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UNDISPUTED FACTS. Shortly after the Watergate arrests, Nixon ordered Haldeman and Ehrlichman to meet with top officials of the CIA. They did so. Later that same day, newly installed Deputy CIA Director Vernon Walters told Gray that FBI attempts to trace money used by the wiretappers through Mexico might interfere with a covert CIA operation there. This slowed the FBI probe. Later Dean asked Walters whether the CIA might provide bail money and support the wiretappers if they were imprisoned. Both Walters and CIA Director Richard Helms decided that the White House was trying "to use" the agency. Walters, after checking further on what the agency was actually doing in Mexico, told Gray that there was no CIA operation in Mexico that could be compromised by the FBI. Gray concluded that there had been an attempt to interfere with the FBI investigation, and he warned the President on July 6, 1972, that "people on your staff are trying to mortally wound you." Nixon asked no questions, but told Gray to continue his investigation.
IN DISPUTE. Haldeman contended that he merely asked the CIA officials to find out whether the CIA had been involved in Watergate and whether they had some operation in Mexico that might be exposed. Both Helms and Walters claimed that Haldeman had introduced the subject as a potential political embarrassment, not a security matter. Walters said he was not asked to determine facts, but was told by Haldeman to tell Gray to hold back the FBI'S investigation in Mexico.
WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE. This is among the earliest and clearest instances of a White House effort to impede the investigation. The past CIA service of several of the arrested wiretappers made it seem logical at first that the CIA could provide a convenient cover for the Watergate operation, but Helms' instant denials to Haldeman of any CIA involvement promptly squelched any such notion.
WHAT DID NIXON KNOW? Nixon said on May 22 that he had no intention of impeding any Watergate investigation, but was concerned about an FBI probe interfering with matters of national security. If his intent really was only to protect national security secrets, he failed to convey that to Haldeman or, through Ehrlichman, to Dean. As these aides relayed the President's instructions to Gray, Helms and Walters, the White House interest impressed those officials as highly political. The fact that Nixon asked no questions when Gray warned him about his aides' activities suggests that Nixon might well have known what those aides were trying to do.
Executive Clemency
UNDISPUTED FACTS. Dean (through intermediaries John Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz) sent word to convicted Wiretapper James McCord that he could expect Executive clemency after perhaps a year in prison if he remained silent about any higher involvement in the burglary. McCord was told that the suggestion was coming "from the very highest levels of the White House." Even before the convicted wiretappers were sentenced, Ehrlichman and Dean asked Attorney General Richard Kleindienst at what point "Executive pardons" could be granted to convicted criminals.