I knew Jack Caulfield less well. Jack was about forty, a chunky Irishman who'd started his career as a policeman in New York, but won a promotion to detective and specialized in "terrorist organizations." During the 1960 Presidential campaign he helped guard candidate Nixon when he was in New York, and he held a temporary security job with the 1968 campaign, one that led Ehrlichman to hire him, in April of 1969, to be a special investigator on the White House staff. Caulfield's office was next to Lyn Nofziger's office in the Executive Office Building and I'd see him there from time to time. He was always very hush-hush about his work, but he seemed to be particularly active during antiwar demonstrations, so I assumed he was investigating antiwar leaders and other of our political opponents.

Dean, Caulfield, and I had lunch at the White House Mess. Caulfield explained that he hoped to start a private investigation firm - codenamed Sand Wedge - that could do work for both CRP and the Republican National Committee, as well as for corporate clients. The firm would provide both security services and covert intelligence-gathering, Caulfield said. John Dean added that both Mitchell and Haldeman were interested in Sand Wedge. The plan had an extra boost in that one of Caulfield's partners was to be Joe Woods, the former sheriff of Cook County, who was Rose Mary Woods's brother.

I told Dean and Caulfield that they should get back in touch with me if they got Caulfield's firm started. CRP had adequate security, but I felt we needed a professional intelligence-gathering operation, and if Mitchell and the White House wanted Caulfield, he was fine with me. However, Dean called me in early November and told me to forget Sand Wedge.

"It fell through," he said. "Jack couldn't put it together."

Jack: Sorry to have to write you this letter but felt you had to know. if Helms goes, and if the WG (Watergate) operation is laid at the CIA's feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall. It will be a scorched desert. The whole matter is at the precipice right now. Just pass the message that if they want it to blow, they are on exactly the right course. I'm sorry that you will get hurt in the fallout.

John Dean: Let me tell you something that lurks at the bottom of this whole thing. If, in going after Segretti, they go after Kalmbach's bank records, you will recall sometime back - perhaps you did not know about this - I apologize. That right after Chappaquidick somebody was put up there to start observing and within six hours he was there for every second of Chappaquidick for a year, and for almost two years he worked for Jack Caulfield.

Richard Nixon: Oh, I have heard of Caulfield.

John Dean: He worked for Caulfield when Caulfield worked for John, and then when I came over here I inherited Caulfield and this guy was still on this same thing. If they get to those bank records between the start of July of 1969 through June of 1971, they say what are these about? Who is this fellow up in New York that you paid? There comes Chappaquidick with a vengeance. This guy is a twenty year detective on the New York City Police Department.

Richard Nixon: In other words, we...

John Dean: He is ready to disprove and show that...

Richard Nixon: (Unintelligible)

John Dean: If they get to it - that is going to come out and this whole thing can turn around on that. If Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into...

Richard Nixon: How do we know - why don't we get it out anyway?

John Dean: Well, we have sort of saved it.

Richard Nixon: Does he have any records? Are they any good?

John Dean: He is probably the most knowledgeable man in the country. I think he ran up against walls and they closed the records down. There are things he can't get, but he can ask all of the questions and get many of the answers as a 20 year detective, but we don't want to surface him right now. But if he is ever surfaced, this is what they will get.

Richard Nixon: How will Kalmbach explain that he hired this guy to do the job on Chappaquidick? Out of what type of funs?

John Dean: He had money left over from the pre-convention ...

Richard Nixon: Are they going to investigate those funds too?

John Dean: They are funds that are quite legal. There is nothing illegal about those funds. Regardless of what may happen, what may occur, they may stumble into this in going back to, say 1971, in Kalmbach's bank records. They have already asked for a lot of his bank records in connection with Segretti, as to how he paid Segretti.

Richard Nixon: Are they going to go back as far as Chappaquidick?

John Dean: Well this fellow worked in 1971 on this. He was up there. He has talked to everybody in that town. He is the one who has caused a lot of embarrassment for Kennedy already by saying he went up there as a newspaperman, by saying; "Why aren't you checking this? Why aren't you looking there?" Calling the press people's attention to things. Gosh, the guy did a masterful job. I have never had the full report.

