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Home , Maurice Stans

s, He's 84. He Wants His Good Name Back. Shouldn't We Give It to Him?

By Ken Ringle Washington Poet Staff Writer ere we have Maurice Stans, the notorious bagman of Wa- tergate, who, as finance chair- contributions. Out of nearly a million trans- man of 's reelec- actions that year!" tion campaign 20 years ago, Now that the record shows he knew Htrafficked in suitcases filled with $100 bills, nothing of the conspiracies and .coverups and, while raising more political money rice • Stans wore the exasperated sincerity his money-raising underwrote, and that all than any previous man in history, financed such charges against him were false, he the burglaries and the coverups and all the of the substitute teacher who just can't qui- et the class. He never seemed to under- says, "there should be some process in the sordid black baggeries of the greatest po- media for absolution." litical scandal in American history. stand what could be wrong with doing his job so well, or why people thought all that Stans has pursued that absolution with And on the other hand we have, appar- the same tenacity and zeal with which he ently in the same chair, the tousle-haired, cash he raised might tempt. Nixon and his operatives to send some of it on dubious once made six- and seven-figure contribu- bespectacled pride of Shakopee, Minn., the tions leap from the 'pockets of corporate. son of a Belgian-born house painter and errands. America. He has testified and granted in- concert bandmaster; who read Horatio Al- "There can be such a thing as an over- ger stories and believed them and believes dose of loyalty," said the Republican Par- them still; who in three years of exhaustive ty's most famous accountant the other day investigations and excruciating trials about on a visit here from his home in Pasadena. Watergate was repeatedly found INNO- "I may have been guilty of that. . . . Loyal- CENT of ANY knowing violation of ANY ty is one of my characteristics," But for 20 law, and is still asking America to "give me years, he says, journalists and prosecutors terviews. He has telephoned and demand- back my good name." have been assuming—and writing—that ed corrections. "When necessary" he has As Dwight Eisenhower's chief fiscal the man who raised nearly $60 million for filed libel suits, all of which, he says, have watchdog, this is the man who gave Ameri- Richard Nixon must have known every- ca its last balanced budget. thing that money was buying. been settled out of court. Can it be that we owe him some sort of "I can understand how and why they In 1978 he published "The Terrors of . . . apology? thought that," Stans said. After all, he end- Justice," a 478-page apologia setting forth ed up pleading guilty to five of the charges his storybook journey from a $30-a-week against him and paying a $5,000 fine. "But stenographer for a sausage casing compa- In the vast rogues' gallery of Watergate, that had nothing to do with Watergate," he ny •to the millionaire money man of presi- Maurice Stans was never a very satisfacto- insists. "They were two charges of non- dents. ry villain. Amid the bulldog intransigence willful receipt of illegal campaign contribu- Written in clear, accountant-like style, of John Mitchell, the snarling defiance of tions—the word 'nonwiliful' appears both complete with periodic summing up and , the storm-trooper glare in the charge and in the judge's ruling— frequent double entries, it adds up all the of H.R. Haldeman, the hand-in-the-candle- and three minor counts of late reporting of flame machismo of G. Gordon Liddy, Mau- Maurice Stuns: Oddly enough, still one of the President's Men, BY DILL 5HEAD-11-1E WAS}1IHGTOH POST , • - hundreds of charges against dozens of sal. called "Watergate figures" like himielk subtracts the 14 men convicted anctfinds STANS, From Fl among the remaining innocent an unceo? .s. scionable surplus of shattered lives Snd. ss- "You're right about that," Stans personal suffering, his own among them:- ",'- says. Last month, as the 20th anniversary :of Which in turn demands a certain ac- Watergate approached, he dashed off a let; ::.counting: ter to the nation's 30 leading newspapers '- ss- Why has Maurice Starts just spent wire services and newsmagazines pleadini four years raising $27 million for the with them to "exercise discretion" in any ''Nixon Library? upcoming retrospective articles when they ' identify someone as a "Watergate 'conspir- Sense of Obligation ator' . . Watergate 'character' or similar: ._ is the central paradox of Mau- term of lasting stigma? -rice Stank While he has won retraction of such la- s "I don't know how you rationalize bels in the past, he wrote, "that has been , my thinking," he says of his continued