinion of the Nixon men was that the weren't that smart, and I suspect that's true. There's a Three Stooges quality about Watergate, a bunch of overprivileged rich kids playing at superspy intrigue and failing miserably. Being on the Enemies List didn't appear to hurt many of Nixon's enemies, but its revelation severely backfired on its creators.

- 13 - - 14 - Hunt/Liddy Special Project #1

As noted previously, a big motive in the Watergate cover-up had nothing to do with the actual burglary, but rather with the previous activities of Unit. Their first operation, “Hunt/Liddy Special Project 1,” was part of the Nixon Administration’s response to the leaking of the Pentagon Papers by one of its contributors, Daniel Ellsberg, Ph.D. (Ellsberg was also known for his pioneering work on the cognitive bias known as the ambiguity aversion effect, better known as the Ellsberg paradox — as described in my work on cognitive bias.1) Ellsberg, a former military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation, was one of 36 members of the Vietnam Study Task Force, established by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to produce an “encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War.” The report “United States—Vietnam Relations: 1945-1967,” was so secret that it was kept from President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. The final report contained 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of original government documents published in 47 volumes. It was classified “Top Secret — Sensitive,” meaning that the reason for its classification was that the publication of the study would be embarrassing. The print run was 15 copies. In October 1969, Ellsberg, who had grown to oppose the Vietnam War, along with Anthony Russo, photocopied the study and showed it to , William Fulbright, George McGovern, and others. None was interested. It was not until February 1971 that Ellsberg first discussed the report with New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan. In March, Ellsberg gave Sheehan 43 of the 47 volumes, and the Times began publishing excerpts from the study starting in June 1971, under the nickname “Pentagon Papers.” The reaction was much the same as what followed the WikiLeaks disclosure of State Department cables. Although numerous claims of damage to US military and intelligence operations gained headlines, the reality was that the Papers talked about events that had happened years before. Nixon Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold later called the Papers an example of "massive overclassification" with "no trace of a threat to the national security.”

1 Dobson, Michael. Random Jottings #6: The Cognitive Biases Issue, 2011. http://efanzines.com/ RandomJottings/RandomJottings06.pdf

- 15 - The Papers became public knowledge when Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) entered 4,100 pages from the report in the Congressional Record, in effect declassifying it. Richard Nixon originally wasn’t interested in prosecuting Ellsberg or the Times, because the study only embarrassed the Johnson and Kennedy administrations, but Henry Kissinger argued that this would set a negative precedent, and Ellsberg and Russo were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917. To come up with evidence to discredit Ellsberg, the Plumbers received their first mission, which took place on September 3, 1971. It was a burglary operation, targeting the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis J. Fielding. The break-in team reported they couldn’t find Ellsberg’s file, but Fielding himself later said that not only was the Ellsberg file in his office, but he had also found it on the floor the morning after the burglary. Someone had clearly gone through it. , Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, reported to Nixon, saying (on tape), “We had one little operation. It’s been aborted out in Los Angeles which, I think, is better that you don’t know about.” Later, when the whole story came, out, the case against Ellsberg turned into a mistrial because of government misconduct, and all charges were dismissed. What’s fascinating to me in all this is how unsuccessful the Plumbers Unit was. Far from achieving its goal of discrediting Ellsberg, the burglary (and related wiretapping) actually contributed to the dismissal of the case. You can download the complete Pentagon Papers (including the parts Ellsberg didn't release) from the US National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/research/ pentagon-papers/.

- 16 - Watergate Considered as an Org Chart of Semi- Precious Stones2

In 1936, the zeppelin LZ129 Hindenburg passed over the nursery school of G. Gordon Liddy, then only six years old. Liddy, by his own account a fearful child, had decided to confront his fears, and the roaring, titanic sound of an airship was chief among those fears. “The earth trembled and the roar grew louder as the enormous machine went through its ponderous turn. I lifted my head and turned my palms outward to feel the vibration better. It struck my upturned face and palms and seemed to infuse my whole body with the strength of the giant airship. Ecstatic, I drank in its colossal power and felt myself grow — swelling with strength. Fear evaporated and in its place came a sense of personal might and power.”3 (Liddy, 26) Of all the figures in the Watergate scandal, the two most interesting characters, to me, are Liddy and White House Counsel John Dean. I’ll get to Dean a little later. G. Gordon Liddy was the architect of Operation GEMSTONE, the operation within CREEP that executed the actual Watergate break-in. Previously, as chief operative of the White House Plumbers, he’d conducted the break-in into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. In the aftermath of the arrest of the burglars at the , he offered to stand on a streetcorner so he could be killed. He famously threatened to kill columnist and muckraker Jack Anderson in a variety of colorful ways. And he once held his hand in a candle’s flame to make a point. “The woman I was working on, Sherry Stevens, was ideal as a plant. She was flashily good looking, young, had secretarial skills and experience, and appeared able to attract men sexually if she wished, possibly even the candidate. At dinner Miss Stevens seemed reluctant, balking at the risks involved, and when I told her that her identity would be revealed to no one...she pointed out that I would know

2 A version of this article originally appeared in my book The Six Dimensions of Project Management under the title “A Third-Rate Burglary.” It is used here by kind permission of Management Concepts; the full citation can be found in the Acknowledgements and Credits section.

3 G. Gordon Liddy. Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy. New York: Dell/St. Martin’s Press, 1980.

- 17 - her identity. I told her nothing could force me to disclose anything I chose not to reveal. She didn’t believe me and I was casting about for some way to convince her when I noticed she smoked. I told her to light her cigarette lighter and hold it out. She did and I locked my gaze upon her eyes and placed my hand, palm down, over the flame. Presently the flesh turned black and when she smelled the scent of burning meat, Sherry Stevens broke from my gaze and pulled the lighter away from my hand. … Pale, Miss Stevens said she was sure I would never betray her, but excused herself as a candidate, invoking a just remembered plan to marry a Swiss airplane pilot in September.” (Liddy, 262-263) In his book Heinlein in Dimension4, Alexei Panshin describes the three stages of the “Heinlein Individual,” a recurring character in the works of Robert Anson Heinlein: “the competent but naive youngster...the competent man who know how things work…[and] the who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too.”(Panshin 129) My biggest takeaway from reading Will was that G. Gordon Liddy is the Heinlein Individual made flesh. In his confrontation with the Hindenberg, you find the competent but naive youngster preparing himself, and in the candle incident the competent man who knows how things work. (The jury is still out on Stage 3.) Liddy’s beliefs and choices reflect those that Heinlein himself made in his evolution toward increasingly conservative positions, and in their shared attitude to the social changes of the late 1960s. As a long-time fan of Heinlein’s work, it was fascinating to me to be brought up against what the Heinlein Individual would be like in real life. It’s not a particularly pretty picture. In “Hunt/Liddy Special Project #1,” we saw him in action for the first time. But the project that brought him to notoriety was his work with CREEP, as the architect of Operation GEMSTONE. This linked in with another of my interests, the field of project management. I’ve written and spoken extensively on the topic over the years. The world of work, as we project managers say, consists of operations, which are ongoing activities with no planned point of termination, and projects, which by definition are both temporary and unique. And projects are always and necessarily bound by a concept known as the Triple Constraints.

4 Alexei Panshin. Heinlein In Dimension. : Advent Publishers, 1968.

- 18 - Official FBI portrait of G. Gordon Liddy, c. 1964

- 19 - The Triple Constraints We’ve all heard the old management joke, “Did you want it fast, good, or cheap? Pick two.” As with most such jokes, there’s a fair amount of hidden truth in it. At the core of any project rests the Triple Constraints: the “iron triangle” of time, cost, and performance criteria. Of course, not all constraints are created equal. In some projects, the deadline is of overwhelming importance and some flexibility on budget is acceptable, while in other projects the scope and requirements absolutely have to be achieved, even if it takes a little more time to get there. The Triple Constraints tend to fall into a hierarchy of Driver, Middle, and Weak Constraint: • the Driver is the core constraint that must be met to call the project something other than a failure • the Weak Constraint is the constraint with the greatest flexibility • the Middle Constraint, as the name suggests, falls somewhere between the two That gives us six different potential hierarchies of constraints. Each hierarchy (dimension of project management, hence the “Six Dimensions” title) has its own dynamic, including common issues and problems, opportunities, and vulnerable points. With that, let’s turn to a project management analysis of Liddy’s Operation GEMSTONE.

Case: Operation GEMSTONE Client: Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) Project Charter Create and manage a project management office for covert politcal operations in support of the 1972 campaign to re-elect President Richard M. Nixon. Triple Constraints and Hierarchy Cost (Driver) $250,000 budget ($83,000 cash)

- 20 - Time (Middle) The project has both a final deadline and various intermediate deadlines, primarily in the form of imposed external dates. These include the timing of the Democratic National Convention, the date new laws imposing campaign finance limitations go into effect, and most importantly, Election Day 1972. Performance (Weak) The initial project scope was revised several times before approval, and is subject to modification based on the political situation and any targets of opportunity. It remains somewhat fluid and the definition of success is a moving target. I have PMO and I’m Armed A Project Management Office (PMO) provides structure and support to individual projects in an organization. A PMO may oversee a portfolio or program for specific subsets of projects, for projects above a certain size, or for projects sharing common methodology. Depending on the organization, a PMO may have the management power to obtain and allocate resources, approve and disapprove projects, and to establish and enforce policies and process. Other PMOs carry the same title, but in practice only provide tech support and scheduling/reporting functions for their projects and have little or no actual decision authority. A good PMO helps focus the wants, desires and needs in an organization into executable projects. This is a nontrivial task, as figuring out what we need and making it operational can be quite difficult — not to mention highly political. Unstated requirements and assumptions influence the interpretation of needs and wants, and a strong-willed program manager can move the organization’s direction through the way in which projects are executed. A project is chartered in the hope that what you’ve decided to do will achieve what you (or the customer) wants. The goal of the validation and sign-off on project progress is intended to ensure that the project will in fact produce a solution to whatever gap or issue you’ve identified. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work as advertised. When There’s a Leak, Call a Plumber In 1971, G. Gordon Liddy joined President Richard Nixon’s White House staff, where he was assigned to a special team investigating security leaks. This team had been created in large part to address the unease caused by Daniel Ellsberg’s release of what became known as “the Pentagon Papers.” Though not named such at the time,

- 21 - his mission was in effect to create a PMO with the capability to handle a variety of projects. Liddy brought a variety of government and legal expertise to the team: he had been an FBI agent, assistant district attorney for Dutchess County, New York (where he had famously busted Dr. Timothy Leary for drugs), an unsuccessful Congressional candidate, and special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement. A strong conservative, he believed America’s then-current controversy over the war in Vietnam amounted itself to war. In his autobiography, Liddy wrote, “I had learned long ago the maxims of Cicero that ‘laws are inoperative in war’ and that ‘the good of the people is the chief law.’ […] That, to me, is war. I was ready. And willing.” Liddy’s autobiography gives some insight into what the overarching goal would be: “Our organization had been directed to eliminate subversion of the secrets of the administration, so I created an acronym using the initial letter of those descriptive words. […] I am inclined to think in German terms, and the acronym was also used by a World War II German veterans’ organization belonged to by some acquaintances of mine, Organisation Der Emerlingen Schutz Staffel Angehörigen: ODESSA.” (Liddy 176-177, 203) (Liddy’s German is slightly off here. Emerlingen should be Ehemaligen, and Schutz Staffel-Angehörigen is normally written “SS-Angehörigen,” or “former SS members.”) The ODESSA team was augmented by a consultant, E. Howard Hunt, who had been working for assistant to the president . In the White House, the ODESSA operation became known as the “Plumbers,” from a sign David Young placed on the office door. The ODESSA group had a wide-ranging project portfolio, conducting high-level intelligence assessments but focusing primarily on Ellsberg. Liddy believed the operation needed to remain closely held. “[D]isclosure of the ODESSA operation would lend itself to charges of ‘witch hunting’; ‘cover-up’; and ‘repression,’” Liddy wrote. (Liddy 221-222)

In the performance of his project charter, Liddy and Hunt planned a preliminary break-in of the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, to gain information to prepare a CIA psychological profile of Ellsberg. Based on the planning and risk assessment, Hunt brought in some friends, Cuban-Americans from the who had been trained by the CIA for clandestine work. Unfortunately for ODESSA, the Fielding burglary produced no useful results. Other less sensitive projects were executed, and several further projects that were proposed were turned down.

- 22 - You Say Yes, I Say No/You Say Stop and I Say Go, Go Go With the election approaching, Liddy used the ODESSA PMO experience and assets to establish a new PMO for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), and was introduced to the campaign leadership as “our man in charge of dirty tricks.” At the request of Jeb Magruder, a special assistant to President Nixon now assigned to CREEP as assistant to the chairman and former Attorney General John Mitchell. Liddy prepared a budget and plan for Mitchell. As projects move through the process from concept to execution, they normally pass through various “phase gates,” during which a project may be approved, disapproved, or modified. Liddy’s project faced such a phase gate review early in the initiation process, during which he made a proposal for a sweeping program consisting of multiple projects. Liddy may not have been a Project Management Professional (PMP®), as the credential did not exist at the time, but he was proceeding according to best practices—clarifying his constraints, obtaining sign-off and approval and keeping communication lines open. With a neatly prepared presentation, including the equivalent of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), along with a variety of other charts, Liddy headed off to his stakeholder meeting with Mitchell, Magruder, and others. Tell Me Why “Why” is the most overlooked and the most critical question in project management. Some project managers don’t even recognize this as a legitimate question. “Why? Because the boss/customer said so!” That’s not nearly good enough. As project managers, it may not always be our business to judge the wishes of the customer/sponsor, but it is certainly our business to understand the customer/sponsor needs. If the proposed project isn’t going to meet the expressed and unexpressed needs, either the project has to change or the needs need reexamination. If neither is done, the project may succeed on a technical level, but it will likely fail the ultimate test of customer satisfaction: “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” In the case of ODESSA and Liddy, this appears to have been a critical project planning blind spot. At the point of project approval, Richard Nixon was likely to be re-elected. The original Democratic front-runner, Senator of Maine, had done poorly in primaries. Anti-war candidate George McGovern, considered by the White House and CREEP as the easiest to defeat, appeared to be the Democratic front- runner. Why, then, approve a plan that had such negative potential consequences when taking the risk was not necessary?

- 23 - While many customers have a good idea of their needs and know how to express them in terms appropriate for a project, others don’t. It becomes our job as project managers to consult and advise on those needs and the best approach to meet them. A special danger in project management arises when the project manager has a strong point of view. In such cases, it’s hard for the project manager to resist the impulse to modify customer needs into something “more correct.” Sometimes, it’s appropriate for the project manager, especially when working with a customer whose own sense of the project is very limited. Other times it isn’t. The wise project manager thinks hard and long before letting his or her point of view trump the expressed wishes of the customer. In a political environment, however, you are dealing with people who often bring a strong ideological bent to the table. Their point of view sometimes trumps everything — including the actual wishes and ultimate needs of the customer. The Work Breakdown Structure G. Gordon Liddy presented a proposed project plan to Mitchell in Mitchell’s inner office at the Justice Department. In a series of charts, he presented the information summarized in the WBS structure in Fig. 1, with a total budget of $1 million. At the conclusion, Mitchell said, “Gordon, a million dollars is a hell of a lot of money, much more than we had in mind. I’d like you to go back and come up with something more realistic.” (Liddy, 276) As an aside, in that first encounter, John Mitchell proved himself to have a sense of humor. When Liddy was discussing the use of professional killers to deal with troublesome protestors. “And where did you find men like that?” Mitchell asked. When told they were organized crime figures, Mitchell asked about cost, and when told they were expensive, he said dryly, “Well, let’s not contribute any more than we have to to the coffers of organized crime.” (Liddy 273)

______Notes

1. Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) was a euphemism to describe the disappearance of people arrested by the Gestapo.

