(17 of 21)
P: How does Dean come out on this thing?
HP: His counsel says we want a deal. This man was an agent. This man didn't do anything but what Halde—
P: Haldeman and Ehrlichman told him to do.
HP: And Mitchell, and if you insist on trying him we, in defense, are going to try Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Nixon and this Administration ...
P: He'd try it—the President too?
HP: It's a goddamned poker game. Yes sir.
Summoning Ziegler to join the conversation, the President resumes his musings over what sort of public statement he could issue that would "knock true."
P: I want them [the press] to know that since the 21st [of March] I've been working my tail off, which I have—I—I'm so sick of this thing. I want to get it done with and over, and I don't want to hear about it again.
APRIL 16,1973, 3:27 P.M.
E.O.B. Present: the President, Ehrlichman and Ziegler.
Second thoughts begin to surface about how necessary it is, after all, to issue a statement.
P: We just won't try to get out in front... We've gotten into enough trouble by saying nothing so we'll say nothing today. You know, actually, thank God we haven't, thank God we haven't had a Haldeman statement Believe me. [Unintelligible] Thank God we didn't get out a Dean report. Right? Thank God. So, we've done a few things right. Don't say anything.
∎
E: I'd sure like to see us cone out sometime, and I suppose it has to be at a time that Magruder makes his deal.
P: Well, let me say—I've got Peterson on a short leash.
Ehrlichman continues to argue for a statement, preferably on April 17; eventually he prevails.
APRIL 17,1973, 9:47 A.M.
The Oval Office. Present: the President and Haldeman.
Nixon discusses the need to issue a Watergate statement because "they keep banging around and banging around. The prosecution gets out the damn stuff." There is a note of fatalism.
P: [Dean] basically is the one who surprises me and disappoints ... because he is trying to save his neck and doing so easily. He is not, to hear him tell it, when I have talked to him, he is not telling things that will, you know—
H: That is not really true though. He is.
∎
H: That is the real problem we've got. It had to break and it should break but what you've got is people within it... who said things and said them, too, exactly as Dean told them.
APRIL 17, 1973, 12:35 P.M.
The Oval Office. Present: the President, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Ziegler.
For nearly two hours, the threat from Dean dominates the conversation.
P: You see Dean—let's see, what the hell—what's he got with regard to the President? He came and talked to me, as you