costly. Meanwhile, my financial affairs sservice to the man who brought him have been shattered. My defense expenses -;down. "Many people have been angry have been enormous. Awards and honork ,for me. Many people have thought I justly due, have been denied me. Positio4s ;Should have acted differently. But of trust have been withheld." ;:maybe it's my smalkown For an 84-year-old son of Shakopee, still-- —attitude.. seeking validation in the wider world, it's What happened was Nixon asked been a heavy price. But Stans has never, sshini over to dinner and, after he'd for one moment, lain even an ounce of that/ ,sturned down the fund-raising job three price at the feet of Richard Nixon. . times, "tried the one thing that always "It never occurred to me to pin my Prob- -;:lgorks: flattery. He said 'Maury, lems on him or anybody else," Stans says: siau're the only man in the country thoughtfully, making a tepee of his longs: s.,who can do this. Without you there freckled fingers after adjusting his presi- :swill be no Nixon Library: And I said, dential seal tie clasp. "I never felt I wanted sffelliMr. President, if you put it that to go back and demand accountability, fi- s. way, T accept. But it won't be easy.' nancial or otherwise, from anybody that And it wasn't.... got me in trouble. It always seems best to But I felt an obligation to Nixon as me to forget the misdeeds and mis-evalua-- I did to Eisenhower. Eisenhower tions of my friends and go on doing my.' piCked up a guy with no government business as best I can. .. ." experience whatever and put him in Stans, however, has done far more than charge of the federal budget. Nixon taking care of business. He also appears to put me in charge of raising money for have sustained one of history's world-class his campaign when I'd never raised cases of unrequited love, toward a presi; more:than $1.5 million before... . dent who at best ignored him and at worst "Those things became challenges to hung him out to dry. me, opportunities. And whatever suc- In his book, he notes without complaint cesses I've had in my life have flowed that, despite his Cabinet position (he was from opportunities like that" Nixon's first secretary of commerce) and- his record-breaking achievements in ftind- `You Don't Want to Know' raising, he was routinely excluded from the Stans is explaining how he could president's inner circle. His budgetary ad-' have been blind to what his 1972 vice was ignored. His counsel was discard- fund-raising was paying for. ed. On the night of his overwhelming elec-+= - "There were two parts to the mon- tion victory, Nixon spurned even a token' ,ey,:bperation: getting the money, appearance before Stans and the Contribit-: --which was my job, and handling the tors who had paid for it all. money, which was Hugh Sloan's. He Once Stans's three-year legal nightmare; deposited and dispersed the money, of accusations, innuendo and investigation paid the bills and so on, and along the began (his wife was critically iII much of he got involved in a couple of the time; she died in 1984), Nixon offered of cash I didn't know anything neither money or support. When the fa-- about, until the whole thing came out mous White House tapes were made pub- Ss. in court.. Ins . lie, Stans discovered Nixortliad,a;ecretly "I remember one instance when planned to make him a fallIAL e scan- Slosin; came to me and said, 'Liddy dal, nominating hirn4qt.'SSI _w= ia orshiia s :wants $50,000 to spend in New s so his stormy conlii-mation earwigs won% panips.hire: And I said, 'What's Liddy • take the heat off the president. I' got to do with New Hampshire?' And Didn't that kind of smack of ingratitude? .• he said, 'I don't know but Magruder See STq INS. F. cot t says, he should have it.' And I said, ':'Wait'Wait a minute: Let me talk to John .', Mitchell.' So I called Mitchell and I Z.: said, 'Is Liddy entitled to get any mon- 4.4k,ei -for campaign purposes?' And he Stans, Sloan said, replied, "I don't 'How much should I give him: $25? <', 'Yes, but it should go through want to know and you don't want to $50? Or does he expect more than , Gan,' And I said. 'That's the way it know." that?' " -,... e:but I just want your approval.' It was, Stans says today, none of his So fund-raising rule number one, '' he said, 'Okay, tell Sloan to give affair. Stans says, is always name a figure tidi any amount of money he asks He concedes that CPAs such as he before your prospect can think of one. ;tstei,"t And that's what happened." usually evidence unusual interest in And make it larger than you think ,,..;*n cording to testimony in the Wa- - both where money comes from and they'd give. 