2. Einsatsgruppe, or Special Action Groups, were SS units who executed nearly one million Jews. The burnout rate and slow pace of this operation led to the notorious Wannsee Conference, during which the “final solution to the Jewish problem” was developed.

3. The COAL operation was directed at Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first black female candidate for President. (I worked for her 1972 campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina.)

- 24 - Fig. 1 Watergate Considered as an Org Chart of Semi-Precious Stones. This preliminary Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) describes the original proposed Liddy plan, rejected by Mitchell as excessive.

Operation GEMSTONE

DEMONSTRATION POLITICAL SURVEILLANCE CLANDESTINE FUNDING ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ENTRIES (BRICK)

RUBY QUARTZ OPALS (I to IV) DIAMOND Infiltration of spies Microwave Clandestine entries Counterdemon- into Democratic interception of to plant bugging stration Activities campaign camps telephone traffic devices

SAPPHIRE EMERALD NACHT UND NEBEL Houseboat filled Chase plane to Identify and kidnap Sen. Edmund with prostitutes for eavesdrop on leaders, hold in Muskie Democratic Democratic Mexico convention candidate aircraft

EINSATSGRUPPE CRYSTAL COAL Special action Electronic Funnel money to Sen. George group of surveillance of Shirley Chisholm's McGovern professional mob Democratic campaign killers convention

GARNET TURQUOISE Arrange pro- Commando raid to Democratic Democratic sabotage air National demonstrations conditioning at Convention from unpopular Democratic committee groups convention meetings

TOPAZ Photographs of documents during clandestine entries (Same targets)

- 25 - Scope Revisions and New WBS At Mitchell’s direction (“Burn those charts. Do it personally”), Liddy then began working on a new plan, this one to be capped at a budget of no more than $500,000. The easiest way to fit a project into a lower cost structure is to cut big dollar items first. The chase plane, Operation EMERALD, was out immediately, followed by QUARTZ (microwave interception of telephone traffic) and COAL (Mitchell said that this had already been taken care of by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller). Other operations were pared down to fit into the $500,000 budget. In SAPPHIRE, the houseboat was out, but the prostitutes remained. This resulted in a modified WBS, shown in Fig. 2. This was again presented to Mitchell, and the decision was to be forthcoming. While Liddy waited, he worked on various smaller projects, including installing an operative posing as Muskie’s loyal chauffeur, and matters involving and ITT lobbyist Dita Beard. Fig. 2. First Revision. This revised WBS was budgeted at $500,000. It was rejected as well.

Operation GEMSTONE (Mark II)

DEMONSTRATION POLITICAL CLANDESTINE FUNDING ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ENTRIES (BRICK)

OPALS (I to IV) RUBY Clandestine entries DIAMOND Infiltration of spies to plant bugging Counterdemonstration into Democratic devices (same activities (reduced, with campaign camps some GARNET retained) targets as before)

SAPPHIRE TOPAZ Prostitutes, no Photographs of houseboat documents during clandestine entries (Same targets as above)

CRYSTAL Electronic surveillance of Democratic convention (reduced in scope)

- 26 - Liddy also discovered that although he was officially in charge of these operations, at least two other operations of similar nature were going on, one of them being ’s Operation SANDWEDGE. Liddy continued to push for an answer, and learned after several weeks the operation had been rejected, once again for cost. Liddy cut the proposed project again, keeping the four OPAL entries, the two existing RUBY agents, and two of the SAPPHIRE prostitutes, along with some DIAMOND counterdemonstration capabilities, fitting into a budget of $250,000 (Fig. 3). This was approved shortly before the introduction of new campaign finance rules that would make it more difficult to raise clandestine funds.

Fig. 3. Second Revision. This WBS was budgeted at $250,000, and was approved.

Operation GEMSTONE (Mark III)

DEMONSTRATION POLITICAL CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ENTRIES

OPALS (I to IV) DIAMOND Clandestine entries to plant RUBY Counterdemonstration bugging devices (same Two agents activities (further reduced) targets as before)

SAPPHIRE TOPAZ Two prostitutes Photographs of documents during clandestine entries (Same targets as above)

Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse Let’s come back to our discussion of “Why.” The people involved knew the risks and the rather low upside return on these dirty trick projects. In hindsight, many of those who gave project approval may have even asked themselves, “Why on earth are we doing this?” So, how did G. Gordon Liddy manage to sell even a reduced Operation GEMSTONE to John Mitchell and the rest of the Committee to Re-Elect the President?

- 27 - Psychologist Robert B. Cialdini5 believes it was the successive cutbacks that resulted in the decision to approve the operation. He lists six fundamental techniques (Cialdini, xiii) to influence and persuade other people: • Reciprocation. I did something for you, so you must do something for me. • Commitment and Consistency. I agreed to it once and invested energy in it. I must be consistent with my previous behavior and thought. • Social Proof. Other people are doing it. They must know what’s best. • Liking. You’re a likeable person. I want to do what you want me to do. • Authority. You’re the expert. It’s best if I follow your advice. • Scarcity. There isn’t much to go around. I need to take it now so I don’t lose the chance later. G. Gordon Liddy’s persuasion came through the agency of reciprocation, argues Cialdini. The first plan Liddy submitted was rejected, and Liddy was directed on the spot to come up with a plan costing substantially less. He did so. The second plan lingered in limbo for weeks, until Liddy received word it, too, had been rejected. Why did the decision on the second plan take so long? When some plan or person is rejected, the rejector tends to feel a certain amount of discomfort, resulting in the feeling that “we owe them one.” Any subsequent proposal tends to be regarded more favorably as a result. When the second proposal is also rejected, we feel even more under an obligation to reciprocate the concessions that have been made. Cialdini reports Jeb Magruder on the decision to accept the third proposal. “[N]o one was particularly overwhelmed with the project…but after starting at the grandiose sum of $1 million, we thought that probably $250,000 would be an acceptable figure. […] We were reluctant to send him away with nothing.” (Cialdini, 44, emphasis added.)

Could a decision as ultimately risky as this be taken merely on the feeling that “we were reluctant to send him away with nothing”? Cialdini notes that only one member of the group, Frederick LaRue, argued against the project, saying, “I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” Of the three decision-makers, La Rue was the only one who had not been at the previous two meetings. He had no feelings of reciprocation: he looked at the proposal in its own right rather than in the context of the two previous rejections. (Cialdini, 45)

5 Robert B. Cialdini. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Quill, 1993

- 28 - Scope Creeps In on Little Cat Feet Both before and after the approval of the third version of GEMSTONE, Liddy was given additional project responsibilities and was directed to fund additional operations. He drew from a supply of $83,000 in cash that had been provided for the surreptitious operations, leaving meticulous IOUs to provide an accounting when and if called for. Campaign treasurer Hugh Sloane asked once for an accounting. “When I started to detail what I was using the money for, however, he said that wouldn’t be necessary and hurried me out nervously.” (Liddy, 302) Money went for SEDAN CHAIR (a Magruder operation), for other infiltration programs (RUBY), for research on a proposal to stop — permanently — columnist Jack Anderson’s publication of secret materials. (Proposals included using LSD on the steering wheel of Anderson’s car, running into the car in an effort to flip it over, placing of poisoned tablets in Anderson’s aspirin bottle, and faking a mugging/ murder.) In short, GEMSTONE’s funds were being spent on ongoing operations before the project itself had ever been approved. Evolution of the Triple Constraints This resulted in increased cost pressures on the GEMSTONE operation, which pushed themselves into the Driver slot. The project was not “do what’s necessary and we’ll pay for it,” but rather “do what you can within funding limitations.” Many of the operations involved the Democratic National Convention, which was time-fixed. Infiltrating the staffs of the major Democratic candidates was time-limited as well. RUBY agents needed to be in place by the time of the nomination. And behind it all was Election Day, a date established by law. This made Time the Middle Constraint. Performance was the Weak Constraint by default. Liddy’s difficulties in achieving his initial performance targets came primarily from budgetary limitations, and secondarily from the externally imposed deadlines. Time constraints on the project were external to CREEP, while project budgetary limitations were primarily imposed from within the organization. At least in theory, the campaign could have funded the original $1 million proposal, but chose not to. In addition, a new campaign finance law introduced that spring completely changed CREEP’s ability to raise undeclared funds or to launder funds coming in after that deadline. Whereas Liddy would have been able to go back for addition funding in previous elections, the rules (“enterprise environmental factors,” as the PMBOK® calls them) had shifted. Having determined that cost was the driver, in light of the revisions that Liddy had submitted in his previous project proposals and general issues of cost-driven projects, certain critical strategies for keeping the project on-target needed to be the order of the day:

- 29 - Cost as Driver: Scope must be reined in to stay in line with resources available. Scope had already been cut twice, and further cuts were likely — though at the same time new scope was being added as a result of external pressures. Performance as Weak Constraint: Quality, scope, or risk can be modified when performance is the weak constraint. Lower quality may impact worth of the deliverables, lowered scope reduces the number and size of the deliverables, and increased risk results in greater likelihood of failure. All three would apply to GEMSTONE. The Strange Thing the Dog Did in the Night You will notice that the original OPAL/TOPAZ plan included burglaries of the offices of Senators Muskie and McGovern, and of meetings of the Democratic National Committee. Conspicuously missing is the Watergate break-in itself, the burglary and bugging of the office of DNC chairman Lawrence O’Brien. Funding issues were plaguing project activities and Liddy decided to cut overhead costs by using Hunt, James McCord (an ex-FBI and ex-CIA specialist in electronic surveillance) and the Cubans for operational work rather than recruiting people with less obvious ties to the Administration and the Committee. “The OPAL budget,” Liddy writes, “was high [and funds were] tight.” (Liddy, 301) There were bonus payments for each entry, travel and expenses for the Miami-based Cubans, and other costs, amounting to $10,000 per job—not counting the cost of electronic equipment. A penetration of McGovern’s Capitol Hill office was successful; a second was aborted when a real attempted burglary resulted in the hiring of a security agency to guard the place. In late April, Jeb Magruder gave Liddy the assignment to put a bug in O’Brien’s Watergate office, and to photograph anything he found there. The budget did contain a provision for one additional OPAL entry, but no more. Liddy thought the request “strange,” but upon inquiry was simply told, “It’s important.” (Liddy, 302-303)

As Liddy prepared for the Watergate entry, he continued to receive unbudgeted requests, and began to insist on additional funding to cover the additional scope. His team conducted one surreptitious entry of the Watergate building successfully, though Hunt and Gonzales were locked in the room until next day. (Hunt ended up filling one of O’Brien’s scotch bottles with urine.) The next night they tried again, unsuccessfully. The third try was also successful, and the team placed the listening devices and photographed O’Brien’s correspondence. However, the bug was in the wrong place and no useful conversations were intercepted.

- 30 - Opals are Bad Luck The team needed to go back for still another entry into the Watergate office building to fix a defective bug or move it to where it would pick up the desired conversations. Magruder called Liddy in for a meeting, bringing up the issue of documents again. “I want to know what O’Brien’s got right here!” Magruder said, pointing to the lower part of his desk, where he kept derogatory information on Democrats. Liddy concluded from this that the purpose of this additional Watergate break-in was to find out what derogatory information O’Brien might have on the President or other Republicans, rather than to find something that could be used against the Democrats. They went in on Friday evening, 16 June. At approximately 2 AM Saturday morning, the Watergate burglars were caught by police. Those arrested included James McCord, who was officially employed by the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Scope and Stakeholders At this point it is important to note that many analyses cite bad luck as the reason that the break-in was discovered and worse luck that it became a scandal. However, when you accept additional levels of risk in the project, the probability and severity of bad outcomes inevitably increases. Project management responsibility for the failure rests on several shoulders. The first is Liddy himself. As a project manager, he did not account for the inevitability of scope creep. A project manager must clearly lay out the consequences of adding scope without adding resources or cutting elsewhere. A project manager must help stakeholders understand their choices and the associated consequences. The stakeholders, including Mitchell, Magruder, and others, failed to supervise Liddy’s operations, failed to request appropriate project reporting, and failed to take into account the potential impact of their own requests on project success. If you cut funding to a project, you need to be careful in adding scope. Too many stakeholders ignore warning signs from project managers that their projects are overburdened. It may well be that project managers can be pushed to higher levels of achievement, but there is a breaking point beyond which failure becomes inevitable. Risk Management and Crisis Response G. Gordon Liddy knew how critical it was to keep this operation away from the Committee, and had even promised not to use any CREEP staff or official consultants for GEMSTONE activities. In putting McCord in with the Cubans, Liddy broke his own rule. While he repeatedly and clearly took responsibility for this decision, he felt his options had been narrowed too much. He reports telling John Dean, “By the time the program finally got approved, McCord was the only game in town and I used him.”

- 31 - Elsewhere we’ve discussed the importance of bad decisions, the idea that if your choice is between bad and good, any sensible person would choose good. If, on the other hand, your choice is between bad and worse, it’s important to choose the merely bad. The problem is that it isn’t always clear which is bad, and which worse. The decision-makers ordering the Watergate break-in (Magruder and whoever gave orders to Magruder — theories abound) were not made aware that Liddy’s only available choice could tie the operation directly back to the Committee. Would the same decision have been made had Magruder known this? Considering the clear risk of catastrophe in the event of mission compromise, one assumes someone at a high enough level might have called a halt. Alternatively, depending on the nature of the information someone was worried that O’Brien might have, the risk of not re-entering may have been worse. In a security-conscious environment, in which information is necessarily closely held, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure any single person has access to all the necessary information. The Continuation of Diplomacy (With the Addition of Other Means) What, then, of Liddy? His project management process was clearly methodical, regardless of one’s political or ethical opinion of the project itself. What about the processes of quantitative and qualitative risk analysis? Liddy was aware of the risk he was taking, as we have noted. He took immediate responsibility for the failure. Because he was aware of the risk, he must have consciously decided that it was worth taking. Dirty tricks are not unknown in political campaigns, and certainly neither began nor ended with the 1972 Nixon campaign. However, when someone proposes a campaign plan that includes (at least in early drafts) kidnapping, assassination, and CIA-level electronic surveillance, it seems clear that the planner believes the stakes of the election are unusually high. Indeed, some of these activities are appropriate to the battlefield rather than normal civilian life. As we have noted earlier, Liddy regarded the political and social climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a state of war, and in war decisions normally considered wrong become legitimized. “The experience of the last ten years left no doubt in my mind that the United States was at war internally as well as externally. […] In view of the thousands of bombings, burnings, riots, and looting of the ‘60s […] the murders of police just because they were police, the killing of judges, and the general disintegration of the social order. […] The events of the 1960s offended me gravely. To permit the thought, spirit, life-style, and ideas of the ‘60s movement to achieve power [was] as offensive to me as was the thought of surrender to a career Japanese soldier in 1945. […] With an ice-cold, deliberate certainty I knew exactly what I was going

- 32 - to be doing in 1972 and it was damn well about time: we were going to throw the Battle Override.” (Liddy, 269) Project managers are project stakeholders. Their personal beliefs, understandings, and goals necessarily affect the projects they manage, sometimes in minor ways and sometimes in major. If the project manager views a situation as more serious than the project sponsor, customer, or other stakeholders, it’s likely that the project manager will accept risks that other stakeholders might reject. Although other members of the Nixon Administration would naturally share many of Liddy’s views, it’s not necessarily the case they would view the conflict in as stark or warlike a manner. If they did agree with Liddy’s judgment, then he was accepting risks that his stakeholders would likely have accepted as well. For better or worse, this would form a shared judgment. The problem for project sponsor and customer comes when they view the situation differently and less starkly than the project manager. In that case, it’s vital for central stakeholders to exercise more detailed control over the project manager, or alternately to replace the project manager with someone more in sync with their vision. Failure to do so results by default in accepting this additional risk — as clearly happened in this case. The advantage of appointing an aggressive project manager with a strong point of view is that he or she will take the initiative and push the project ahead regardless of challenges. The disadvantage is that the same project manager may take risks the sponsor and customer do not wish to take. Keep active lines of communication open with strong-willed and opinionated project managers. Insist on regular briefings. Discuss the limits of acceptable risk. Review project plans and details. If the project manager will not or cannot adjust the level of effort to meet stakeholder expectations, you need a different project manager. If your expectations and those of the project manager are in alignment, understand this makes you an active acceptor of the project’s risks. Project Management Principles • The amount of risk you should accept in a project must be proportional to that which is at stake. • Just because the project customer and sponsor says so is not enough reason to allow you undertake the project effectively. • If the proposed project isn’t going to meet the customer’s expressed and unexpresed needs, either the project has to change or the needs need reexamination.

