(6 of 10)
Dean also took a more concrete step to protect himself before he was fired: he carried away nine documents from his files and placed them in a safe deposit box in Virginia's Alexandria National Bank, not far from where he lives. He gave the keys to Judge John J. Sirica, who had presided over the original Watergate trial and been the main force in pushing the case beyond the low-level convictions.
Last week the White House filed a motion with Judge Sirica to have those documents returned. "We want the originals back. They're our papers, goddammit," said a White House official. He added: "If any one thinks that we're going to do anything sneaky, let the court hang on to a copy." Judge Sirica scheduled a hearing for this week on what to do with the Dean documents.
Yet at the same time, other Justice Department authorities were knocking down the importance of those papers. The New York Times quoted one such official as saying that the papers are national security documents that "have nothing to do with anything." Another told the Times that Dean cannot implicate the President in any way, adding: "We have debriefed Dean from A to Z."
Partly in response, Dean contended in a statement that unspecified persons were waging a campaign "to discredit me personally in the hope of discrediting my testimony. There is a concerted effort to 'get me.' "
All this is part of a complex battle over immunity. Dean is demanding a full-immunity "bath," under which he would tell everything he knows in return for the assurance that he cannot be prosecuted in any way. The Ervin committee is seeking a more limited "use" immunity, under which he could be prosecuted later, but Justice Department attorneys would have to show that any evidence they used against Dean was derived independently of his public testimony. The department is resisting any immunity at all for Dean. Nixon last week reversed his own blanket decree against immunity in the case, so any refusal to accommodate Dean is no longer the President's sole responsibility.
The angry argument reaches far beyond Dean. "There won't be any criminal cases if the witnesses go on TV and reel off their grand jury testimony," contends a Justice Department official. He argues that such a wide dissemination of testimony would allow other defendants to claim that their criminal cases had been hopelessly prejudiced. It would also enable them to discover much of what probable accusing witnesses would say about them—and to prepare their defenses.
Senator Ervin, on the other hand, argues that "it's far more important to get the truth than to send someone to jail." He complains of the prosecutors: "They have had the case since last summer, and if they can't get enough evidence to convict somebody by this time, they ought to go out of business."
That may be unfair. There were indications last week that the Watergate grand jury is now speeding up its work, possibly in an attempt to indict the most important officials before they can give their testimony in public to the Ervin committee. Some indictments could come as early as this week. The most likely persons to be indicted include John Mitchell, John Dean, John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman, Jeb Magruder and Fred LaRue.