Scapegoating strategy

The Scapegoating strategy describes an effort to contain the Watergate crisis by making selected subordinates bear blame for actions connected to a broader chain of political authority. The book presents it not as a single accusation but as a developing contest over who had acted, who had authorized the actions, and who would be left to answer for them. John Dean’s associates portrayed him as a prospective fall guy; the surrounding evidence of delegated authority and deliberate deniability made that possibility part of the larger struggle over responsibility.

A system that could obscure responsibility

The fund’s authorization structure shows why blame could be shifted down a chain of intermediaries. Hugh Sloan described calling John Mitchell at the Justice Department when campaign money was needed. Mitchell would tell him to release it; such calls had begun in 1971 and, Sloan said, had occurred repeatedly. Mitchell was initially the sole person authorized to approve expenditures, and authority was later passed to others, including Jeb Magruder. The book emphasizes the significance of this account: while Attorney General, Mitchell had authorized campaign spending for apparently illegal activity against the political opposition.

Other links in the operation were similarly mediated. Donald Segretti eventually said that Dwight Chapin had hired him, Gordon Strachan had discussed the job with him, and Herbert Kalmbach had paid him. Segretti insisted that he had not sought out the job and suggested that Chapin had simply done what he was told. These accounts do not by themselves settle what every participant knew, but they establish a pattern in which recruitment, discussion, payment, and authorization could belong to different people. Such separation left room for senior figures to distance themselves from the actions carried out below them.

The reporters understood deniability as a method used by H. R. Haldeman: controversial decisions could be implemented through others, allowing him later to deny direct involvement. Haldeman seldom dealt directly with the Committee for the Re-election of the President; Gordon Strachan handled that connection. The book notes that this system made it difficult to find direct tracks to Haldeman, even as sources’ silence in Justice and the FBI reinforced the reporters’ suspicions. In this setting, scapegoating and deniability were related but distinct: intermediaries could obscure the route of a decision, while a scapegoat could be made to absorb its consequences.

John Dean as a possible fall guy

As the Watergate case widened, Dean issued a statement saying he had refrained from public comment and would continue to do so. He urged caution in judging anyone’s guilt or involvement, then directly addressed the possibility that he would become a scapegoat. His warning gave the strategy its clearest name within the crisis: it suggested that the dispute was not only over what had happened, but also over who would be made to carry the blame.

An associate who spoke with Carl Bernstein argued that Dean had occupied a unique position from which to understand the whole affair, while people inside and outside the White House were trying to discredit him before he could do further damage. The associate said Dean had not made the decision to try to defeat the reporters and had not acted without someone telling him what to do. The distinction mattered to the Post’s reporting: Dean might have participated in the cover-up, but the associates’ account presented him as neither its originator nor its sole author.

The reporters sought corroboration rather than treating Dean’s defense as established fact. A contact at the Committee for the Re-election of the President said Dean had told him the same account and that he had firsthand knowledge of some allegations. He described Dean as a runner in the cover-up, said H. R. Haldeman had approved virtually everything about it, including payments to the conspirators, and reported that Dean wanted to tell the grand jury everything if he could reach an agreement with prosecutors. A second friend confirmed hearing the same story. The claims remained allegations relayed through associates, but their repetition and the reporters’ effort to check them shaped the emerging account of Dean’s position.

The struggle over who would be sacrificed

The associates directed the reporters toward Richard Nixon’s March 21 meeting with Dean, when Dean had brought the President serious charges about the cover-up. One suggested that John Ehrlichman had not been the person to tell Nixon how extensive the cover-up was, and raised the possibility that H. R. Haldeman would have reason to make someone else a scapegoat. The same account said Dean had done nothing from June 17 onward without Haldeman or another person telling him to act, including the arrangements for hush money. The argument did not erase Dean’s role; it contested the idea that his role could fairly stand for the whole operation.

An account of the aftermath of Dean’s meeting sharpened the conflict. Dean, according to his associate, expected that those involved would accept responsibility, acknowledge that the President knew nothing, and cooperate with the grand jury. Instead, the associate said, the President had been persuaded to minimize his losses, sacrifice Dean, and discourage the indictment of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. The associate described the remaining pressure as an effort to make Dean take the blame for them. This was a participant’s account, not a neutral finding, but it made explicit the suspected exchange at the heart of the strategy: protect senior figures by isolating the subordinate whose knowledge could expose them.

Public responsibility and the limits of the strategy

The struggle over blame also played out publicly. After the Watergate reporting reached the White House’s doorstep, the administration selected the Post as a target even though Time had developed comparably damaging information. The White House put its credibility against the newspaper’s, and nationwide coverage of the dispute gave the paper’s allegations greater currency. Telephone records reported by The New York Times then showed at least half a dozen calls from Donald Segretti’s telephone or credit card to the White House and Chapin’s home, and at least twenty-one to Howard Hunt’s home and office. This documentation made it harder to dismiss the reporting as hearsay and weakened the White House’s effort to frame the paper as the problem.

In his April 30 address, Richard Nixon said that the easiest course would have been to blame those delegated to run the campaign, but called that cowardly and accepted responsibility as the person at the top. He also announced that he had accepted the resignations of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. The speech thus publicly rejected simple blame-shifting while placing the immediate personnel consequences on two close associates; it did not itself resolve the competing accounts of who had known or authorized what. The following day, Ronald Ziegler apologized to the Post and its reporters for his earlier criticism, acknowledging that the White House had been wrong in light of developments.

The strategy’s importance lies in the gap between an individual’s visible actions and the authority behind them. The book traces that gap through calls authorizing campaign money, tasks passed through intermediaries, Dean’s claim that he was being selected as a scapegoat, and the competing accounts of Nixon’s response. Scapegoating could simplify a complex operation into the culpability of one subordinate; the reporting’s pursuit of corroboration and authorization chains challenged that simplification without making every allegation certain.