- 33 - • While many customers have a good idea of their needs and know how to express them in terms appropriate for a project, don’t bet on it. • Watch out for the project manager with a strong point of view. • There are six fundamental techniques to influence and persuade other people: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity. Know how and when to use these techniques, and how to handle it when they are used on you. • Scope creep is inherently dangerous, and the danger is compounded when the additional scope is unplanned and unbudgeted. • Cost constraints can be imposed by circumstances or by deliberate action of project sponsors or customers. This can lead to acceptance of higher levels of risk. • Additional scope carries additional risk, especially when that scope is added to an already-tight budget on a cost-driven project. • When the real objective of the project is not shared with the project manager, the project manager may misunderstand the real priority or objective of the project and act wrongly. • Choosing between bad and worse is harder and more sophisticated than choosing between bad and good. • Project managers are also project stakeholders, with consequences for good and for ill. One Final Liddy Story Liddy served four and a half years in prison, the longest time served by any member of the Watergate conspiracy. His stories of his prison time make for some of the most fascinating reading in all of Will. In particular, I remember a scene from his first days in the D. C. jail, a notorious hellhole. Ordered to get undressed in his cell before proceeding to the shower, he marched past the cells of the primarily black prison population fully naked — unaware of the custom that he should have wrapped the towel around himself. For him, it was like any other locker room and he felt no need to cover himself. Under shouts and catcalls from the other prisoners, rather than cover himself he began to sing loudly. “‘Die Fahne hoch!’ I sang, ‘Die Reihen dicht geschlossen…’

- 34 - A curious phenomenon occurred. The roaring noise started to abate. By the time I reached the second verse of the ‘Horst Wessel Song,’ [anthem of the Nazi party] my voice was the only one in the entire cellblock. I don’t believe there was a man there who understood one word of what I sang. But they got the message.” (LIddy 400-401) My advice? Before you get the leak fixed, make sure you choose the right plumber.

Liddy post-Watergate, autographing his book.

- 35 - The Watergate complex from the air.

“Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.”

— Billy Graham

- 36 - Duct and Other Tapes

On June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills apprehended , Vergilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, , and James McCord inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building, a combination office, condominium, and hotel complex near the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The men were arrested and locked up until a preliminary hearing the next morning. At the hearing, the judge asked each of the men their names, homes, and where they worked. James McCord mumbled his answer when it got to where he worked. The judge told him to speak up. “Where do you work?” the judge asked again. “I work for the Committee to Re-Elect the President,” McCord said. And with those words, the public face of Watergate scandal officially began. As we’ve noted, a lot had already happened by this time — the Enemies List, the raid on the office of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and Operation GEMSTONE. The infamous “two-bit burglary,” however, was the incident that unraveled the entire web. The June 17 burglary, interestingly, was not the first. During the previous Memorial Day weekend, the Watergate team tried not one, but twice, and failed on both attempts, one because they couldn’t get to the staff elevator before the night alarm got turned on, and the second because Gonzales, a locksmith, failed to pick the lock to the DNC headquarters office door. On the night of May 28, a third attempt succeeded. The burglars installed a wiretap and room mike in the office of DNC chairman Larry O’Brien, and photographed as many documents as they could. Across the street from the Watergate, in Room 419 of the Howard Johnson’s (now a George Washington University dorm), Hunt and the other mission commander, G. Gordon Liddy, monitored the bugs, but evidently they didn’t work that well. By June 5, they gave McCord new instructions: fixing the room monitoring bug and fixing a problem with one of the phone taps. On June 17, the team went back in, using the door between the garage and the stairwell. To make sure it didn’t lock, they put duct tape over the latch bolt. Security guard Frank Wills, working the midnight to 7 am shift, spotted the tape on a routine patrol of the building, and removed it. He didn’t think anything else about it, and kept going.

- 37 - But when he came back on his next round, he found that the tape had been replaced! And so he called the police. Frank Wills’ story, unfortunately, didn’t turn out well. When the Watergate complex didn’t give him a raise for discovering the burglary, he quit. His fifteen minutes of fame lasted a year or so, and after that he wasn’t able to hold a steady job. In 1983 he was convicted of shoplifting. By 1993, he was so broke that he was washing his clothes in a bucket. He died in 2000 of a brain tumor.

Chapstick tubes with hidden microphones used by the Watergate burglars. These were found in Howard Hunt’s White House office safe.

- 38 - Come Back to the Five and Dime Again, John Dean, John Dean6

A Bridge Too Far I came to the Watergate story late. I was, of course, like everybody else, aware of the scandal in its broad outlines, though I assumed that the burglary was a low-level staff operation gone wild. I was in college at the time, and my interest in politics was limited. I attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the city where I was born, because I could live with my grandmother and keep my college outlays to a minimum. I was home ill with a swollen jaw when John Dean’s testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee began, and that’s how John Dean became my entry point into the Watergate scandal. I was impressed by the thoroughness and detail of his testimony, and found him instantly believable. While the first book on Watergate I bought was Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, the second I bought was John Dean’s Blind Ambition.7 While I saw the Heinlein Individual in G. Gordon Liddy, I saw more of myself in John Dean. I have a good memory for detail (though admittedly I can tell the Statler Hilton from the Mayflower Hotel), and I could easily see myself making the same decisions and choices Dean made: getting eagerly involved in an ambiguous situation and suddenly finding myself way out on a limb with no easy way of getting back. To me, the most poignant scene in all the writing about Watergate comes from Blind Ambition:

6 A version of this article originally appeared in my book The Six Dimensions of Project Management under the title “Let’s Go to the Tape.” It is used here by kind permission of Management Concepts; the full citation can be found in the Acknowledgements and Credits section.

7 John Dean. Blind Ambition. New York: Pocket Books, 1977.

- 39 - John Dean, White House Counsel, 1973

- 40 - “I began my role in the [Watergate] cover-up as a fact-finder and worked my way up to idea man, and finally to desk officer. At the outset, I sensed no personal danger in what I was doing. In fact, I took considerable satisfaction from knowing that I had no criminal liability, and I consistently sought to keep it that way. […] On such half-truths I sustained the image of myself as a “counsel” rather than an active participant for as long as I could, but the line blurred and finally vanished. […] I am still not sure when I crossed the line into criminal culpability….” (Dean 117-118) Like the Coyote running off the cliff in a Chuck Jones Roadrunner cartoon, suspended in midair until he suddenly looks down and realizes what he’s done, when we follow the “one-step-at-a-time” approach our situation is fraught with unforeseen danger. Dean had gathered the contents of E. Howard Hunt’s White House safe and put them in his own without checking them too closely, but during the trial, he decided to look for two notebooks that contained potentially incriminating evidence. He found them, leafed through them, and realized that they contained dangerous information. “I went through a tumble of nervous calculations. These documents were no longer relevant to the trial after Hunt’s guilty plea, I rationalized. But they were certainly dangerous to the cover-up. I would have to get rid of the goddam things...I put them into my new shredder. The machine tore through the pages but choked on the cardboard covers, and I was afraid it might break down. … Destroying the notebooks was only a small addition to the criminal acts I had committed, but this seemed to me to be a moment of high symbolism. This direct, concrete, and sweaty act had also shredded the last of my feeble rationalizations that I was an agent rather than a participant.” (Dean 180-181) What It Takes Project managers of necessity tend to be pragmatists. What do I have to do today to keep my project moving? How can I preserve my career prospects in the face of danger? We have sayings: “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” (In practice, this is true only about 70 percent of the time. Pick your shots carefully.) “The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.” “If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.” “Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, but knowing what excuses to give and when.”

- 41 - In a universe ruled by Finagle and Murphy, project managers understand that some corners have to be cut. There is a line, however. Sometimes it’s a nice, bright, clear line, but more often the line is gray, indistinct, and fuzzy. The latter is a time of great danger. It’s altogether too easy to make pragmatic choices day by day, no single choice by itself unethical, and at some point find yourself in a situation you would never have chosen consciously. Few of us set out to do wrong, but we may (I have) find ourselves, like Dean, over a line we wished we had not crossed. Strong personal ethical standards and vigilance are important, but sometimes not sufficient, especially when day-to-day events sweep over us like ocean waves. It may be that you have to deal with a situation in which there may have been serious wrongdoing. You don’t want to throw people to the wolves on mere suspicion, and you want to stabilize the situation with as little harm as possible. These are appropriate impulses, but you can’t afford to forget the danger in the situation. The key is to decide in advance the standards you want to uphold. Define the line as clearly as possible, and decide when you’re about to move into the danger zone early enough to stop. This is best done at the very beginning, or at least at the first sign of danger. With each step you take, turning back becomes increasingly problematic. With that in mind, let’s check out John Dean’s performance as project manager of the cover-up.

Case: Managing the Watergate Cover-Up John Dean, Project Manager Project Charter Ensure fallout from the Watergate break-in does not jeopardize other White House secrets and does not touch the President or his senior staff. Triple Constraints Performance (Driver): Keep the Watergate story from hurting the re-election campaign, and after the election, keep the story quiet and let it die a natural death. Don’t allow other programs to be revealed. Cost (Middle): Political funds, possibility of some laundered money. Staff of the White House counsel’s office. Access to top White House officials. Time (Weak): The longer the cover-up can be maintained, the more it will become yesterday’s news. Eventually, it will be overtaken by events and be at most a minor nuisance.

- 42 - The Opposite of Well Done “Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em,” the Bard tells us. Not infrequently this is also the path of project managers. Some projects are fabulous concepts, destined to make a reputation; some projects can be built and shaped into a career-defining achievement; and some projects are thrust upon the unsuspecting project manager, ill-conceived, poorly defined and unwanted, but yours nonetheless. So, how do you identify the bad project from the lineup? From 30,000 feet, most projects look alike. Finding those project weaknesses frequently falls into the area of stakeholder management. As we’ve noted elsewhere, understanding and managing stakeholder relationships is essential both for the success of the project and all too often for the personal survival of the project manager. Project stakeholders and sponsors will have diverse interests and in some cases these interests can be at odds with the project as assigned to you, the project manager. Such stakeholders are not necessarily a Machiavellian enemy with your project in their crosshairs, but rather an accidental adversary created by conflicting priorities. (Your mileage, of course, may vary.) When assigned to a project (or volunteering for one), start by asking: • Where else do my primary stakeholders have a vested interest? • What is the overall impact of my project on the organization’s strategic plan? • Is my success good for my stakeholders? Skepticism or inquisitiveness go a long way in identifying many of those niggling little things that later in a project love to jump out and yell “Surprise!” Project Context As all project managers eventually discover (usually painfully), failing to see stakeholder conflicts does not protect us from the possible repercussions. In the case of John Dean’s career as the project manager of the White House cover-up of Watergate, his project tripped as frequently over its own stakeholders as it was foiled by the investigative work of such people as Bob Woodward and . “I’m Winston Wolf. I Solve Problems.”8 John Dean had been named White House general counsel to President Nixon in July 1970. Basically an in-house lawyer, his work as White House Counsel included

8 A line from the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction.

- 43 - providing general legal advice, conducting background checks on nominees, and performing occasional special investigative projects: calling up tax records on people who opposed the administration, firefighting possible scandals or press investigations, or sending out a private detective to gather information on people of interest for the administration. Ambitious, Dean was interested in taking on projects that would expand his influence. As noted earlier, he was the author, or at least the compiler, of the first version of the infamous Enemies List. On July 18, 1972, Dean was flying back from Asia when he received a call to return to the White House as fast as possible. Over the weekend, he was told, five men had been arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The police and the press had both discovered that at least one of the burglars, James McCord, was directly linked to CREEP and by extension possibly to the White House itself. At his desk on Monday morning, Dean was bombarded by everyone who might be touched by the connection of the break-in to the administration: Deputy Director of CREEP Jeb Magruder, former Attorney General and campaign manager John Mitchell, chief legal council to Nixon and domestic policy guru John Erlichmann, and others turned to him as the point man on managing the burgeoning scandal. While it was fairly obvious that some connection with the Administration did exist, exactly what it was and how far it reached was not entirely clear to Dean, who was not high enough in the Nixon Administration to have been in the inner circle. He knew enough, however, to realize that the situation was fraught with danger, both because of the burglary itself and also because of the various other White House operations that became subsumed in the overall scandal. As far as the burglary itself, Dean had the initial impression that this was a wild card operation initiated at a fairly low level — neither Liddy, Hunt, nor McCord were major players either. (He would quickly alter his opinion.) Nevertheless, it was essential to cover up any connection between the White House and the Watergate break-in, no matter how small. Wanting to prove his skill — and, of course, blindly ambitious — Dean accepted quickly and gladly. That was his first mistake. The Most Dangerous Word in Project Management There is an art to accepting a project assignment that keeps you from getting into too much trouble later, and it was not one that Dean followed in this case. Our greatest negotiation leverage in any relationship is at the point when we play hard to get—in business, that is the moment before we have said yes: before we have been hired, before we have signed the contract, before we have agreed to take on the

- 44 - project. Once we have agreed to something, it is much harder to adjust terms to our advantage. The most dangerous word in project management is a premature “Yes.” We’re not necessarily saying to say “No” — we aren’t even suggesting that it’s always even an option. But the timing of the yes should be under your control. Don’t say “Yes” until you know what you’re saying “Yes” to. Seasoned negotiators always recommend pacing yourself in a negotiation. Not only should you never take the first offer, you should never progress too quickly. No matter how high you rank in your organization, it is always better to defer authority to “the people back in the office” or “our senior vice president,” etc. As we used to say as children, “I don’t know if I can. I have to ask my mom first.” If you don’t have higher authority to refer to, make something up. In Dean’s case, he agreed to take on a difficult project without taking a moment to sit back and consider the implications. This is dangerous. It always pays to find the time to think before agreeing. Next time you are offered a project, consider the following responses as a way to buy time: •“That sounds interesting. Tell me a bit more about it.” If it sounds too bad, maybe you can pass the hot potato to someone else. •“Give me an idea of the scope of the project.” Whatever they say, flinch when they describe it. Give the impression you’re already starved for resources. You can always cut your request later, but it will be increasingly difficult to increase it. •“I have to check with Susan, to see if I can be freed up from what I’ve got on my plate at the moment.” Being able to blame a refusal on outside authority can take the pressure off. Once we have agreed to the project, we lose a lot of our negotiating leverage — and we can’t get it back. Don’t just give it away. Hierarchy of Constraints Dean’s description of those first days post-Watergate in the White House are a haze of constant meetings and firefighting. Jet-lagged and somewhat ill from the Asia trip, Dean had very little opportunity to sit back and analyze the constraints on the project he’d just agreed to. If he had sat down to look at the project parameters, what would he have discovered? Potential cost and resource issues: On this project the two cost factors, money and people, moderately constrained Dean’s ability to maneuver. Dean knew there would be adequate funds available. Although he had never been centrally involved with the Plumbers at the White House, he was aware of them at least in broad outline. Dean