Not in anyone's wildest speculation could it have been envisioned that I would, 20 years after joining the NYPD, become a public figure. That distinction resulted from the Watergate drama in which my investigative duties and other activities as White House Staff Assistant would, like dozens of my colleagues, come under intense review - and be laid out eventually in the public record. One of my post-White House activities fell into a controversial category, in that I was, in January '73 unwittingly led by John Dean, then White House counsel, into the final moments of a disastrously imploding Watergate cover-up. I later learned that John Dean, then White House counsel, had silently masterminded the cover-up for six months. During part of my White House tenure, I had reported to Dean but had left the White House five months before the break-in and ensuing cover-up. Resultantly, I knew zero about Dean's cover-up activities - although it didn't take a rocket scientist to guess that something major was going on

Only because my loyalty was to the President (no matter what the consequences), was Dean able to get my reluctant participation in arranging to obliquely transmit, via telephone, a fuzzily inferred Presidential commutation message to one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord. I initially believed that I was acting in the President's interests. As it turned out the entire matter accomplished absolutely nothing, but "trouble in River City." What I later shockingly learned was that not only was the message inane, but deceitful in that (as White House tapes prove) Nixon was in no way involved in, or had prior knowledge of that cunning transmittal.

In fact, the commutation message was arbitrarily composed out of thin air, in what was the most foolish of Dean's attempts to save himself during the last moments of his Machiavellian cover-up activities. John Ehrlichman had it about right when he publicly characterized Dean's action as "a monumental error." For his part, Dean masterfully avoided the entire matter in his book, Blind Ambition - oh, well.

Actually, Dean somewhat succeeded in saving himself when some three months later, he decided to head to the prosecutors "giving up" everyone around him, including the President of the United States, while offering them every purported foible (and document) that was connected directly or indirectly to "generic Watergate." All of this was in order to get his subsequent "deal", which turned out to be a good one for him. The D.C. legal profession was resultantly exposed to newfound clients - the likes and numbers of which has never been seen before or since.

In the transcript of the famed, 3/21/73, "Cancer on the Presidency" White House tape, Dean deceived the President when he reported that McCord initiated the so called commutation subject: "Uh, McCord did ask to meet with somebody and it was Jack Caulfield" - (uh, uh, John!.... YOU initiated that specific commutation subject with McCord via a telephone call to me which I took in the presence of a close friend at the San Clemente White House on January 6, 1973; see if your vaunted memory can bring that up). .Dean continued: "and he wanted to know, well, you know, (coughs) - he wanted to talk about commutation and things like that."

So, that was the type of sophisticated evasion of the facts in which Dean was engaged at that late moment; further, what is now retrospectively clear is that both Dean and McCord were, in fact, the historical catalysts that initiated a rapidly descending "funnel-cloud" (aka Watergate) and sent it heading directly for the White House.

Many of my White House colleagues subsequently went to jail for generically-related, "Watergate" political activities (profoundly regrettable to me because most all of them are/were basically good and outstandingly able men, caught in a senseless political maelstrom, that none could have even remotely imagined). I did not - for two reasons, as I now see it: first, I tend to agree with Dean's candid assessment of me to Richard Nixon: "he is an incredibly cautious person" who, I suggest, perceptively saw and fortuitously avoided many of the snares in the ever hazardous trail that was the Nixon White House. My extensive BOSSI experience had served me well in that environment; Second, Irish luck - which is the only way to describe what I later learned, was a strong positive comment made about me by Judge John Sirica to the Watergate prosecutors immediately following my Watergate Committee testimony on live television. Included, was my reading of a 27-page statement in which I referred to the numerous NYPD commendations I had received for anti-terrorist work.

Caulfield also talked with Ulasewicz about forming a private security business. Ulasewicz's assignments had declined as 1971 progressed, and Caulfield had often talked with Ulasewicz about entering private business when Caulfield left the government. Caulfield envisioned Ulasewicz as head of the New York office of the new corporation, with primary responsibilities for offensive intelligence-gathering. Ulasewicz subsequently rented an apartment at 321 East 48th Street (Apartment 11-C), New York City, that could be used as an office for the private detective agency.

In the late summer of 1971, Caulfield met with Acree, Barth, and Joe Woods for about two hours at his home to discuss the proposal .

Following the meeting, Caulfield told Dean of the group's plans, and Dean asked Caulfield to commit the proposal to writing. Caulfield then drafted the memorandum entitled Operation "Sandwedge". The document called for an offensive intelligence gathering operation which would be clandestinely based in New York and would be able to infiltrate campaign organizations and headquarters with "undercover personnel:" The offensive capability would also include a "Black bag" capability, "surveillance of Democratic primaries, convention, meetings, etc.," and "derogatory information investigative -capability, worldwide."

