THE LAST WEEK: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT

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Instantly, the stunned St. Clair knew that the contents were devastating to Nixon's defense. The transcripts showed that just six days after the Watergate wiretap-burglary, Nixon was fully aware that Re-Election Campaign Director John Mitchell and two former White House consultants, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, had been involved—even though Hunt and Liddy had not then been arrested (see box page 18). He was told by Haldeman that "the FBI is not under control," and that agents were tracing money found on the burglars to Nixon's re-election committee.

Nixon immediately proposed cover-up actions. His first suggestion to Haldeman, according to the transcripts, was that each campaign contributor whose check was traced to the burglary by the FBI should claim that the burglars had approached him independently for the money. Haldeman objected that this would involve "relying on more and more people all the time." Haldeman relayed a suggestion from Mitchell and Dean that the CIA should be asked to tell the FBI to "stay to hell out of this" because the FBI probe would expose unnamed—and actually nonexistent—secret CIA operations. Asked Haldeman about the FBI, "You seem to think the thing to do is get them to stop?" Replied Nixon: "Right, fine." Added Nixon later: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest."

With those words, Nixon authorized the coverup, a criminal obstruction of justice that was eventually to destroy his presidency. The transcripts show that Nixon ordered Haldeman to call in CIA Director Richard Helms and Deputy CIA Director Vernon Walters and get them to tell Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray "to lay off' his investigation of the Watergate burglary money. Nixon suggested that Haldeman could claim that "the President believes" that such an investigation would "open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again" (as a CIA agent, Hunt had helped organize the disastrous 1961 invasion of Cuba), and that the CIA officials "should call the FBI in" and tell Gray, "Don't go any further into this case, period!"

The June 23 conversations hinted, moreover, that Nixon had been concerned even earlier about the FBI investigation touching the White House. "We're back in the problem area," Haldeman said early in the first meeting with Nixon that day, indicating a prior discussion. One such occasion almost certainly was on June 20, the day on which the two held an 18½-minute Watergate discussion—the tape of which was later manually erased by someone with access to the White House–held recordings.

Reading the transcripts, St. Clair had no doubt about what should be done: they must be released promptly and publicly. He knew that once Jaworski got them under the Supreme Court order, they would eventually become public, if only at the cover-up conspiracy trial of six Nixon aides. He knew that the Senate could acquire them for its probable trial of the President, and he feared that their contents might leak out earlier. Release in any of those forms would look involuntary. That would not only destroy Nixon but it could ruin St. Clair professionally, since he could be accused of having withheld evidence and argued falsely in Nixon's behalf.

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