- 45 - had been included in some strategy sessions for “election security” (one of the euphemisms for dirty tricks) and had also picked up on the grapevine information about some of the dirty tricks projects that had been conducted. Limits on money and human resources came through new campaign finance laws. Up to April 1972 liberal campaign finance laws had allowed Nixon’s campaign staff to operate with million-dollar cash slush funds for “election security” and intelligence gathering. While CREEP was willing to get money for Dean, ways of raising these funds were disappearing. Sources of time pressure: Based on Nixon’s behavior and Dean’s assumption he would leave as White House Counsel after the election, it appears the initial understanding of the deadline was to maintain the cover-up until the election was over. A cover-up would contain the damage until Nixon was successfully re-elected — his reelection acting as validation that the scandal was “only politics” and that Nixon’s innocence had been endorsed by the electorate. After the 1972 election, Nixon initiated a revenge campaign against all those he believed disloyal, firing many, attacking both directly and through third parties, and generally re-organizing the government. Clearly, at that point, Nixon believed himself to be safe from repercussions. Definition of performance objectives: Being a little bit indicted is like being a little bit pregnant. Dean’s performance goal was to keep the White House and Nixon out of the scandal. The scandal could not be allowed to impact the election. That, at least, was not subject to compromise. It was, of course, completely legitimate to consider throwing some people off the back of the sled to feed the media wolves. The project Dean had before him was then: Project: Cover up any connection between the White House and the Watergate break-in

Performance (Driver) Scandal kept out of White House, successful re-election) Cost (Middle) Flexible resources: dollars, personnel. Additional constraint: election laws Time (Weak) Bury scandal, ideally permanently or at least until after election Overall, Dean managed the cover-up well, leveraging the limited flexibility that he had. Based on the project as originally scoped, Dean was successful — after all, Nixon was re-elected and the Post and their coverage of Watergate were effectively marginalized. We’ll consider first how Dean delivered success on this project. Then, we’ll look at what mistakes did Dean make from a project management perspective.

- 46 - Time is on Your Side Leveraging time as the weak constraint requires a lot of what Germans call Sitzfleisch: the ability to sit and wait. Good things often come to those who wait. With the mantra “time is on my side (yes it is)” the project manager needs to look for opportunities where “slow and steady wins the race,” where procrastination is a virtue (“Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow”), and where exactness trumps expedience. Counterintuitive to the natural urge to complete and chalk up a new milestone, here the project manager seeks a different rhythm for the project. Dean was perfectly positioned to use this flexibility. As part of the White House staff, Dean was able to position himself above the fray, standing behind his “title authority.” All information requests from the press were routed through White House communications. Anyone who has applied for a job knows that a job title holds great market value—who is going to question the authority of the vice president of marketing, even if there are only two people in all of marketing? Which sounds better on a résumé: gofer to the county commission or gofer at the White House? Dean’s position, and the filtering of the press through the communications office, slowed the investigative attack of the press and allowed him to play for time. Admittedly Dean’s charter was unusual, but pushing out timelines to gain flexibility in other project areas has many uses. Delaying a project phase until the next fiscal year can enable a project to tap into additional funding. Because raw materials prices fluctuate, postponing acquisition can result in better prices. Dean’s delay supported the performance objective, here defined as no major scandal break before the election. Delay works especially well on low-priority projects. All organizations have projects critical enough to earn authorization but that are at the bottom of the heap compared to other projects. Low priority work is often assigned to fill in between other projects and may offer a new project manager the first chance to prove his or her ability. Frequently resources will be pulled away for other higher priority projects. The project manager needs to work with the flexible timeline while fighting the downside of a weak time constraint: flagging motivation. Dean’s cover-up tactics worked well to keep Watergate under wraps until Nixon was re-elected. But Nixon’s resignation in 1974 indicates that something went seriously wrong with this project.

- 47 - The Project and the Project Basic military doctrine states that no strategy can be successful without first achieving an accurate assessment of the situation. While Dean’s outline of the cover- up project seemed reasonable and his management of project flexibility solid, he never accurately identified the entire project and failed to extract the real information needed from his stakeholders. This problem is not unknown in other projects. The nineteenth century medical researcher Ignaz Semmelweis achieved breakthroughs in the fight against the deadly disease known as childbed fever by pioneering the idea of sanitation in hospitals. Having solved the medical problem, he thought the project was done. But he was wrong. Pushback from other doctors, who deeply objected to being told that their own actions were responsible for the deaths of thousands of women, led to Semmelweis being discredited and fired. His reforms failed, and it was left to another generation to solve the problem. (“Semmelweis Effect,” Random Jottings #6) If you do only half the job, even if you do it perfectly, you don’t get half the results. Sometimes you get nothing at all. So was it with John Dean. * * * Dean defined the Watergate break-in as a single project, with the election as the operational deadline, and covered it up as such. And in that project he did a pretty decent job. When you look at the press coverage in the Washington Post and elsewhere, the press didn’t uncover much evidence connecting the White House to the break-in. Slowly, they did uncover lots of other bad stuff, but by the 1972 election, Watergate was a minor issue, as evidenced by Nixon’s overwhelming victory. Dean failed to identify that Watergate was a program and not a single, limited- duration project. He was constantly being blindsided by revelations that damaged his project. He scoped the project entirely wrong and failed to define properly what exactly he was supposed to be covering up. And as we have noted elsewhere, not knowing about something doesn’t exempt us from the responsibility for the fallout. Correctly identifying scope is critical for a Triple Constraint analysis. The skewed project scope caused Dean to completely misread the deadline. It was not merely the 1972 election, but continued long afterward. As more and more program scope emerged in the form of press coverage on other dirty tricks, Dean found himself in continual firefighting mode, dealing with each individual incident. He never re-scoped the project, but rather just moved out the deadline a few more weeks. If he had re- scoped, he would have seen that the cover-up had to last for Nixon’s entire second term — a very different set of performance expectations. But by then, it was too late.

- 48 - Project Management Principles • Identify bad projects early. If you can’t dodge them, prepare your back-up plans early. • Look out for hidden agendas — including your own. • Don’t make up your ethics on the fly. Treat ethics as one more constraint on the project. • If you can’t figure out who’s going to be the scapegoat if things go south, it’s you. • Desperate people behave desperately. • Blind ambition leads to numerous problems, including accepting too much risk and allowing too much compromise. • Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow, because things may be completely different the day after tomorrow. • The most dangerous phrase out of a project manager’s mouth is “Yes, I’ll do it,” said before you’ve figured out fully what needs to be done. • If you fail to scope your project fully, you’re destined to end up in firefighting mode. • While scope should ideally be established at the beginning, developing (or revising) a scope statement late beats not developing one at all. • Change is the only constant. Come Back to the Five and Dime Again, John Dean, John Dean Dean’s transition from desk manager of the cover-up to co-conspirator and obstruction of justice was, as we’ve noted, a gradual process. Like the frog in the pot of water, he did not notice as the temperature gradually rose. His transition from criminal to star witness wasn’t quite like the other frog, the one that’s thrown into a pot of already hot water and immediately jumps out, but it was more rapid and more deliberate. One theme in Blind Ambition is Dean’s need to think of himself as a decent person. He is increasingly troubled as he finds himself deeper and deeper, and it is his need to maintain a decent self-image that in large part drives him into the arms of the prosecutors. What slows him down in the transition is also related to self image: the desire not to be thought of as a rat, or as disloyal, or as betraying his friends. Dean was close to John Mitchell, for example, and he agonizes repeatedly over the idea of betraying him. (He eventually does.)

- 49 - Self image complicates the preparation of his testimony — to the repeated annoyance of his attorney, Charlie Shaffer. “‘Now, listen, the next sentence is the kind that’s trouble. This is what I’m talking about: ‘When he came in I told him I could not tell him to lie before the grand jury.’ [Charlie said.] ‘That’s true, that’s exactly what I told Jeb.’ I was getting very defensive; this was exactly the kind of self-protective statement I’d been so careful to construct all through the cover-up. ‘I don’t give a shit whether it’s true or not,’ Charlie declared. ‘You might have told him to consult with his wife, his conscience, and the Pope himself before he lied. But so what? You sat there with him and helped him prepare the lie. You helped him practice, didn’t you? … Well, that’s what’s important, dammit.’” (Dean, 305) But it is also the desire and need for a positive self-image that eventually compels him to come clean and to accept responsibility for his own actions. The management tool known as the Johari Window identifies four selves: the public face that is known to others and to ourselves, the unconscious face that is known to others but not to ourselves, the secret face that is not known to others but is known to ourselves, and finally the hidden face that is unknown both to others and to ourselves. Making the hidden face conscious increases self-awareness, but it is often uncomfortable, because the hidden face contains much that we reject or deny. Self-image can be a weapon. Playing on the need for a positive self-image is a powerful way to manipulate others, to force them down a path of your choosing. We are vulnerable, though it is not an inappropriate vulnerability to have. Toward the very end of Blind Ambition, Dean, then imprisoned at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, is reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up. “There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness...For my part I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I jot down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind the world would consider me a model of depravity.” (Dean, 400-401) There are two ways to learn from your experience: from your own experience or that of someone else. The second way is cheaper. Which makes John Dean a great role model.

- 50 - Let’s Go to the Tape, Johnny!

Waiter, There’s a Bug in My Soup Richard Nixon, of course, was not the first president to tape conversations in the White House. I've read transcripts of secret tapes made by FDR while researching my novel MacArthur’s War, and have downloaded for my iPod the JFK tapes covering the Cuban Missile Crisis for another prospective alternate history with Doug Niles. (Doug went on to write it as a solo book, Final Failure, available on Amazon.) Eisenhower and Johnson also taped Oval Office conversations, but I haven't heard any of them personally. New revelations from the Johnson tapes about Nixon and the Paris Peace Talks are addressed in the chapter “Origins of a Scandal,” earlier in this publication. While it is certainly the case that no president after Nixon dared tape the Oval Office, from a historical perspective that’s quite a shame. FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon have all contributed hugely to the understanding of the presidency — and that’s a good thing. Butterfield 8 never planned to be part of a White House conspiracy, but by accident turned into one of the key figures in the scandal. A former Air Force pilot (he commanded reconnaissance aircraft during Vietnam), he retired from the USAF at the urging of college pal H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, and became Deputy Assistant to the President, responsible for the daily business of the White House, including overseeing Nixon's schedule. In addition, Butterfield was responsible for maintaining Nixon's historical records, and in that role he oversaw a secret taping system that Nixon had installed in the White House. After Nixon's reelection in 1972, Butterfield became administrator of the FAA. In July 1973, members of 's Senate investigation team interviewed Butterfield about his time in the White House. Previously, John Dean had mentioned that he

- 51 - suspected White House conversations were being taped, and so the committee staff routinely asked witnesses whether they knew if it was true. Although Butterfield avoided revealing the taping system voluntarily, he had decided to tell the truth if asked directly. Ironically, it was the minority Republican counsel, Donald Sanders, who put the direct question to Butterfield, who replied that "[E]verything was taped ... as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped." The significance of this was obvious, so the committee quickly scheduled Butterfield to appear before the full Senate committee on July 16, 1973, where chief minority counsel (later part of the Law and Order television cast) asked the fatal question, "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?" Two days later, on July 18, 1973, Nixon ordered the tape recorders turned off. There was no suggestion that Butterfield was part of the cover-up. He remained as FAA administrator until 1975. Butterfield, interestingly, was one of the few who guessed the real identity of "Deep Throat," telling the Hartford Courant in 1995, "I think it was a guy named Mark Felt." Tape Worm Only about 200 hours of the 3,500 hours of conversation recorded on the Nixon tapes even mention Watergate, but eight of the tapes were subpoenaed immediately by Special Watergate Counsel . Citing executive privilege, Nixon refused. When Cox did not back off, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire him. Richardson refused and resigned, as did his deputy William Ruckelshaus. It fell to the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, to fire him in what became known as the “.” (See “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Firing”), coming up.) That was hardly the end of the taping problems. Nixon's secretary, , made a "terrible mistake" and erased five minutes of the June 20, 1972, recording. Strangely, the gap grew from five minutes to 18-1/2 minutes. Woods denied she had anything do to with the additional 13 minutes. While only the participants know for sure what was discussed in those missing 18-1/2 minutes, H. R. Haldeman's notes say that in that particular meeting, Nixon and Haldeman spoke about the arrests at the Watergate that had taken place three days previously. Although various attempts were made to explain away the gap, the President's attorneys eventually decided that there was "no innocent explanation" they could offer for the problem.

- 52 - Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, demonstrating how she might have accidentally erased the tape.

In any event, it wasn't the 18-1/2 minute gap from June 20 that was the problem, but rather the tape of June 23, six days after the break-in, that would prove Nixon’s undoing, covered later.

Unlike previous Presidential taping systems, the Nixon system was automatically activated by voice. Previously, the President had to manually activate the taping system by flipping a switch. Of course, no sensible president would voluntarily tape himself talking about potentially criminal actions, but in the case of Nixon, the automated nature of the tapes suggested that if he had indeed made self- incriminating statements, they would be on the tapes. The tapes were a godsend for John Dean. The all-too-obvious flaw in Dean’s testimony was that it was his word against the President of the United States. But if the tapes confirmed what Dean was saying, it would substantiate his testimony. Accordingly, Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor, issued his subpoena.

- 53 - Nixon initially refused to release the tapes on the Constitutional grounds of executive privilege and the separation of powers, then added another claim that the tapes were vital to national security. In October 1973, under increasing political pressure, Nixon offered a compromise in which he would allow Mississippi Democratic Senator John Stennis to review and summarize the tapes, and report his findings to the Special Prosecutor. Cox rejected this. Even after Cox was fired in the Saturday Night Massacre, the pressure to release the tapes continued, and Nixon was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor, . As 1974 began, bad news for the Nixon Administration began to mount. In April, Nixon decided to release typed transcripts of the relevant tapes, from which the infamous phrase “expletive deleted” originated. You Heard It Here First, Folks While I rely mostly on secondary sources, I do actually have one original piece of Watergate information. One of my neighbors (our mortgage broker, actually), was Laurie Anderson, daughter of “Washington Merry-Go-Round” columnist Jack Anderson. She told me how Anderson’s newspaper column got the transcripts before the Senate did. It seems that Anderson had a White House janitor on his payroll, who fished the single-use carbon paper out of the trashcans and delivered it to Anderson. Laurie told me how she taped the carbons to a lampshade and typed up the contents for her father. United States v. Nixon Meanwhile, the court case made its way to the Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in the case United States v. Nixon, the court ruled unanimously (with justice William Rehnquist recused because he had formerly worked for Nixon’s Justice Department) that the tapes should be released. Six days later, on July 30, Nixon complied. The transcripts indeed confirmed Dean’s testimony.