'cargate hearings, Sloan later asked where it goes. But, as he explains: "So instead of waiting for you to Stans precisely what Liddy, who was "There's a fever that goes on in a suggest a figure I say, 'Several of your i technically nothing more than counsel campaign like that. It gets higher and neighbors are giving $200 and we 1., jo the finance committee of the Com- higher. You do your job at a faster and think it would be nice if you were in I.t Thittee to Re-Elect the President, faster pace and you have less and less that same class.' I'll probably get the t 'needed money for. The answer, of time to look at any individual transac- $200 from you. But if I don't I'll al- 1.- v , course, was for the campaign of "dirty tion... . Yet I did take the time. I was ways get more than if I let you set the r' 'tricks" of which the Watergate bur- able to demonstrate to the special amount yourself." ! glary was only one small part. But prosecutor that I had refused or re- But it's also critical, Stans says, to l':". : turned somewhere between $4 and know your prospect and see him in $5 million, either because I didn't person. In 1968, he said, he flew to trust the contributor or because the hoping to coax a $25,000 contribution came with some sort of contribution for Nixon from legendary string attached... . mega-millionaire W. Clement Stone. "Now if there's a question of my in- But he didn't know much about tegrity, it seems to me that's part of Stone's politics, and was surprised to the equation. It seems to me that find him already strongly for Nixon. ought to outweigh any little piddling Noting the enthusiasm, Stans held thing of a two-month delay in report- back from mentioning a figure, and by ing an item because I couldn't get the the time they'd finished lunch, had names of the contributors from the in- about decided he could ask for dividual who raised the money. But $100,000. Then Stone mentioned he nothing has ever been said about that, strongly favored matching gifts, and as far as I can remember, either by would match anything the campaign the lawyers [who prosecuted him] or could raise in the next 60 days. . by the media." "Up to what amount, Mr. Stoner Stans asked. Flattery and Fund-Raising "Up to a million dollars." One question, spoken and unspo- Stans then asked for and got a ken, about Maurice Stans and Water- $200,000 advance on account, and the gate, is how, if the 1972 campaign 1968 Nixon presidential campaign contributions weren't buying special was underway in style. favors from the Nixon administration, Four years later, Stans said, he'd a nice unassuming fellow like Maurice learned other techniques as well. Stans managed to raise so much. "I would meet with some potentially The answer, he says with a crafty big contributors and tell them, 'You all smile of pride, lies in his discovery of know what kind of president Richard the real key to fund-raising: "Nobody Nixon would be, but you probably ever gets offended by being asked for don't know much about George Mc- too much." Govern. So I've brought along copies People, he says, "are flattered by of a tax bill he's submitted to Con- being asked to give more than they gress. Take it home, show it to your can afford": It suggests you think accountant and ask him how much this they're richer than they are. bill would cost you.' That was very ef- "Suppose I came to you and said, fective." - 'I'm raising $2 million for an animal Total Recall shelter here in Washington. Your neighbors are all contributing and Whatever the traumas he suffered we'd like you to contribute too.' What over Watergate, Stans is a great ad- goes through your head? You think, vertisement for old age. Though he's slightly stooped and wears a hearing program that was one of his pet pro- aid, his mental agility would impress in jects as secretary of commerce. a man half his age. Not only can he re- He's also writing his autobiography call from memory chapter and verse ("Between the Lines of History") and a of every charge, trial and witness in book on fund-raising. the labyrinth of Watergate, he is just Where does he get the energy? as forthcoming with details of the "When I was 12 my father bought a budget he balanced in 1960 or his life insurance policy on me for $1,000. trade talks with the Soviets during de- I read all the fine print and discovered tente. that on the payment of premiums for In January he finally decided to the 96th year, no more premiums whittle his 15 corporate consultancies shall be due and the full amount of the and directorships down to three. He policy falls due to the beneficiary. I de- closed his office and now has a secre- cided I had to live to be 96 to collect tary only three days a week. But he's that $1,000. And I still plan to." been away from home more than half And from Maurice Stans, the small, the year so far, most recently working satisfied smile of an accountant who's on revitalizing a minority enterprise summed it all up.

