Blind Ambition: The End of the Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

slush-fund politician. Chotiner was part of the “old Nixon” image, but he seemed congenial and I decided to test my insight on him. Proudly, feeling like one of the intimate few, I told him what the President had said about young lawyers, what I had read about Richard Nixon’s coming to Washington as a young lawyer, and my theory. Was I right?
    Chotiner said nothing for several long and awkward moments. I felt the chagrin he intended me to feel, and I regretted my question. When he spoke, it was to offer friendly but firm advice. “John, you’re new around here. If you want to get along with the President, keep what he tells you to yourself. Unless he tells you otherwise. And even more important, don’t ask questions unless you have a good reason. Believe me, I know from experience what I’m saying.”
    He was trying to be helpful, but I was stung. I learned an important lesson: to keep my mouth shut. All loose talk about the boss is dangerous to him and forbidden to his aides. The loyal soldier is silent, and he does not pry.
    Now the President concluded his reflections on young lawyers in government, leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands as his arms rested on the chair, and was once again most Presidential. Haldeman, seated immediately beside his desk, looked at me and said, without speaking a word, Now that you are the President’s counsel, what do you have to say? It was my turn.
    Mustering my courage, I told the President as briefly as possible that I would follow up his suggestion about involving young lawyers, and that I was most grateful for the opportunity to serve him on the White House staff. I failed to hide my nervousness or my excitement. The President responded with a smile and rose. The meeting was over.
    We shook hands and Haldeman led me back to his office. I had been at the summit for twenty minutes.
    Haldeman went to his desk and began scanning the neatly typed messages that had piled up in the twenty minutes. He tore some notes from a pad he was carrying. I presumed he had taken them during his own session with the President. After sliding them into a desk drawer, he pushed a button on his telephone which brought Larry Higby flying into his office. 1 * Higby stood patiently, like a well-trained retriever, waiting for his master to speak. Finally Haldeman addressed him: “Call Chapin and see if he’ll have lunch with us. Are those memos ready yet?” Before Higby could respond, Haldeman fired off more questions and instructions. Higby faded as quickly as he had appeared.
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    1 * When writing Blind Ambition I made this comment about Haldeman making notes because it was a regular practice but also a well-kept secret. Later, when Haldeman was given a subpoena for all his notes, he claimed to have none, for he had placed them all in the President’s files, as Presidential papers. But after he left government, and Watergate was well behind him, he obtained his notes from the President and published them in The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994). My visit to San Clemente, and hiring, was not of sufficient importance to make Haldeman’s diary, other than an editorial note that I began working at the White House on July 28, 1970 (my records indicate July 27, 1970).
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    I sat on Haldeman’s sofa and lit a cigarette, which tasted especially good after the ordeal. Haldeman busied himself with memos on his desk. I welcomed the brief pause and began staring out the large panel windows. This place is like a stop-and-go movie, I thought. Everyone races through moments of intense activity and then becomes motionless and distant. The pauses are therapeutic reprieves, but they are intense too. I thought about my new job with a slow, languid pleasure, as if licking an ice-cream cone. I felt I had reached a true height of success, assuring even greater future successes, and all this had happened far ahead even of my own optimistic schedule. I had