In addition, the memorandum outlined an operating cover for the entity. The new corporation would hire itself out to large Republican corporations, whose fees would finance the clandestine and offensive capability envisioned in the memorandum. Caulfield emphasized the clandestine nature of the operation: "The offensive involvement outlined above would be supported, supervised and programmed by the principals, but completely disassociated (separate foolproof financing) from the corporate structure and located in New York in extreme clandestine fashion."

Caulfield noted in the memorandum that Ulasewicz would head the clandestine operation in New York, claiming that "his expertise in this area was considered the model for police - departments throughout the nation - and the results certainly proved it." Woods would be in charge of the midwestern office of the new corporation, heading covert efforts and acting as liaison to retired FBI agents "for discreet investigative support" from the FBI. Mike Acree would provide "IRS information input" and other financial investigations that would help support the New York City operation.

However, earlier in his memorandum, on page two, Caulfield discussed a former FBI agent who was known as a "black bag" specialist while at the FBI. Caulfield acknowledged that the term "black bag specialist," means an individual who specialized in breaking and entering for the purpose of, placing electronic surveillance. In addition, Caulfield noted that the term "bag job" in the intelligence community meant a burglary for the placement of electronic surveillance. Thus it appears that the capability to which Caulfield was referring inn his "Sandwedge Proposal" was one of surreptitious breaking and entering for the purpose of placing electronic surveillance, quite similar in nature to the Gemstone Operation which ultimately evolved.

Caulfield became Ehrlichman's contact with BOSSI, and through Ehrlichman, Caulfield met H. R. Haldeman, who would become Nixon's chief of staff after he was elected President. Both Ehrlichman and Haldeman were impressed with BOSSI's thoroughness in handling security, and at Ehrlichman's prodding, Haldeman persuaded the Police Commissioner to let Caulfield become head of Nixon's campaign security detail. Caulfield's assignment was classified as detached departmental service. Almost immediately after his appointment, Caulfield called to ask me to join Nixon's campaign train, but I turned him down. The job simply held no challenge for me. In my mind a campaign security assignment would mean nothing more than a lot of glitz and tinsel draped over a lot of travel, talk, and parties and too little sleep.

In March 1969, after Nixon had won and taken office, Caulfield again approached me about a possible assignment. It wasn't going to be what I thought, Caulfield said; it would be so different in fact that he couldn't talk about it over the phone. This time I was a bit more receptive, having in the last few weeks begun to think about retiring. In 1969, at age fifty-one, I was only seven years away from retirement on a full police pension, but setting myself up in business as a private investigator had begun to interest me. An affiliation with the White House would surely benefit the future of my own operation, and so I was ready to hear Caulfield out. We met at the Hofbrau, a bar and restaurant near 42nd Street which had long been a hangout for both New York's cops and reporters for the Daily News.

I hadn't seen Caulfield in over a year, and in an instant I could see that he had already become a tout for all the power that makes Washington move. He was just bursting with his news that he had found the Yellow Brick Road and was going to make a million bucks as a lobbyist when he finished working for Nixon. "The lobbyists in Washington run the whole show," he said. But I wasn't interested in his ambitions; all I wanted to know was what was so hush-hush that he couldn't tell me about it over the phone.

Over a few drinks, Caulfield outlined the big secret. He said the White House wanted to set up its own investigative resource which would be quite separate from the FBI, CIA, or Secret Service.

Neither (Howard) Baker nor any other Senator asked me about the specifics of any of my investigations, although they must have known about them because (Terry) Lenzner had made a list of them for the committee. My financial records, including receipts for all my travel and lodging expenses, were also turned over to the committee. I was never asked about my trip to check out the offices of the DNC at the end of May, who asked me to go there, or who was behind that request. Caulfield's call to me the afternoon after the Watergate break-in was never explored, although John Dean was the man who had ordered the call to be made. I expected to be asked about my meeting with Dean when Caulfield was clearing out his office in the Executive Office Building. Again I wasn't. Dean, I concluded, was obviously being protected for star billing as a witness. No one asked me if I had any documents or White House memos about any of my investigations. While I had no intention of playing cute with anybody, I wasn't going to volunteer information unless I was asked for it. I wasn't asked about meeting "Mr. George" or hearing his off-the-wall intelligence plans for the campaign, or about Colson and the Brookings Institution, or about Simmons in Wisconsin. I didn't mind not being asked; I just didn't understand why I wasn't....

