Blind Ambition: The End of the Story Read Free

White House, but I had no idea the animosity cut deep. I would learn.
    In early July, I was eating lunch at the Congressional Hotel on Capitol Hill, discussing the Administration’s drug legislation with a key House Commerce Committee member, when I was paged to the phone. It was, Lawrence Higby, Haldeman’s chief gopher, and he was in a hurry. The legendary White House operators had tracked me down at my obscure corner table for Higby, who was across the country at the Western White House. He asked me to catch the next plane to California because “Mr. Haldeman wants to meet with you.” Immediately. Drop everything. With the efficiency that was the stamp of Haldeman’s staff, Higby reeled off the available flight times. I thought I could catch the three-o’clock flight from Baltimore’s Friendship Airport with a mad dash. I would be met in Los Angeles, he told me, but he failed to say why I was being summoned to San Clemente. I assumed it was about the White House job. “Don’t miss the plane,” Higby said and hung up.
    I went back to the lunch table and whispered to my Justice Department colleague, Mike Sonnenreich, that he would have to carry on without me. As nonchalantly as possible, I mentioned that I had to leave at once for San Clemente on urgent business.
    His jaw dropped, his composure momentarily lost. “You what?”
    Having secured the name dropper’s most savored prize, I smiled and rushed off.
    Richard G. Kleindienst, the Deputy Attorney General, was in a meeting. I interrupted to tell him the news. We had talked about my moving to the White House, and he was more opposed than Mitchell. Half seriously and half to flatter, he said again that he didn’t want to lose me, and that the last place in the world he wanted to see me was in “that zoo up the street.” No title and no amount of money could induce him to work there, he said. Despite the overstatement, he was serious. When I said Haldeman had summoned me, he observed, “Haldeman’s the only son-of-a-bitch in the whole place who can think straight. You’ll like Bob.”
    I dashed home to pack, carefully selecting suits, shirts, ties, and shoes consonant with my image of the Nixon White House. As I drove my Porsche through the early-afternoon traffic on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I wondered whether I could beat a speeding ticket by telling a policeman I was on my way to the Western White House. Luck spared me, and I caught the flight with five minutes to spare.
    Five hours, a few Scotch-and-sodas, a meal, some thoughts about the White House, some promising conversations with the stewardesses, and we were landing. The passengers in the first-class cabin were pulling their coats from the overhead racks when an officious airline executive stepped briskly on board.
    “Excuse me,” he said to the startled passengers, “would you all wait just a moment, please?” He whispered to the stewardess and then followed her to my seat. “Mr. Dean?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to San Clemente?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have any luggage?”
    “Only what I’m carrying.”
    He took my bag and marched off the plane ahead of me. The other passengers were held up until I made my exit, pleasantly embarrassed. Just outside the plane’s door the executive stopped in the folding passageway to unlock a door that led down to the ground. By this time, the flight crew had gathered to watch. I noted the curiosity on their faces and tried to look as though I were accustomed to this royal treatment. I planned to step smartly into the limousine I expected below, but instead of a limousine I saw, not a hundred yards away, a shiny brown-and-white Marine helicopter with a corporal in full-dress uniform standing at attention at the foot of its boarding ramp.
    The airline executive handed my suitcase to a young Marine lieutenant who stepped out of the helicopter as we approached. The corporal, still at attention and expressionless, snapped a salute at me without