- 54 - Saturday Night’s Alright (for Firing)

Following Richard Nixon's overwhelming re-election in November 1972, it looked as if the worst of the Watergate scandal had been contained. As long as the burglary could be put down to overzealous underlings at CREEP and kept away from the White House itself, all was in order. There were some loose ends. One of the burglars had checks from White House Plumber E. Howard Hunt. Hunt was connected to Special Counsel to the President Charles Colson, known as Nixon's hatchet man. As part of the cover up, White House Counsel John Dean went to acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray to keep the situation under control. As Dean later wrote, "[We] could count on Pat Gray to keep the Hunt material from becoming public, and he did not disappoint us." Gray went so far as to burn what were billed as "national security documents [that] should never see the light of day" from Hunt's personal safe at the request of Dean and John Ehrlichman. These documents weren't officially about Watergate, Gray later said. "The first set of papers in there were false top-secret cables indicating that the Kennedy administration had much to do with the assassination of the Vietnamese president (Diem). The second set of papers in there were letters purportedly written by Senator Kennedy involving some of his peccadilloes, if you will." Unfortunately, Gray wasn't the only person who knew about the Hunt material. His deputy, FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt, who actually ran the FBI's day-to-day operations, was also "Deep Throat," the confidential informant providing Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with information. As the material began to leak, Gray became shaky. In February 1973, Nixon nominated Gray to be permanent director of the FBI, handing the Senate its first opportunity to interrogate a high-ranking Administration official about Watergate. Gray went into full self-defense mode. He volunteered that he'd provided investigation files to John Dean, saying FBI lawyers had told him it was legal, confirmed the dirty tricks activities of CREEP — and worst of all, testified that Dean himself had "probably lied" to the FBI.

- 55 - Elliot Richardson Archibald Cox

Enraged by the betrayal, Ehrlichman told Dean that Gray should "twist slowly, slowly in the wind." (Ehrlichman was evidently a fan of Huxley's Brave New World.) Gray withdrew his nomination, and after he learned that Dean had rolled over, Gray resigned from the FBI altogether. Although he was later indicted, he was never convicted. In March 1973, Watergate burglar and CREEP security specialist James McCord wrote Watergate Judge that his testimony was perjured under pressure. One month after that, seeing the handwriting on the wall, John Dean rolled over and began cooperating with Federal prosecutors. Desperate to distance himself from the scandal, Nixon responded by firing Ehrlichman, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. (Kleindienst had taken over from John Mitchell when Mitchell was tasked with leading the re-election effort. His involvement with the scandal was peripheral, and he ended up with a misdemeanor conviction for perjury and paid a $100 fine.) With the Justice Department compromised, Nixon had little choice but to allow the appointment of a nominally independent special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. After the

- 56 - revelation of the White House tapes and Nixon's refusal to release them, Cox pursued a subpoena to get the tapes for his investigation. When Cox refused a Nixon compromise that would give him transcripts but no access to the actual recordings, Nixon had had enough. On Saturday evening, October 20, 1973, Nixon called Attorney General Elliot Richardson, Kleindienst's successor, and ordered him to fire Cox. Richardson, citing his promise to the Congressional oversight committee not to interfere with the Special Prosecutor, refused. When Nixon continued to press him, he resigned. Nixon then called the Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, who had made the same pledge, and ordered him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also resigned. The third in command of the Justice Department was Solicitor General Robert Bork (later a notorious failed Supreme Court nominee), who had not been part of the process and who had therefore not made the same pledge. Although Bork claimed to believe that Nixon had the right to fire Cox, he says he also considered resigning so he wouldn't be "perceived as a man who did the President's bidding to save my job." Elliot Richardson says he persuaded Bork not to resign, on the grounds that the Justice Department needed some continuity of leadership. Nixon had Bork brought to the White House by limousine, swore him in as Acting Attorney General, and had Bork write the letter on the spot firing Cox. This incident became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," and it was a major tipping point in the scandal. Congress was infuriated, the public outraged. After the Massacre, a plurality of Americans for the first time supported impeachment: 44% for, 43% against, 13% undecided. Several resolutions of impeachment were introduced in the House. Nixon was forced to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. There was some concern Jaworski, as the President's approved choice, would limit the investigation to the burglary alone, but as it turned out, Jaworski also looked at the broader implications of the growing scandal. In November 1973, a Federal district judge ruled that Cox's firing was illegal under the regulation establishing the special prosecutors office, which required a finding of "extraordinary impropriety." However, the situation had moved far too quickly to allow Cox to resume his position. The battle of the tapes would continue well into the following year.

- 57 - Richard Nixon at a press conference

- 58 - By Hook or by Crook

Immediately after Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of Richard Nixon’s White House taping system, the tapes themselves became the central issue of the unfolding Watergate scandal. While certain key facts (the burglary itself, the link to the Committee to Re-Elect the President) were not in dispute, the critical question was the one being asked by Watergate Select Committee ranking minority member of Tennessee: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Now that tapes were available, that question could be settled definitely. The Saturday Night Massacre took place on October 19, 1973. Just about a month later, on November 17, 1973, Richard Nixon traveled to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, for a question-and-answer session before the 400 members of Associated Press Managing Editor’s Association. As expected, the first questions involved the Watergate scandal and its consequences for the nation. The president of the Managing Editor’s Association wondered if Watergate was serious enough to take down the country. “Mr. President,” he asked, “This morning, Governor Askew of Florida addressed this group and recalled the words of Benjamin Franklin. When leaving the Constitutional Convention he was asked, ‘What have you given us, sir, a monarch or a republic?’ Franklin answered, ‘A republic, sir, if you can keep it.’ Mr. President, in the prevailing pessimism of the lingering matter we call Watergate, can we keep that republic, sir, and how?” Nixon assured him that the Republic would continue. The Louisville-Courier asked about two of the subpoenaed tapes that had gone missing. Nixon replied that he had other information — Dictaphone belts, diary notes, and telephone call recordings — that would substantiate his claims of innocence. The Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle followed up, but gained no more information. The Rochester Times-Union asked about the connection to the Ellsberg case, and Nixon replied that it was not part of Watergate, and should be considered a national security matter. The Detroit News followed with a softball question that allowed Nixon

- 59 - to once again reassure the public that everything was under control. The St. Petersburg Times asked about Nixon’s praise of Ehrlichman and Haldeman. Nixon replied, “First, I hold that both men and others who have been charged are guilty until I have evidence that they are not guilty.” (The president of the association later corrected Nixon, who agreed that he had misspoken.) The Des Moines Register and Tribune asked another question about the Ellsberg case, and Nixon reiterated his claim of national security. Next, the subject of Nixon’s income tax returns came up. Nixon, according to the Providence Evening Bulletin, had paid only $792 in Federal income tax in 1970, and $878 in 1971. Nixon replied that he’d paid $79,000 in income tax in 1969, and the dramatic reduction in tax resulted from Nixon’s donation of his vice-presidential papers to the U.S. government, for which he’d taken a $500,000 deduction. (This practice was outlawed in 1969, so Nixon had gotten in just under .) The Tennessee Oak Ridger threw in another softball, asking Nixon if the demands of the Presidency were such that he just hadn’t had time to manage the re-election campaign directly. Nixon replied that yes, he’d taken a hands-off approach, but added “I say if mistakes are made, however, I am not blaming the people down below. The man at the top has got to take the heat for all of them.” Before he took another question, however, Richard Nixon decided to go back to the question of his income tax payments. His government service had not been particularly lucrative, he said. “When I left office…you know what my net worth was? $47,000 total. Now, I have no complaints. In the next 8 years, I made a lot of money [from his book and law partnership]. And so, that is where the money came from.” Even though the focus of the questions was on Watergate, it was the suspicion of financial irregularities in his personal life that seemed to concern Nixon most of all. Whatever anyone believed about his role in Watergate, he was determined to make it clear that his personal finances were completely aboveboard. It was in defending those finances that Richard Nixon delivered one of the most famous quotes of his lifetime:

“Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the television audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service --I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.” [Emphasis added.] That seemed to stop the questions about Watergate. Reporters asked about the wiretapping of Richard Nixon’s brother Donald, additional matters of national security, the desirability of shield laws for reporters, executive privilege, the energy

- 60 - crisis, possible gas rationing, milk price supports, and what Nixon planned to do in retirement. (Hint: work for campaign finance reform.) The event, televised live, went a few moments over the scheduled time, but that was okay in Nixon’s book. “It is a lousy movie anyway tonight.” And when it was over, Richard Nixon said, “Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. I guess that is the end.” But the end was still nine months away.

- 61 - A White House tape recorder, now on exhibit at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum

“I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.”

— Richard Nixon

- 62 - The Smoking Gun Goes Off

The Tipping Point In many ways, the revelation of the White House taping system was the tipping point that inexorably led to the first — and so far only — resignation of a United States President. Until the tape revelation, much of the Watergate scandal had devolved into a “he said, she said” argument. There was no question that operatives associated with the Committee to Re-Elect the President had broken into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex, but it was less clear how high up the scandal might reach. After all, the idea that low-level staff members might take it into their own heads to do something the boss would not approve is hardly unprecedented. Initially, a lot of people believed that the “two-bit burglary” itself was simply a rogue staff operation, and that the cover-up was primarily designed to protect the Plumbers operation. Although parts of the story remain murky to this day, it now appears that the burglary itself originated at high levels of the Administration, and may have been ordered by Nixon himself, concerned about potential negative information possessed by DNC chairman Larry O’Brien. (There are a number of suggestions as to what this information might have been. My own speculations can be found earlier.) Slowly, the chain of Watergate responsibility crept up the ladder, moving from CREEP to the White House itself, but the “smoking gun” that would implicate the President personally remained elusive. Although Dean’s explosive testimony had in fact implicated Nixon, it was still a matter of his word against that of the President of the United States. Battle of the Tapes The revelation of the White House taping system changed all that. The tapes themselves were capable of revealing once and for all “what the President knew and when he knew it.” Nixon argued against the subpoena of the tapes for two reasons. The first was executive privilege, a claim based on the separation of powers and checks and balances enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. The second was a claim that the privacy

- 63 - of the tapes was vital to national security. In spite of losing several court decisions and conducting the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon held fast to his position — as well he might, given the dangerous material on those tapes. The battle continued to rage. In April 1974, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the tapes for 42 additional White House conversations. Nixon released edited transcriptions, still citing executive privilege and national security. Jaworski, about the same time, subpoenaed 64 tapes to support his criminal prosecutions of various Nixon administration officials. The last word, of course, came from the Supreme Court. In late July 1974, it issued an 8-0 decision in United States v. Nixon: the subpoena was valid. Nixon had to release the tapes. In his column “On Language,” William Safire described Watergate as the Golden Age of Political Coinage. He wrote, “The Watergate era coined or popularized Saturday night massacre, stonewalling, cover-up, dirty tricks, straight arrow, expletive deleted, third-rate burglary, plumbers, Deep Throat, Big Enchilada, enemies list and twisting slowly in the wind.” The term “smoking gun,” according to Safire, apparently first appears in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Gloria Scott,” but it gained its current meaning in the Watergate scandal. Roger Wilkins in first used the term. “The big question asked over the last few weeks in and around the House Judiciary Committee's hearing room by committee members who were uncertain about how they felt about impeachment was ‘Where's the smoking gun?’” My Gun Is Quick On August 5, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee released what instantly became known as the “smoking gun tape.” It was a recording of a meeting that had taken place on June 23, 1972, six days after the original burglary, in which H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff, asked Nixon if he should ask , CIA director, to approach FBI chief L. Patrick Gray about halting his investigation on national security grounds. This, the special prosecutor and the Judiciary Committee agreed, constituted a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Here’s the relevant text: HALDEMAN: …the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to the–in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have… their investigation is now leading into some productive areas […] and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go. […] [T]he way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI]

- 64 - and just say, ‘Stay the hell out of this …this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it.’” NIXON: All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest. […] You call [the CIA] in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it.” Until that point, the ten Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee had voted against impeachment, but now they unanimously agreed that they would support an impeachment vote once the case reached the House floor. In the American system, the impeachment of a President requires a simple majority vote of the House of Representatives, but removal from office requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. In essence, this means that any removal of a President from office requires a substantial number of votes from the President’s own party. Impeachment can be a purely partisan act (see Clinton, Bill), but removal from office must necessarily be bipartisan. Resigned to His Fate It was therefore a delegation of Republican senators who informed President Nixon that there were only about 14 votes to keep him in office, far short of the 34 votes he needed. With the handwriting on the wall, Nixon took the only path available. In a nationally televised Oval Office address on the evening of August 8, 1974, Nixon resigned, saying: “In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future…. “I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations. From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.

- 65 - “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.” The next morning, the President and his wife said goodbye to the White House staff and boarded a helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base, where Air Force One waited to fly them to his California home in San Clemente. He wrote later of his thoughts. “As the helicopter moved on to Andrews, I found myself thinking not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now?” President pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, saying, “[Watergate] is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.” Nixon continued to maintain his innocence until his death on April 22, 1994.

- 66 - - 67 - Mr. Jameson Goes to Washington

And now for something completely different. It had always been my hope and dream to pursue at least one of my creative interests, but finding an open door was a difficult and protracted process. I tried a number of things to little avail. One of them was an attempt to become a writer for Marvel Comics. I prevailed on a friendly acquaintanceship with Chris Claremont to get an interview with Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. I got what I later learned was a canned lecture and an offer to let me send a few stories on spec. I can’t say any of the stories were particularly good, nor do I fault Jim for not hiring me. One of the stories, though, has relevance here: my Spider-Man® meets a thinly disguised G. Gordon Liddy adventure, called “Mr. Jameson Goes to Washington.” It was, as mentioned earlier, rejected as “not appropriate to our demographic,” but editor Tom DeFalco did suggest I rewrite it as a mystery story. Unfortunately, the original story is nowhere to be found. I can find my other attempts at comic writing easily enough, but not this one. (It will, no doubt, turn up shortly after this is published.) Because I really wanted it as a change of pace for this publication, I decided to rewrite it. This version is much more about Watergate with a lot lower threshold of action, which basically describes my life these days. It may also serve as authoritative proof that I am not cut out to trip the panel fantastic, but that’s pretty much moot. It’s clearly not written in the Marvel Method®, but frankly, I’ve long since forgotten how to do that. I am delighted that Dandy Dave Hicks consented to provide some illustrations for the piece. He says, “am checking up on old artists' styles and will try to give you a bit of Ross Andru and Gil Kane and perhaps some Buscemas. They're the ones I think of as early seventies Spidey.” While it should go without saying, it’s probably a good idea for me to reiterate that Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson, A.I.M., any other peripheral Marvel Universe references, and their distinctive likenesses are copyrighted and trademarked by Marvel Comics, and used here under “fair use” doctrine for satirical purposes only. Excelsior!

- 68 - The Amazing Spider-Man® in MR. JAMESON GOES TO WASHINGTON!

Story by Maladroit Michael Dobson Art by Dandy Dave Hicks

Starring Peter Parker®, news photographer, aka Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man® J. Jonah Jameson®, irascible editor of The Daily Bugle@, Parker’s boss and Spider-Man’s enemy Aunt May®, Peter’s doting and seemingly immortal aunt

Guest Starring Cecil Munson, a government investigator who looks a lot like G. Gordon Liddy. Richard Bradford, a Pulitzer-prize winning news reporter George Will, a real-life pundit (cameo) Munson’s Cuban henchmen (five) Synopsis. Jonah is confronted by the moral dilemma of one of his old friends in the newspaper business in a metaphor for the Watergate scandal. Meanwhile, Spider- Man must confront a new super-villain whose mission is nothing less than bringing down the United States Government!