ASSOCIATED PAESS PHOTOS Left, happy times for Nixon and Stans in 1989. Right, in 1982, the Associated Press reported spotting Stans "prowling Washington hoping to restore his reputation." TWENTY YEARS AFTER Positively the Last Word( s) On Watergate

By Charles Trueheart Washington Pest Staff Writer Thumb-suckers are nice, retrospectives are dandy, but the meaning of Watergate can be rendered in a few short phrases: "a scandal involving abuse of power by public officials, violations of the public trust, bribery, contempt of Congress, and attempted obstruction of justice." Nixon: So says the American Heritage Dictionary of the "Stonewall" American Language's Third Edition, due out in August, where Watergate shares a page:with its sister debacle Waterloo. "It's taken on an extended meaning, just as Beirut has," says Anne Soukhanov, executive editor of the dictionary. Watergate has become an important legacy not just to presidents, journalists and citizens, but to lexicographers, the keepers of our dictionaries, and many others whose minds are attics of the memorably uttered. The suffix -gate is far more versatile than Watergate proper, and lives on today as an all-purpose denoter of scandal. It has adorned many a word—Korea, Iran, Billy, debate—and given it the redolence of malfeasance at the Ziegler: highest levels. "Gatesgate," the minor hubbub over Robert "Inoperative" - Gates's nomination to head the CIA, was the reductio ad absurdum of this idea. Yet Soukhanov and company decided not to include the suffix in the new edition. Maybe next time: They've just admitted grassy knoll. Stonewall and deep-six and dirty tricks, among other charming expressions, may not have been invented by Watergate protagonists, but the terms were crystalized and immortalized by their invocation during the affair. President Nixon, borrowing an honorable Civil War name for dishonorable purposes, used "stonewall" to describe the position he wanted his minions to take to staunch revelations of official wrongdoing. The Trickster Ehrliehman: himself is cited in the American Heritage definition: "Twisting slowly See GLOSSARY, F5, Col. k in the wind" ▪

he Final Words on Watergate

GLOSSARY, From Fl White House should handle the doomed nomination. of L. Patrick "Informal. To refuse to cooperate Gray to head: the FBIta: leave it with; resist or rebuff: 7 want you to twisting slowly, slowly in the wind? stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Or 's gymnastic ..,i,;limendment.'7 (Richard M. Nixon)." 18-minute gap—one of many, many 14 (This tactic, also known as hanging strange gaps in the Oval Office tough, was later amended, no more tapes, deletionS Alekander Haig lat- successfully, to the famous limited er straight-facedly suggested were modified hangout route.) caused by a sinister force. Or • Deep-six, a term that has its roots CREEP, as Nixon's enemies liked to ▪in both naval and funerary parlance, call the Committee to Re-Elect the ▪ was the Nixon White House's equiv- President. alent of "five fathoms deep"—the Not in Soukhanov's dictionary, but 5" underwater location, possibly off a still frequently heard, is expletive. Baker. "What did he know, • Potomac River bridge, where docu- deleted, the blushingly .frequent eu- and when did he know it?' grents or loot or bugging equipment phemism of choice on transcripts of be forever secretly dispatched. Oval Office conversations. This coy- up. And the firestorm—now a journal- Dirty tricks were the political erup language, ironically, has been istic -Cliche—that greeted the Satur- ones, from Donald Segretti's wicked adopted by some newspapers to pro- day Night Massacre. pranks at the excusable end to the tect the sensibilities of their readers " ' wiretapping Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, tan- from the raw and earthy things Most : gled to the end in his president's un- -af the unconstitutional one. Perhaps people say in their daily discourse. because Watergate gave dirty tricks raveling lies," managed to etch a few • The Senate testimony of Richard terms in history's glossary. No one ev- • such a had name, the term is no lon- Nixon's buttoned-down minions sagged ger in use. It's been replaced by- er let him forget his early dismissal of with bureaucratese„ the wordiness fa-. the Watergate break-in as a third-rate : what else?—euphemisms, such as vored by people who have nothing to .7, "negative campaigning," stoked by burglary. And he provided weeks of say but want to sound important saying mirth with his later announcement, as • "opposition research.' it: At that point in time instead of • How about The Washington official explanations of the scandal "then," for instance, and not to the best were proven to be deliberately fraudu- Post's anonymous ultra-source, ▪• of my recollection instead of "I don't lent, that previous White House state- '? (The expression was remember"or instead of telling the ments on the subject were inopera- ▪ itself borrowed from a well-known truth. tive. porno flick of the time.) "That's Watergate spawned its share of The great man himself contributed .•=:.:,..aomething we'll be watching for a quotable quotes: "What did he know some memorably Nixonian phrases to • while," says Soukhanov, who writes and when did he know it?" was Sen. our cultural vocabulary. "I am not a Zihe Word Watch column for The At- 's sonorous interrogato- crook" is the pathetic best of them. "If it gains more currency out ry. It earned him a reputation for "Let others wallow in Watergate;' he if the Watergate context, like tough-mindedness—in imperial Wash, said at another point in time, "we are -- -4-eitch-22; then it could become an ington, it doesn't take much. going to do our job." • addition to a future edition of the Then there was the nasty thing in- But for sheer sanctimony and Ma- dictidnary." volving a wringer that John Mitchell chiavellian gall, nothing comes close to - Bin: other shards of language are said would happen to Washington Post Nixon's quickly adding, after swagger- somehow more memorable, even if Co. Chairman . And ing on at length about his ability to lay they are too wordy or Watergate- Chuck Colson's reported willingneSs to his hands on a million dollars of hush ,: specific to earn a place in a diction- run over my awn grandmother in the money, that it would be wrong: a side- ic 40. service of RN. And the cancer on the long whisper to his conscience, not to Who can forget John Ehrlichman's presidency somberly mention the whirring tape recorders =sneering description. of how the warned Nixon. about early in the cover- reeling him down into history.