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HAROLD ROSENBERG
down as far from the White House as possible.
As
the
main
line of
defense, Haldeman and Erlichman were charged with preventing the
chain of command from passing through them into the Oval Room.
But since no one above them would assume responsibility, they could
not
claim
to be "cogs." The guilt would fall on them.
If
they were
to avoid it, the Watergate "wheel," and other dirty tricks, had to be
self-starting.
The techniques for projecting crimes back upon those physically
captured while committing them deserve careful scrutiny. The key,
as revealed in the fencing of Haldeman and Erlichman with the
Senate Committee, is to avoid giving an order, or to give it in a
fonn that allows more than one reading of it (as in Erlichman's
memo on the raid of the office of EIlsberg's psychiatrist). By this
device Erlichman and Haldeman could create accomplices while stay–
ing out of the action.
L.
Patrick Gray was given to understand that
the Hunt files were to be destroyed but no one ever told him to
destroy them. To be head of an agency in the Nixon Administration,
one had to be able to take a hint, then act on one's own. That the
White House desired the action made it "proper" and provided moral
absolution. To lack susceptibility to hints, or faith in the cleansing
power of the White House, was to be disqualified. Pat Gray was
qualified enough to accept the Hunt file and eventually to burn it–
and he was rewarded by receiving the nomination to direct the FBI.
But poor Gray's faith in the power of the White House to grant re–
mission of sin was faulty - he trusted the President but wondered
about
his
lieutenants. Like other Americans he failed to grasp that
everything done by the White House represented a single will.
As
early as July 1972, Gray warned Nixon against his chief aides, and
this led in time to his being left to "dangle in the wind." A common
myth of authoritarian regimes is that the Czar, the Pope, or the
Leader is a prisoner of his subordinates (see Gide's
The Vatican
Swindle),
and that if he only knew the facts things would be en–
tirely different. Nixon's "ignorance" of Watergate is a version of this
game; John Mitchell presented himself as the Grand Vizier who
locked out the President from knowledge that might have damaged
him.
White House bosses Haldeman and Erlichman conducted them–
selves as if they expected all along that some day they would have to