- 69 - Cover SPIDER-MAN and villain CECIL MUNSON (who bears a strong resemblance to G. Gordon Liddy) fight with the US Capitol in the background. It’s night, and MUNSON is wearing a combat suit that gives him a appearance. Caption reads “MENACE IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL!”

Splash Page J. JONAH JAMESON, cigar in hand, is leaving baggage claim at Washington National Airport (airport signage tells us where we are; it’s otherwise a generic airport baggage claim), trailed by PETER PARKER, struggling under the weight of both men’s luggage. The smoke from JAMESON’s cigar wafts past a prominently displayed NO SMOKING sign. There’s a newspaper box displaying today’s headline: DISGRACED US SENATOR SHOT, CONDITION CRITICAL.

JONAH (waving cigar) Stop lollygagging, Parker!

PARKER (mumbling, but Jameson isn’t paying attention anyway) All this luggage for two days in DC?

We see THEIR taxicab driving in downtown DC. You can see the top of the US Capitol over some faceless office buildings, with the Washington Monument off to one side. It’s late in the afternoon. An oversize, orange sun sinks below the horizon of office buildings.

Important Spider-Man Note: Washington, DC, has a rigid height limit for buildings, that they can be no taller than the tip of the Capitol Dome. (The Washington Monument is an obvious exception.) As a result, there are no skyscrapers anywhere.

- 70 - Inside one of those office buildings, a man sits at a desk. The room has a film noir look, deep shadows with a parallelogram of light coming in through a pane of frosted glass in the office door. In the gray parallelogram of light we see the name: SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS.

The man sitting at the desk is shadowed. We can see the lower half of his face and the top of the desk in the yellow light of a desk lamp. The nameplate on the desk reads: MUNSON. He’s talking on the phone.

VOICE ON OTHER END We agreed — no violence!

- 71 - MUNSON (harshly) It’s too late to get cold feet!

The man at the other end of the telephone is in a large, brightly lit newsroom, bustling with reporters. He is sitting at a nondescript desk, with a nameplate reading: BRADFORD. Bradford is a newspaper reporter for a major Washington daily. He looks shaken as he puts down the telephone.

ANOTHER REPORTER Hey, Pulitzer winner! Ready for your big speech? Err … Are you OK?

BRADFORD (shakily) I…I’m fine. See you tonight.

BRADFORD stands at his desk, a bead of sweat on his forehead. On the other end of the call, MUNSON opens his desk drawer to find…a service .45.

CUT TO PARKER and JAMESON, who are checking into their hotel, the Hotel Washington, across the street from the US Treasury and overlooking the White House.

The Hotel Washington is well known in DC for its rooftop bar, with an unusual view of the top of the Treasury Building and a glimpse at the White House roof next door. Next to the check-in counter is an easel with a poster: AWARD-WINNING REPORTER RICHARD BRADFORD, 8 PM, GRAND BALLROOM.

PARKER So you two used to work together?

JONAH Finest reporter I ever knew! Except for me, of course!

PARKER’S is cramped and tiny; the bed and dresser take up almost all the space. He’s changed into a suit for the party, and he’s talking on the hotel phone to AUNT MAY. We see her in a split frame.

- 72 - AUNT MAY It’s so exciting you’re in the nation’s capital! Will you get to see the President?

PARKER ‘Fraid not. Ol’ skinflint has me acting like his personal valet, and I have to take pictures tonight. I won’t have any time to sightsee!

AUNT MAY That’s terrible! And that Mr. Jameson is usually such a nice young man!

The big dinner is in a hotel ballroom; a wide shot shows it’s full of press people in suits. JONAH is at the podium. Seated next to him on the dais is BRADFORD. We zoom in on JONAH.

JONAH …and his recent series uncovering scandal at the highest levels of government should make all reporters proud! I give you…my very good friend…Richard Bradford!

CLAP-CLAP-CLAP HURRAY!

BRADFORD moves to the podium to give his acceptance speech. He still looks sweaty and shaken, not the proud honoree he’s supposed to be. We see him in close-up.

BRADFORD (slowly losing it) I’m so…honored to receive this award. I — I’ve spent my life trying…to cover the news honestly and completely…to…

CUT TO PARKER, with the other photographers. Lines radiating from his head tell us that his spider-sense has just kicked in.

PARKER (thought balloon) Spider-sense…tingling! Could it be…Jonah’s friend?

Cut back to BRADFORD, who’s finishing his speech. We see JONAH sitting next to him. JONAH looks worried.

- 73 - BRADFORD This is a great…honor. I don’t…deserve it. Thank you!

CLAP-CLAP-CLAP

CUT TO a cocktail party/reception on the rooftop of the hotel. It’s crowded. JONAH, cigar in mouth, pushes his way through the crowd, oblivious again to the prominent NO SMOKING sign right behind him. As he glad-hands his way through the crowd, he encounters prominent pundit GEORGE WILL.

JONAH Nice bowtie, George! JONAH finally reaches BRADFORD, who still looks ill-at-ease even though surrounded by people praising him.

JONAH Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…unless it was me!

It’s much later. Elevator doors open and JONAH, smoking another cigar, exits, oblivious to yet another NO SMOKING sign in the elevator. PARKER follows him.

JONAH There’s something wrong with Bradford! I wish I knew what it was! Well, tomorrow night we’re having dinner. Maybe he’ll tell me then.

We get a glimpse of JONAH’S luxurious suite before PARKER goes back to his tiny little room.

PARKER (thought balloon) Jonah’s right…for once! Spider-sense doesn’t lie! Maybe it’s time I looked into it!

PARKER swings open his closet door to reveal his SPIDER-MAN suit hanging up. In the next shot, the point of view is in midair just outside PARKER’S hotel window. SPIDER- MAN is leaning out, his arm outstretched like he’s ready to shoot webbing, but in our shot we see that across the street is only the US Treasury building — a mere four stories tall.

- 74 - SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) Wait a minute! The buildings are too low! If I swing on my web, I’ll hit the ground!

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

By act of Congress, no building in Washington, DC, can be taller than the tip of the US Capitol dome! — Ed.

Still from our camera viewpoint outside the building, we see SPIDER-MAN climbing the wall until he’s as high as he can get. He fires his web to the next office building but has to shimmy across. This is much slower and much more annoying than his usual mode of travel.

SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) I never thought I’d miss skyscrapers…until now!

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

The wall-crawler makes his way to Bradford’s house in the suburbs…

SPIDER-MAN soon reaches BRADFORD’S house. It’s a traditional ranch design on a wooded lot. SPIDER-MAN is hanging upside down outside BRADFORD’S study window while BRADFORD talks on the phone to MUNSON. (Of course, SPIDER-MAN doesn’t yet know who MUNSON is.)

BRADFORD (on the phone) I agreed to publish the dirt you gave me on those politicians — not to help murder them! I want out — now!

(pause — we can’t hear the man on the other end of the phone)

No, I mean it! No more cooperation! If you push me, I’ll go to the police!

(pause)

My…my daughter? BRADFORD picks up a picture on his desk of a little girl. It’s clear that MUNSON has threatened to hurt her somehow.

- 75 - BRADFORD (on the phone) Okay, okay! You win! I’ll meet you tomorrow night.

BRADFORD hangs up the phone. He sits down and puts his head in his hands, unaware that SPIDER-MAN can be seen in the window behind him.

SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) I’ll wait until he goes to sleep…then see what I can find!

We see the exterior of the house. One light — in the bedroom on the other side from the study is on…and then it turns off. The house is in darkness.

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

Spider-Man quickly looks through the reporter’s desk, hoping to find out what’s going on…

SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) Gotcha!

He takes his miniature pocket camera, the one he uses to take fight pics for the Bugle, and snaps several pieces of paper. He then sneaks into BRADFORD’S bedroom and plants a Spider-Tracer on BRADFORD’S jacket. Then we see him web- sling his way into the night. (There are tall trees nearby.)

Coming back into town, SPIDER-MAN webslings his way to the top of the Washington Monument, where he sits in the darkness overlooking the Mall for a minute, admiring the view, then swings back to his hotel room. We see him crawling hand-over-hand from the low-slung buildings, then crawling down across the front of the hotel until he reaches his room.

SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) I’ve got an address, but what does it mean?

It’s the next morning. PETER is sleeping when the hotel phone rings.

RRRRIIIIING!!!

- 76 - PETER (sleepily) Hello?

JONAH (on the other end) Meet me in the lobby in five minutes! We have work to do!

PETER (sleepily) B-but…

CLICK!

Shortly, PETER reaches the lobby. JONAH is already there, pacing back and forth, puffing on a cigar and knocking the ashes onto the floor. There is a NO SMOKING sign just behind him.

JONAH Took you long enough! What’s the matter with this hotel? No ashtrays anywhere!

PETER (still sleepy) I thought we had the day off!

JONAH Always lazy, Parker — that’s your problem! No initiative! No physical activity! No drive!

PETER What are we doing?

JONAH Parker, I was a darned good reporter once upon a time, and I smell a story. Let Robbie run the paper for a while — I’m going to get to the bottom of this!

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

Robbie Robertson, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Bugle, the only person on the staff who isn’t afraid of publisher J. Jonah Jameson. – Ed.

- 77 - CUT TO the reading room at the Library of Congress

JONAH has accumulated a huge pile of newspapers and is going through them with PETER’S assistance.

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

The Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. – Ed.

JONAH (too loud) Parker, I think I’ve got it!

LIBRARIAN Shhhh!

Other patrons look on, annoyed.

JONAH (still too loud) It looks like Bradford got the dirt on several members of Congress — but three of them have died!

LIBRARIAN (more firmly) Shhhh!

Patrons start to look up with increasing annoyance.

JONAH (ignoring everyone else)

Now I just have to find out who killed them!

LIBRARIAN (even more firmly) SHHHH!

Pleased as punch with his discovery, JONAH lights up a cigar. There is, of course, a prominent NO SMOKING sign on the librarian’s counter.

CUT TO JONAH and PETER being thrown out of the Library of Congress by uniformed guards.

- 78 - JONAH I pay your salary, you ingrates!

He lights up another cigar.

Cut to JONAH and PETER sitting at a bar. JONAH is puffing happily away on a cigar and nursing a drink. PETER has a taller glass with a straw in it.

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

After a long day’s investigation…

JONAH Lemonade? At a bar? You’ll never make a reporter, Parker!

PETER This whole story looks pretty fishy. Three dead senators — this is serious!

JONAH Sure, it’s serious! Pulitzer Prize serious!

PETER But we still don't know who’s behind it. Your friend doesn’t seem like a cold-blooded murderer.

JONAH (looking downcast)

You’re right. He isn’t.

CUT TO PARKER’S hotel room. It’s evening.

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

Evening finds Peter Parker back in his hotel room…

PETER I thought I’d never get rid of him! Now to investigate — like only Spider-Man can! The Spider-Tracker will lead me straight to Bradford!

- 79 - Again, we have a shot of SPIDER-MAN laboriously navigating the low buildings.

CUT TO a restaurant. BRADFORD and MUNSON are having dinner. It’s a small Italian place, dark and intimate. The two are sitting at a table with a white tablecloth. There’s a candle on the table. In the darkness we can see SPIDER-MAN, upside down again, peering through the window.

BRADFORD I don’t like this! Someone will find out!

MUNSON (dismissively) How? You won’t talk — and I never will.

BRADFORD I don’t believe you. Everybody in this town talks.

MUNSON Not me.

MUNSON holds his hand directly over the candle flame. Disbelievingly, BRADFORD watches in horror as MUNSON’S hand chars under the flame. Outside the window, SPIDER-MAN’S spider-sense is going wild.

SPIDER-MAN (thought balloon) He’s crazy!

MUNSON

See? Just do your job — and your family won’t be hurt.

BRADFORD nods. He can’t resist MUNSON’S pressure.

Soon, MUNSON leaves the restaurant. SPIDER-MAN, perched on top of a lamppost, plants another Spider-Tracker on MUNSON and follows him stealthily.

MUNSON comes to a warehouse in a dingy part of town and goes in. SPIDER-MAN, on the roof, opens a glass panel and peers inside. The warehouse is a low-rent supervillain lair. There are racks of weapons, vans, and a table filled with bomb- making equipment. There are five HENCHMEN, all Cuban. MUNSON is still in a business suit; the HENCHMEN wear A.I.M. style uniforms without the weird helmets.

- 80 - MUNSON Men, we won’t keep our operation secret much longer. Too many weak links! Tonight — we must strike! For too long, we’ve let weak men rule our government. They must all die!

They pack two vans with weapons and bombs. MUNSON changes into his own combat suit.

MUNSON Tonight, everything changes!

He pulls a facemask over his head, and the HENCHMEN do the same. As they start to enter the vans, SPIDER-MAN drops down from the rooftop entrance.

SPIDER-MAN Going somewhere, boys?

MUNSON Spider-Man? But how — !?

A HENCHMAN Es el hombre araña! Pero, ¿cómo?

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

“It’s Spider-Man! But how?” — El Editor

Finally, it’s time for the big fight scene. Spider-Man can easily handle six ordinary humans, and makes quick work of them.

BIFF! POW! CRASH!

But Munson has an ace up his sleeve. He picks up a strange futuristic energy rifle and fires. BZZZZAP!

- 81 - MUNSON You can’t stop me that easily!

SPIDER-MAN (feeling the full jolt of the energy weapon) Arrrrgh!

SPIDER-MAN collapses, but manages to throw a Spider-Tracker onto one of the vans before he does.

MUNSON Quick, men! He won’t stay down for long!

MUNSON and the HENCHMEN pile into the vans and speed off into the night.

Groggily, SPIDER-MAN manages to stand up.

SPIDER-MAN Must…stand…up!

Recovering, SPIDER-MAN examines the trashed warehouse.

SPIDER-MAN Bomb making equipment! Energy weapons! What are they planning?

He finds a spare energy weapon and examines it. On the weapon he finds the inscription A. I. M.

SPIDER-MAN

A. I. M.? They’re involved in this?

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

Advanced Idea Mechanics, an organization of scientists dedicated to the acquisition of power and the overthrow of all world governments! – Ed.

SPIDER-MAN I must stop them before it’s too late! My Spider-Tracker will let me follow them!

- 82 - Moving as quickly as he can, SPIDER-MAN follows the trail of the Spider-Tracker, and shortly reaches the US Capitol (see earlier reference photo). MUNSON and the HENCHMEN are pulling equipment from the van and setting up a strange-looking device that surely isn’t going to do anything good!

SPIDER-MAN (swinging down and smashing into the HENCHMEN) Miss me, boys?

MUNSON Get him!

BIFF! POW! CRASH! ZZZAPPP! KA-POW!

Armed with energy weapons, the HENCHMEN are more dangerous, but not a match for SPIDER-MAN. Still, they keep him distracted while MUNSON continues to work on the strange device. The fight goes on for two or three pages, covering many of the landmarks on the National Mall. SPIDER-MAN makes a few corny jokes and the HENCHMEN cry out in Spanish as he hits them.

MUNSON Keep him away from me! Not…much…longer!

BIFF! POW! CRASH! BZAAAP!

Energy blasts whiz by SPIDER-MAN, who’s swinging wildly and bashing one HENCHMAN after another while MUNSON works rapidly.

MUNSON At last!

THE STRANGE DEVICE

RRRRRRRR

- 83 - SPIDER-MAN The device!

SPIDER-MAN shoots a big glob of webbing over the controls.

MUNSON The Delta Ray! Nooo! Can’t…control…it!

The pressure builds, and the device explodes dramatically.

KA-BLAAAAMMM! AIEEEEE!

SPIDER-MAN is blown backward by the explosion, landing in the reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol.

KA-WHOOSH! SPLASH!

