April 24, 1973: Attorneys General Inform Nixon of Lawyer’s Testimony about Pentagon Papers Leaker, FBI Director

Attorney General Richard Kleindienst meets with President Nixon to tell him that White House counsel John Dean has testified about the White House’s ordering of the Ellsberg break-in (see September 9, 1971). The biggest problem is not the ties to the Watergate burglary, Kleindienst says, but the trial of Daniel Ellsberg now going on in Santa Monica, California (see May 11, 1973). The prosecution must inform the trial judge about the new information, and the judge must decide whether to inform Ellsberg’s lawyers. Nixon tries to claim that the break-in is a matter of national security and must not be divulged, but Kleindienst says it is too late for that, the information will “be out in the street tomorrow or two days from now, a week, and the law clearly dictates that we have to do—it could be another g_ddamn cover-up, you know.… We can’t have another cover-up, Mr. President.” Nixon says, “I don’t want any cover-ups of anything.”
Motive - Dean’s primary motive for divulging this information is his desire for immunity from prosecution, Kleindienst believes. He adds that Deputy Attorney General Henry Peterson has asked about granting Dean immunity: “and he even comes up to the point where a trump card of Dean would be that I’m going to implicate the president—and I told Henry at that point you have to tell Dean to go f_ck himself. You’re not going to blackmail the government of the United States and implicate the president in the Ellsberg matter.” Nixon, depressed and reckless, says that maybe he should just be impeached and removed from office, letting Vice President Spiro Agnew have the presidency. “There’s not going to be anything like that,” Kleindienst assures Nixon.
Details of Testimony - Nixon also grills Peterson about Dean’s testimony, and learns that Dean has divulged his knowledge of the destruction of key evidence by FBI chief L. Patrick Gray (see Late December 1972 and April 27-30, 1973)—Gray denies destroying the evidence, claiming Dean is lying. Nixon says Gray has to resign. Peterson says he will not give in to Dean on any attempt to blackmail his way into an immunity agreement; Nixon agrees, comparing it to the stories of paying Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt “hush money” (see June 20-21, 1972)—“I would never approve the payoff of Hunt,” Nixon assures Peterson. Nixon ends the conversation by asking Peterson for the details of any upcoming case against chief of staff H. R. Haldeman. Peterson agrees to give him that information. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 595-598]