Life Inside a White House That Leaks Like the Titanic

Since we are in the middle of the most surreal time in the history of American politics, it came as no surprise to me last week when my old law partner, Richard M. Nixon, showed up for a nighttime talk.

I was familiar with his midnight musings. In October 1968, Nixon was on the road campaigning for the presidency and watching his lead over Hubert H. Humphrey crumble. Many nights my phone in New York would ring between midnight and 1:00 a.m. and Nixon, a scotch and Seconal aboard, would talk himself to sleep, pouring his fear into a friendly ear.

This time there was no trace of Nixon anxiety. He just had this urge to talk about the Bill Clinton scandals and had wangled a probationary pass to do so. Here is some of what transpired:

Nixon (looking fit, dark blue suit, starched white shirt): Sorry to barge in, Len; ah, I wanted to, you know, chat--if you have a minute.

Garment (sitting bolt upright in bed): No problem at all, sir. I’m overjoyed to see you. (Notices Nixon perspiring, though the room is cool.) Say, I can get the temperature down in a jiffy, sir--

Nixon (dabbing perspiration with a handkerchief): No, no, it’s not necessary, Len. It’s that damned in-between place I’m stuck in. Hot as--well, no, it’s actually Alaska compared with, you know, the other place. (Glances furtively at his watch.) I only have a few minutes, Len, and since you’re the last living unindicted survivor of the Nixon conspiracy (chuckles) . . . . OK, first (placing check mark on yellow pad), off the record (personal material deleted).

Nixon (cont.): Now, the important things. First, those stories about me during Watergate, about how, at the end, I was wandering around the White House, talking to paintings of presidents. Christ, they made Nixon look like a total nut. For once you were helpful, Len, knocking the rumors down in that book of yours.

Now I have to tell you something, Len: Those stories about me talking to the pictures? They were 100% correct, in spades. I talked to photographs, statues, to King Timahoe. But the damned mutt just barked back, and, by the way, he would never take food from my hand . . . .

(Shrugs) Do you know why I talked to those pictures? Because I couldn’t talk to anybody else. Everyone I’d ever talked with about Watergate was on his way to the slammer or spilling his guts to Archie Cox. Or Leon Jaworski, that pious windbag. Leaked like a sieve. Made Cox look like a saint. Near the end, the White House was all whispers and murmurs, and nobody wants to see Mr. President.

Sure, I could talk with Al Haig, but he was always ahead of me. I’d say, “Can’t we do something about that damn tape, Al?” And he’d say, “You mean the new Montovani, Mr. President?” I tell you, the place was a nut factory.

So Len, my heart goes out to Clinton. I mean it. He dragged himself from Nowhere, Ark., to the American goddamn presidency, and now Ken Starr is hauling busloads of Clinton people off to the grand jury to analyze the president’s private parts. Talk about nightmares.

Do this for me, Len. Get word to Clinton that Nixon, the real Nixon, knows what’s going on and deeply sympathizes. Of course, it’s the goddamn press all over again. I wish we’d had loyalists like Carville to fight them, use them. He’s a fighter, I mean, calling Starr a thug, just deliberate as hell.

OK, Len (another check on the yellow pad), you can also tell Clinton that Nixon owes him an apology for undermining presidential privacy with the tapes screw-up. Next, Len, and Clinton has to be perfectly clear about this: (Slowly) Others may hate him, but only if he hates back can he be destroyed. Notice how I tightened that line, Len? Edit, edit, edit, that’s what it’s all about.

You can end on a light note. Tell Clinton I know about Monicas. I’ll trade a Monica Crowley diary of Nixon meetings for a Monica S. Lewinsky diary of Clinton meetings, and give him six points.

(Nixon laughs, flashes his surprisingly bright smile, does his V-for-victory salute and, like the famous cat, fades away. Garment wakes up the next day, thinking he dreamed it, until he finds a crumbled handkerchief at the foot of the bed.)

It didn’t start with Clintongate. Nixon’s tape-recorded scandal began the decline of presidential privacy, with the Supreme Court, Congress and proliferating prosecutors and media as accessories before and after the fact. This erosion, more than Clinton’s difficulties, is the cancer growing on the modern presidency.

In 1974, with several senior Nixon advisors under criminal investigation, the legal wrangling began over tapes of their conversations with the president. On the day the issue was argued in the Court of Appeals, I rode to court with Charles Alan Wright, the president’s constitutional lawyer. Wright asked for a metaphor to describe the consequences of breaching the confidentiality of presidential communications. I suggested the obvious one: Titanic--a small gash in the ship’s side, the water forced in, the ship inexorably filling and foundering. An hour later, Wright turned this into a graceful argument: A small, well-rationalized compromise of presidential confidentiality would inevitably erode the privacy at the core of the presidential function.

We didn’t have a chance; Nixon was going down, and the privacy of the presidency with him. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered the tapes delivered to Judge John J. Sirica to rule on which were needed as criminal evidence. Through this opening, which the Supreme Court considered a small exception, poured an ocean of detritus.

Now we have Clinton, with his mammoth gifts and appetites, whose real crisis began when the Supreme Court ruled, again unanimously, that Paula Corbin Jones’ suit for harassment did not have to wait until he left office. Discovery, deposition of the president, even the trial could go forward. In a remarkable sign of how far the presidency has fallen, the opinion dismissed the dangers of lawsuits, saying it was highly improbable that a deluge of litigation would engulf the presidential office. Besides, said the court, the Jones case, with proper management by the trial court, was “unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of Mr. Clinton’s time.” Where have these people been?

So here we are: Tumbrils are once again packed with staffers rolling to grand juries and maybe more unpleasant places. Moreover, the legal doctrine of conspiracy, created by the early common law, which has been ballooning since the 1970s into a major tool of prosecutors against organized crime, businessmen and politicians, adds another level of evidentiary complexities and dangers for the White House. Even worse, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in a case involving the first lady, limited the attorney-client privilege for government employees, narrowing still further the number of people with whom it is safe for White House occupants to talk.

Thus, it is no surprise that the president and many of his senior aides are trying strenuously to avoid talking not just with Kenneth W. Starr but with each other.

During Watergate, the presence of legal danger made life in the White House strange and stifling. The place seemed to be struck by plague. Was your next-door colleague contagious? Life became intensely confusing: Even those of us supposedly handling the White House mess, the president’s lawyers, gleaned much of our information from press leaks by sources we knew were anonymously among us. Who could be giving Bob Woodward such information, even more precise than we had? Could it be Alexander M. Haig? Henry A. Kissinger? Melvin Laird? Me? Uncertainty bred mutual mistrust, which led many to isolate themselves still further.

The staff also drew away from the president and vice versa. The once-universal tooth-and-claw competition for presidential access disappeared, as staffers suddenly became content to attend to their routine chores. Paradoxically, the increased power that the scandal gave to career officials meant the quotidian business of government frequently got done more effectively than before.

But the president and his staff could no longer take energy and sustenance from one another. Nixon vanished into his cocoon of worry, the presidential spark at home and abroad dimmed to disappearance. For the rest of us, the anxiety of edging through daily minefields was deeply enervating. What finally broke the back of the administration was, as much as anything else, exhaustion.

Today, hazards are far worse. So those at risk act with the ferocity of hunted animals while the national audience laughs with tears in its eyes at the lunacy that has overtaken the beloved country.

What to do? I have not the foggiest idea. So I put the question to Nixon.

Nixon: Well, Len, do you remember what Bob Haldeman said to John Dean when Dean began plea bargaining with the prosecutors? “Don’t forget, John, you can’t get the toothpaste back in the tube.”

That, unfortunately, is also the way it is with history.