SPIDER-MAN (soaking wet) Wotta revolting development!

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

Yes, we know the Thing usually says this, but after all, Spider-Man and the Thing are old friends. – Ed.

Soon, police cars are all over the site. Stunned HENCHMEN with tattered uniforms are being taken into custody. Both vans are wrecked. SPIDER-MAN hides in a treetop watching as a POLICE OFFICER interviews one of the surviving HENCHMEN.

POLICE OFFICER Spider-Man? You’re telling me that Spider-Man was here?

HENCHMAN Sí, era el Hombre Araña!

- 84 - EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

“Yes, it was Spider-Man!” — El Editor

POLICE OFFICER What’s that vigilante doing here in DC?

HENCHMAN No lo sé!

EDITORIAL TEXT (in box)

“I don’t know!” — El Jefe

As the HENCHMEN are taken away, SPIDER-MAN counts them.

SPIDER-MAN …three…four…five…Where’s Munson?

MUNSON is nowhere to be found. Not wanting to be caught by the police, SPIDER- MAN swings away.

The next morning, JONAH appears at the front door of BRADFORD’S suburban house. BRADFORD opens the door.

JONAH We need to talk.

BRADFORD I know. I’m glad it was you who discovered me.

They go inside and the door closes behind them.

CUT TO the Airport, where JONAH and PETER are getting ready to return to New York. JONAH is smoking again, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign while a uniformed guard looks on angrily. PETER is struggling again under all the baggage.

- 85 - JONAH stops to buy a newspaper. The headline reads PLOT ON CAPITOL FAILS! REPORTER IMPLICATED! IS SPIDER-MAN INVOLVED?

JONAH (sadly) He was a good man…once. He looks at the headline again and does a double take. The cigar falls out of his mouth. JONAH That blasted wall-crawler — here? How?! JONAH looks at PETER with momentary suspicion. PETER’S face is half-PETER, half SPIDER-MAN, with tingle rays coming out of the SPIDER-MAN side.

JONAH Naah. Ridiculous.

PETER (thought balloon) Whew! That was close!

They head toward the ticket counter. CUT TO a secret A. I. M. facility, where a badly-injured MUNSON is being wheeled into the operating room.

- 86 - A.I.M. MANAGER Can he be saved?

A.I.M. DOCTOR Yes…but he’ll never be the same.

A.I.M. MANAGER Go ahead. A fanatic like this is far too useful to our master plan!

THE END… (or is it?)

- 87 - Nixon and drug consultant, taking care of business.

“What was Watergate? A little bugging! I mean, a terrible thing — it shouldn’t have been done — shouldn’t have been covered up. And people shouldn’t have and the rest, but we’ve got to beat it.”

— Richard Nixon

- 88 - What Would Nixon Do? The 13 Management Lessons of Watergate

I pitched a management book called What Would Nixon Do? a couple of years ago. There’s a long tradition of management books that list lessons from various famous people, beginning with 1990’s Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. You can find books giving leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln, Billy Graham, Colin Powell, Santa Claus, Elizabeth I, Jesus, Hilary Clinton, Jean-Luc Picard, and more. I’m not sure whether people actually read these books or whether they’re mostly given as gifts: “Here, boss!” MInd you, I don’t really care; the royalty on a book that isn’t read is identical to the royalty on a book that is. What annoys me about a lot of these books is that they tend to be hagiographies, ignoring the flaws and only celebrating the supposed virtues. My idea has always been to do a warts-and-all lessons book. I proposed one on Rommel — a great leader who couldn’t recognize Adolf Hitler’s true nature, and I thought Nixon would be another great candidate for “warts and all.” The following leadership lessons are taken from my book proposal.

Lesson 1: Know your enemies. (And your friends.) “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” says Michael Corleone, sharing his father’s wisdom, but why would you want to do that? If you say “to keep an eye on them,” then the obvious rebuttal is to ask why they would let you do that. So they can spy on you? Is that really what you want? The real reason to keep your friends close and enemies closer goes to the definition of “enemy” in the first place. In our book Enlightened Office Politics (AMACOM, 2001), my wife Debbie and I constructed an operational definition of enemy.

- 89 - High Fellow Travelers Allies Neutrals

Enemies Opposition

Low

Low High RELATIONSHIP

You can work with all the different categories of people in this grid except enemies, so your goal is to make that box as small as possible. You can turn an enemy into something else two ways: find common or compatible interests and turn them into “fellow travelers,” or build a better relationship and turn them into opponents. Note that both of these require contact. Keep your enemies close as a first step to changing the dynamic. If you can’t shift them into another category, then you have to act. That’s why you should keep an enemies list (not necessarily in writing). It’s a precondition for improvement. Don’t neglect the other categories, of course. You don’t want them to slide into the enemies box.

Lesson 2: Take care of business (TCB). Because I had to have an excuse to get that famous White House picture of Nixon and Elvis in this book somehow.

- 90 - Lesson 3: Keep an eye on the competition. And see if you can do it without break-ins or bugging.

Lesson 4: Make sure your subordinates have the resources to do the job right. As we’ve seen, the resource constraints on G. Gordon Liddy led to the fateful decision to use McCord — and from there everything else unraveled. Cheap doesn’t necessarily save money.

Lesson 5: Everything is related. The real reason for the Watergate coverup was never the burglary itself. It was easy enough to pawn it off as a rogue operation and contain the damage short of the President. The problem was that investigating the Watergate team meant revealing all the Plumber operations, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Connections aren’t necessarily obvious, but they’re usually around someplace. Keep your eyes open.

Lesson 6: Power follows the last failure. Like white corpuscles head for disease, power heads for disaster. Inertia keeps the system locked one crisis behind — the power that moves into the crisis becomes solidified and resistant to change, so we’re always looking one step backward. If your company’s losing money, finance is in charge. Lost a big lawsuit? Now it’s legal. If you figure out your organization’s last major disaster, the department responsible, paradoxically, has the power.

Lesson 7: The right thing and the smart thing are usually the same thing. See Dean, John.

- 91 - Lesson 8: Pick your fights — and your weapons — carefully. When Liddy threw the “Battle Override” switch, he forgot something vital: the rules of engagement. Armchair warriors often assume rules of engagement are for wimps. If you’re going to fight, there are no rules. But that’s a terrible mistake. Rules of engagement come from the Principle of the Objective. War is, as we know, the continuation of diplomacy with the addition of other means. There’s a goal and purpose to war, and it goes beyond keeping score as if it’s a football game. Want to win over the civilian population? Don’t bomb them indiscriminately, even if it seems that it would be a tactically appropriate choice in the short run. Want to take over the infrastructure? Don’t destroy it. Certainly ethics and morality play a role in the development of the rules of engagement — but see Lesson 7. Whenever you fight, this is a critical principle. Develop rules of engagement in advance and follow them.

Lesson 9: There’s always something going on that you don’t know about. Hidden agendas are everywhere. Why did Deep Throat spill the beans to Bob Woodward? In the maze of politics, even your right hand doesn’t always know what your left hand is doing. The story of Watergate is the story of betrayal. In the end, no one had all the facts. It may well be the case that this remains true today.

Lesson 10: Winning the half doesn’t mean you won the game. The original Dean assignment was to keep things contained through the election, and by that standard he was spectacularly successful. But the project is what it is, not what they tell you it is.

Lesson 11: The modified limited hangout is a very difficult thing to pull off. While they don’t give a lot of medals for managing a retreat, it’s actually a very hard thing to do. It’s all too easy for a retreat to become a rout, and the process of retreating opens up vulnerabilities in your line.

- 92 - In researching Douglas MacArthur for MacArthur’s War (another great candidate for a “leadership lessons from flawed leaders” book), I ended up deciding that the two most brilliant campaigns he fought were the retreat to Bataan and the retreat in Korea while waiting to build up supplies for the Inchon landing. Neither are usually mentioned as career highlights, but when you look at the details, they were stunningly well handled. Give retreats your full attention.

Lesson 12: Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. There comes a time when you must realize that victory is no longer an option. When that’s the case, the goal must change from maximizing gain to minimizing harm.

Lesson 13: There are no second acts in American lives...but there are often thirds. In the case of Richard Nixon, there wasn’t merely a third act, but fourth, fifth, and sixth, as chronicled in his book Six Crises. And even after everything in Watergate, Nixon still managed a semi-rehabilitation. The Hermit of San Clemente could not be kept down for long.

- 93 - Random Jottings on Random Jottings

“Fan mail from some flounder?” No, Bullwinkle, it’s letters on Random Jottings #7!

Ned Brooks

Great covers by Steve Stiles, and the interiors too.

I'm quite sure Gustave Dore is public-domain long since, though I am told that museums claim rights to images of their holdings. Why are the inhabitants of Samaria called "Samaritans" rather "Samarians"? Was there a surplus of t's to be disposed of? Aha, I see you explain that - sort of, though the derivation from "Shomrim" seems unlikely. But the more I read of it, the less I understand - climbing one mountain to recite blessings and another nearby to recite curses is too ritualistic for me. The point eludes me - but then ritual in general induces a sort of psychic allergic reaction in me. I have that "Famous Cartoonists Series" pin badge of Steve Stiles. One of the great fan cartoonists! The one at the bottom of p.30 appeared on the back of my It Goes on the Shelf 32.

- 94 - I heard just recently that the Encyclopedia Britannica had announced that they will print no more sets of dead tree bits but will be totally digital. This seems ideal to me - the searchability of cyber-text makes it far superior to trying to find anything in a yard- high stack of paper. I didn't know that people were paid to make Wikipedia pages - have such pages fallen into the same editing wars as the ones done for free? Most of what I have looked for on Wikipedia is not controversial enough for that, and I don't recall the problems you describe. I don't take anything that I read there (or anywhere else) as gospel. That an encyclopedia edited by its readers works so well gives me hope for humanity. Your historical analysis is excellent - but I don't see how it supports the "modest proposal". How would splitting the country into two or three pieces benefit anyone? Who would get the nukes? This is not 1860 - I doubt you could find a majority for succession in any southern state. The religious and cultural divisions among US citizens exist in every state - the North-South dichotomy long out of date. One current question is whether Tennessee or Arizona is ahead in passing demented winger laws on matters of science and health (including explosive lead poisoning). And they are deep divisions - but not by region.

Milt Stevens Random Jottings #7 begins with an excellent Steve Stiles cover and includes a fine selection of other Steve Stiles artwork. I think I’ve seen most of it before. I’m sure I’ve seen some of it, because I published it as covers for LACon IV progress reports. I thought that having Steve do the progress report covers would be one way of making sure all of the Hugo voters would see his work. Unfortunately, he still didn’t win a Hugo which I think he deserves. [I strongly agree — Michael] I was surprised and impressed by Steve’s rendition of Li’l Abner. In a fanzine from Steve and Vicki Ogden, I saw an example of Li’l Abner as done by Frank Frazetta. It really Impresses me when an artist can do things in their own style and also adopt the style of another artist. I had one experience with something sort of like a space suit. When I was in the service I had to attend Navy firefighting school. As part of the training, they had us use an oxygen breathing apparatus (OBA). For a test, they had us put on an OBA and walk through a chamber that was filled with smoke. While you were doing it, your breathing sounded wildly amplified as it was in the movie 2001. Some percentage of trainees will always take the OBA off while still in the chamber even though they have been told there is no oxygen in there. Fortunately, I believed what I was told, and all went well.

- 95 - I remember our discussion regarding the Samaritans in the con suite at Corflu. Mundanes really wouldn’t believe the things we do at cons. The discussion made me realize I had mixed up what the Assyrians had done with what the Babylonians had done. I had been thinking of it as only one exile which had been ended by Cyrus of Persia. Your article possibly gave me answers to a couple of things I had wondered about. First, why were the ancient people Israelites and the modern people are Israelis. If the Samaritans refer to themselves as Israelites, maybe the new government decided to be polite and refer to themselves by a new name. [Israeli is a political identity; Israelite a religious one. — Michael] My second question is why Jews use all blue lights when they decorate for Hanukah. One answer I received was that blue was the Zionist color. The idea of color coding turbans might be another source, and I suspect it would be earlier than Zionism. The color coding probably doesn’t accommodate people like me who are none of the above. I guess I should avoid wearing a turban.

Lloyd Penney Great Stiles cover, reminds me of a futuristic Macy’s parade. A great portfolio, too! And, from the April 26th issue of the Toronto Star and the Associated Press… LONDON—When Claire Squires set off on the London Marathon on Sunday, she had raised around $800 for charity. Three days after the race, her online total hit $1 million. And it just keeps on rising. But Squires cannot savour the outpouring of generosity from around 60,000 people. The 30-year-old Englishwoman collapsed near the end of the 42.2- kilometre (26.2-mile) course near Buckingham Palace and died. Her death has touched hearts in both Britain and beyond. “Claire would be so happy and overwhelmed with the incredible support that has been offered by thousands of people from all over the world,” her family said in a statement. “For Claire and the Samaritans, please keep the donations coming. Don’t stop giving, just like her. It’s what she would have wanted.” The Samaritans is a charity organization that provides emotional support to help prevent suicide. They raise around $6 million annually from individual donations. Claire’s mother, Cilla Squires, has been a volunteer for Samaritans for 24 years.

- 96 - “We desperately wish that it was not under these circumstances but we have been overwhelmed by the response from people donating in Claire’s memory,” said Catherine Johnstone, Samaritans chief executive. “These donations will be put into a tribute fund and, following discussions with the family, will go towards projects they feel would have been important to Claire.” Squires is the 11th participant to die in the London Marathon since it started in 1981. She had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a friend last year to raise 1,500 pounds ($2,400) for the Royal Air Force Association. “Claire is an inspiration to us all,” said friend Nicola Short, who was on the trip. “She brought laughter and love to everyone’s life.” The family still does not know what caused the 30-year-old hairdresser from North Kilworth, England, to collapse and die. “It is hard to understand. She was young, fit and strong and had really been looking forward to the run,” said Simon Van Herrewege, Squires’ boyfriend. “She was an amazing person who was always doing stuff for charity and to help others. This is a difficult time for her family.” I wasn’t sure if you’d seen it, but it definitely should be repeated. Yvonne would definitely be a little envious of you having that space suit. She was active with International Space Development Conferences and International Astronautics Conferences for a number of years, the latter especially when it was on this continent. Right now, the Canadian Air & Space Museum, which had been situated at an old Canadian Forces base in Toronto, has been mothballed in favor of redeveloping the building it was in for a couple of hockey rinks. The federal government pulled all financial support for it, and in the midst of government cutbacks, is threatening to mothball most of this country’s archives. Do we ever need a federal election…

The articles about the historical Samaritans just show that religious intolerance is an equal opportunity offender, meaning that anyone can employ it and anyone can be the target of it. We’ve been doing it for a long time, and we’ll do it for a long time to come. We can’t help but see what US politics are like, given our proximity and the news services. Right now, we are suffering under a Conservative regime, but the idea of a Republican government, with their current promises and policies, is repulsive. I can see why Obama might be smiling, but I think of how much more he could do if the Republicans weren’t saying no to almost every proposal he puts forth. Then they have the nerve to say that Obama’s a do-nothing? There truly is no shame any more.

- 97 - Eric Mayer I enjoyed Random Jottings 7 as much as any fanzine I've read lately but mostly because I learned a lot about things I know nothing about and so can't fit into my usual mode of commenting from my personal experience/knowledge. You explored alien territory for me. I mean, no, I don't own a spacesuit, never came close to it and never expect to. Amazing. I know they were custom fitted (or I do now...) but can you fit into it? [No, alas. The height cutoff for astronauts in those days was several inches shorter than I am. I remember the first time I met museum director and former Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins how surprised I was to find he was built like a jockey. - Michael] Likewise the article on the Samaritans was highly educational, particularly so since I am in the process of actually reading the Bible through to see for myself what all the hoo ha is about. So I actually had some idea about the context and it really fills in a lot of history and geography. Looking at the photo of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho I am tempted to call it godforsaken country but I guess that wouldn't be appropriate. I am surprised the Samaritans want to keep their award to themselves given no one today knows anything about them. Then again, maybe they prefer it that and more power to them. I will say, that a religion based on the oldest parts of the Old Testament has got to be a pretty tough religion. I love Wikipedia. Mary and I often use it as a starting point to research our historical mysteries. However, we have learned not to take anything said in a Wikipedia article for granted without checking another source. Just a couple days ago I ran across the clear factual error that Empress Theodora's family belonged to the Blue faction whereas it was the Greens. Obviously trivial, but when I catch errors like that in an area where I have just a smidgeon of knowledge it makes me distrustful. But it is a great way to get an overview and has terrific lists of sources.

Your political article was terrific. I have spent the past couple years saying to Mary, if only the South had won the Civil War we wouldn't have to put up with them. The country would be 100 times more civilized. Of course, that probably isn't true because who knows what would have happened between the two countries in the past century and a half? Would the south still depend on slave labor? Actually that would make it competitive with so it might benefit today. Would it be a theocracy -- which you might guess a lot of Southerners today would prefer? Maybe the United States would be an enlightened society sharing a border with a violent, slave owning repressive theocracy, constantly sending terrorists north. Yes, probably much better just to cut the troglodytes adrift starting now. I wish. Finally the Steve Stiles work was wonderful. I love his cats on the cover. But I have no vocabulary to comment on art. All I can do is enjoy and admire it.

- 98 - Appendix A Watergate Cast of Characters

Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) • John N. Mitchell, Director, former Attorney-General — convicted • Jeb Magruder, Deputy Director — convicted • , Finance Chairman — indicted, acquitted • Hugh W. Sloan, Jr., Treasurer • , political coordinator, former Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security — conviction overturned • Fred LaRue, no official title or role — convicted • Kenneth Parkinson, counsel — acquitted • G. Gordon Liddy, Operation GEMSTONE — convicted • Alfred Baldwin, Watergate “shadow man,” operated listening post in Howard Johnson’s across the street from the Watergate building — never charged

• Herbert Porter, campaign aide — pled guilty • , freelance “ratfucker” (“dirty tricks” operative), hired by Dwight Chapin, paid by Herb Kalmbach — pled guilty to three misdemeanors

Congress • Sam Ervin, Senator (D-NC), chairman of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices (Senate Watergate Committee)

- 99 - • Howard Baker, Senator(R-Tenn), ranking minority member, Senate Watergate Committee • Peter Rodino, Congressman (D-NJ), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee • Edward “Ted” Kennedy, Senator (D-Mass.) • Edmund Muskie, Senator (D-Maine) • George McGovern, Senator (D-SD) • , Senator (D-Idaho), chair of the Church Committee investigating abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies • Shirley Chisholm, Representative (D-NY)

Defense and Intelligence Community • Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, resigned for refusal to block the Watergate investigation • James R. Schlesinger, Director of Central Intelligence, replacing Helms, subsequently appointed Secretary of Defense

Enemies • Daniel Ellsberg, analyst with RAND corporation, contributor to the Pentagon Papers, later leaker of the papers • Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist

• Larry O’Brien, Chairman, Democratic National Committee, target of Watergate break-in

Journalists • Carl Bernstein, reporter, Washington Post • Bob Woodward, reporter, Washington Post • “Deep Throat” (W. Mark Felt), source • Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor, Washington Post

- 100 - • Walter Cronkite, anchorman, CBS Evening News

Judiciary • Archibald Cox, former Solicitor General, first Watergate Special Prosecutor — fired • Leon Jaworski, private practice attorney, second Watergate Special Prosecutor • Judge John Sirica, chief judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia

Justice Department and Related Agencies • Elliot Richardson, Attorney General — resigned • Richard Kleindienst, former Deputy Attorney General, later Attorney General, replaced by Richardson — convicted • William Ruckelshaus, Deputy Attorney General — resigned • Robert Bork, Solicitor General, later candidate for Supreme Court, rejected • Henry E. Petersen, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, initial Watergate investigator — resigned after passing secret grand jury testimony to Dean • L. Patrick Gray III, director, Federal Bureau of Investigation — resigned, never indicted • W. Mark Felt, associate director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (and “Deep Throat”) • Jack Caulfield, Assistant Director, Criminal Enforcement, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, head of Operation SANDWEDGE, a dirty tricks operation — resigned

Watergate Burglars • James W. McCord, Jr., Security Director, Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, also known as CREEP) — convicted

- 101 - • Bernard Barker, freelance undercover operative — convicted • Frank Sturgis, freelance undercover operative — convicted • Eugenio Martinez, anti-Castro operative — convicted • , anti-Castro operative — convicted • G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and Alfred Baldwin (all CREEP) — supervision of the operation, Hunt and Liddy convicted, Baldwin never charged

White House • Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States — unindicted co-conspirator, resigned, pardoned • Spiro Agnew, Vice President of the United States — resigned, pled no contest, paid $270,000 in a civil suit • Gerald Ford, Vice President of the United States, subsequently President of the United States • H. R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff — convicted • , White House Chief of Staff, replaced Haldeman • Gordon Strachan, Assistant to H. R. Haldeman, liaison to CREEP — indicted, charges dropped • Alexander Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to the President, H. R. Haldeman’s deputy and in charge of the White House taping system — never accused of wrongdoing

• John Erlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, suspected of being Deep Throat — convicted • John Dean, White House Counsel — convicted • Fred Fielding, White House Associate Counsel, assistant to John Dean, suspected of being “Deep Throat” • Charles “Chuck” Colson, Special Counsel to the President, hatchet man — convicted • , White House Press Secretary, suspected of being “Deep Throat”

- 102 - • Dwight Chapin, Deputy Assistant to the President, “dirty tricks” supervisor for the 1972 campaign — convicted • Rose Mary Woods, secretary to the President • Herbert W. Kalmbach, personal attorney to the President — convicted • Fred Buzhardt, White House Counsel for Watergate Matters — discovered gaps on tapes, suspected of being “Deep Throat”

White House Plumbers (Special Investigations Unit) • Egil “Bud” Krogh, Jr., Head of Special Investigations — convicted • David Young, Special Assistant to the National Security Council, co founder of the Special Investigations Unit — granted limited immunity • G. Gordon Liddy, chief operative of the unit, supervisor of Watergate break-in — convicted • E. Howard Hunt, member of the unit, supervisor of Watergate break-in — convicted

Others • Ed Reinecke, Lieutenant Governor of California — convicted of perjury for Senate testimony

Overall, 69 government officials were charged with offenses related to Watergate, 48 of whom were found (or pled) guilty.

- 103 - Campaign memorabilia from the 1968 Nixon campaign, a small paper trash bag for use in automobiles

- 104 - Appendix B Watergate Timeline

1968 November: Richard Nixon elected

1969 January: Richard Nixon inaugurated

1970 July 23: Nixon approves, then rescinds approval of, the Huston Plan, a plan for expanded domestic intelligence gathering

1971 June 13: The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers July 1: The White House Plumbers Unit receives approval to set up shop September 9: The Plumbers burglarize the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg

1972 January - May January 27: G. Gordon Liddy, appointed as Counsel to CREEP, presents the first version of Operation GEMSTONE to Attorney General John Mitchell and others. It is rejected. February 4: Liddy presents a reduced version of GEMSTONE. It is also rejected after some delay. Late February: A third revision of GEMSTONE is approved. May 8: Bugging equipment is installed at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office building.

- 105 - June - August June 17: WATERGATE BURGLARY. Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord and Frank Sturgis are arrested at 2:30am. June 19: In court proceedings, it is revealed that one of the burglars, James W. McCord, is CREEP’s security director. The Washington Post reports this, and Mitchell, head of CREEP, denies any link to the operation. August 1: A cashier’s check for $25,000, earmarked for Nixon’s re-election campaign, is found in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars. August 30: White House Counsel John Dean issues an investigative report on the Watergate burglary, and reports that no one from the White House was involved.

September - December September 15: The first Watergate indictments come in for the burglary. In addition to the burglars, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy are also indicted. They become known as the Watergate Seven. September 29: The Washington Post reveals the existence of a secret fund to finance operations against the Democrats. October 10: FBI agents determine the existence of a massive political spying and sabotage operation being conducted on behalf of the Nixon re-election effort. November 11: Richard Nixon wins the presidency for a second time in one of the largest landslides in American history. November 22: For the first time, Watergate becomes a mainstream story when Walter Cronkite devotes 15 minutes to the scandal on his evening news program.

1973 January January 8: The trial of the Watergate Seven begins under the direction of Judge John Sirica. January 11: E. Howard Hunt pleads guilty. January 15: Barker, Gonzales, Martinez, and Sturgis plead guilty. January 30: Liddy and McCord are convicted of conspiracy.

February - March February 7: The Senate creates the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, with Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee as the ranking Republican.

- 106 - March 19-23: McCord sends a letter to Judge Sirica claiming that he and the others who pled guilty did so under duress, and that they perjured themselves when they said no one else was involved.

April April 6: White House Counsel John Dean begins co-operating with Watergate prosecutors. April 15: Dean has a late-night conversation with Nixon. April 16: Dean is asked to sign a letter of resignation implicating himself in the scandal and realizes he is being set up. April 17: Nixon announces that he will allow White House staff to appear before the Senate Watergate Committee. He issues an official statement claiming he had no prior knowledge of the Watergate affair. Easter Sunday: Nixon sends Dean to Camp David to prepare a report on Watergate. April 30: On national television, Nixon announces the firing of Dean and the resignations of Chief of Staff Haldeman and senior staff member Erlichman.

May - June May 4: Alexander Haig becomes White House Chief of Staff. May 17: The Senate Watergate Committee begins hearings; they will be televised starting the following day. May 25: Archibald Cox, former Solicitor General, is appointed the Justice Department special prosecutor for Watergate. June 13: Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to Erlichman about the plans to burgle Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, demonstrating his knowledge. June 25: John Dean begins his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.

July - August July 7: Nixon claims executive privilege; he will not testify nor grant access to presidential documents. July 13: In testimony, White House Appointments Secretary Alexander Butterfield reveals the White House taping system. Five days later, Nixon orders it disconnected. July 23: The Senate Committee and Special Prosecutor Cox demand a number of White House tapes and documents. Two days later, Nixon officially refuses, and the following day the Committee issues a subpoena for the tapes.

- 107 - August 9: The Senate Committee goes to court over Nixon’s refusal to comply with the subpoena. August 15: Nixon makes his second speech to the nation on Watergate. August 29: Judge Sirica orders Nixon to hand over the tapes.

October October 10: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns after pleading no contest to a charge of income tax evasion. Two days later, Nixon nominates Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan to replace him. October 12: The US Circuit Court of Appeals uphold’s Sirica’s decision. Nixon’s tax returns come under investigation. October 19: Nixon offers a compromise to the Senate Watergate Committee, providing limited access to the tapes. October 20: SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE. Cox rejects the compromise. Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him; Richardson refuses and resigns. Nixon orders the Deputy AG, William Ruckleshaus, to fire Cox. When Ruckleshaus refuses, he is fired. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in command and now acting attorney general, agrees to fire Cox. October 23: As a result of public and legal pressure, Nixon agrees to comply with the subpoena and release a limited number of tapes.

November - December November 1: Leon Jaworski is appointed the new Watergate Special Prosecutor. November 17: During a news conference, Nixon declares, “I am not a crook.” November 18: A gap of 18-1/2 minutes is found on the June 20 tape covering a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman. Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods denies deliberately erasing the tape. December 7: Alexander Haig declares that “some sinister force” may have erased the tape.

1974 January - April January: Time Magazine names Judge Sirica as Man of the Year. February 6: The House of Representatives votes to have the House Judiciary Committee investigate whether grounds exist to impeach Nixon.

- 108 - March 1: Nixon is named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a grand jury indictment of former White House aides. April 16: Jaworski issues a subpoena for 64 more tapes. April 29: Nixon refuses the subpoena but provides edited transcripts instead, appearing on national television to announce his decision. Late April/early May: The expression “expletive deleted” enters the vocabulary based on the number of uses in the White House tapes.

May - July May 9: Impeachment hearings begin in the House Judiciary Committee. July 4: The Supreme Court upholds the subpoena of the tapes. July 27: The Judiciary Committee adopts the first Article of Impeachment against Nixon for obstructing the investigation of the Watergate break-in. July 29: The second Article of Impeachment is adopted, for misuse of power and violation of oath of office. July 30: The third Article of Impeachment charges Nixon with failure to comply with subpoenas.

August - September August 5: Nixon releases the “Smoking Gun” tapes revealing his direct order to cover up the Watergate burglary. August 7: Senior Republican congressmen meet with Nixon to tell him he cannot avoid impeachment and will likely be removed from office by the Senate. August 8: Nixon announces his resignation in a televised national address. August 9: Nixon departs the White House by helicopter, submitting his resignation letter to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger 11:35am. Gerald Ford is sworn in as president. Jaworski prepares a memorandum giving the arguments for and against prosecuting Nixon. September 8: Gerald Ford grants a “full free and absolute pardon” to Nixon.

1977 March March 23: The Frost/Nixon interviews begin. They will last 28 hours, 45 minutes over 12 days.

- 109 - President Gerald Ford pardons a Thanksgiving turkey

May May 4-26: The Frost/Nixon interviews are televised in the US in four segments. A fifth, of additional material, was aired in September.

1978 RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon is released, the first of ten books he will write and publish post-presidency.

1993 June June 22: Pat Nixon dies.

1994 April April 22: Richard Nixon dies.

- 110 - Appendix C Acknowledgements and Credits

The chapters “Watergate Considered as an Org Chart of Semi-Precious Stones” (originally “A Third-Rate Burglary”) and “Come Back to the Five and Dime Again, John Dean, John Dean” (originally “Let’s Go to the Tape”) are adapted with permission from The Six Dimensions of Project Management: Turning Constraints into Resources by Michael Dobson and Heidi Feickert. © 2007 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. www.managementconceptspress.com. The Enemies Grid originally appeared in Enlightened Office Politics: Understanding, Coping With, and Winning the Game Without Losing Your Soul by Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson. New York: AMACOM, 2001. Photographs used in this book are in the public domain as works created by employees of the Federal government in the course of their duties, except as noted. The aerial photograph of the Watergate complex was released into the public domain by the photographer. The photograph of the Watergate as seen from Jack’s Boathouse (back cover) is by “AgnosticPreachersKid” and the photograph of Gordon Liddy at the Miami Book Fair is by “MDCArchives.” Both are used here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license (CC BY-SA 3.0). The photograph of me in “About the Author” was taken by Humayun Mirza. Illustrations in the Spider-Man® story are by Dave Hicks; Spider-Man et al. are trademarks of Marvel Comics. Rights in the art remain the property of the artists. “My Nixon Dream” by Steve Stiles is copyright © 2013 by Steve Stiles and used here with the kind permission of the artist. The caricature of Nixon by Edmund Valtman was released into the public domain by the artist. The fundraising ad for the Pentagon Papers and the Nixon campaign trashbag were not published with copyright notices and under the prevailing copyright law of the time are therefore in the public domain.

- 111 - Nixon campaigning

“Even Napoleon had his Watergate.” — Yogi Berra

- 112 -