Baker asked me in general what my arrangement had been under the agreement I made with Ehrlichman in 1969, but when he asked me "of whom and about what" did I investigate, I didn't get a chance to open my mouth before Baker said, "Let me say this, Mr. Chairman. It is my understanding that Mr. Ulasewicz will once again return for further testimony in another category of testimony." I affirmed Baker's assumption and said, "That's correct." Baker then cut off the inquiry and said, "So we will abbreviate this inquiry at this point, with the full understanding that we can pursue that aspect of it later." Senator Weicker said. He wanted Baker to continue the line of questioning he started, but Baker ! responded that Committee Chairman, Senator Sam Ervin, whispered in his ear that "if we don't get on with this hearing, we'll still be here when the last trembling tones of Gabriel's trumpet fades into ultimate silence."

If a senator made a speech against the president's policies in regard to Vietnam, Nixon would issue an order to Haldeman: "Put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on that bastard."

Why a surveillance? To obtain deleterious information that could be used against the senator. Nixon liked that sort of secret, intrigue related intelligence, and fostered an environment within the White House that put a premium on it. The president believed that the domestic information-gathering arms of the government - the FBI and other federal policing agencies - could not be counted on to undertake confidential assignments of the sort he had in mind. J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon believed, had files on everybody, but even though Hoover often cooperated with Nixon, the FBI director was reluctant to release any of those files to Nixon even after he became president, just as reluctant as Director Richard Helms would be in 1971 to release the CIA's Bay of Pigs files when Nixon instructed him to do so.

And so, just weeks after Nixon's inauguration, the president directed White House counsel John Ehrlichman to hire a private eye. "He wanted somebody who could do chores for him that a federal employee could not do," Ehrlichman says. "Nixon was demanding information on certain things that I couldn't get through government channels because it would have been questionable." What sort of investigations? "Of the Kennedys, for example," Ehrlichman wrote in Witness to Power.

Ehrlichman quickly found a candidate, a well-decorated, forty year-old Irish New York City cop, John J. Caulfield. Caulfield had been a member of the NYPD and its undercover unit, the Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI). He had made cases against dissident and terrorist organizations, and BOSSI as a whole was known for its ability to penetrate and keep track of left-wing and black groups. One of the unit's jobs was to work closely with the Secret Service and guard political dignitaries and world leaders who frequently moved through the city. During the 1960 election, Caulfield had been assigned to the security detail of candidate Richard Nixon. He had befriended Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and her brother Joe, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois. In 1968, after leaving the New York City Police Department, Caulfield had served as a security man for the Nixon campaign.

But when Ehrlichman approached him in early 1969 and asked Caulfield to set up a private security firm to provide services for the Nixon White House, Caulfield declined, and instead suggested that he join Ehrlichman's staff and then, as a White House employee, supervise another man who would be hired solely as a private eye. Ehrlichman agreed, and when Caulfield arrived at the White House to start work in April 1969, he said he had the ideal candidate for presidential gumshoe, a BOSSI colleague, Anthony Ulasewicz.

In May 1969, Ehrlichman and Caulfield flew to New York and met Ulasewicz in the American Airlines VIP lounge at LaGuardia Airport. Ulasewicz was ten years older than Caulfield, just as streetwise, and even saltier, with a thick accent picked up from his youth on the Lower East Side and twenty-six years of pounding the pavement on his beats. He was told in the VIP lounge that he would operate under a veil of tight secrecy. He would receive orders only from Caulfield though he could assume that those came from Ehrlichman, who would, in turn, be acting on instructions from the president. Ulasewicz would keep no files and submit no written reports; he later wrote in his memoirs that Ehrlichman said to him, "You'll be allowed no mistakes. There will be no support for you whatsoever from the White House if you're exposed." Ulasewicz refused an offer of six months' work, and insisted on a full year, with the understanding that there would be no written contract, just a verbal guarantee. It was also agreed that to keep everything away from the White House, Ulasewicz would work through an outside attorney. In late June 1969, Caulfield directed Ulasewicz to come to Washington and meet a man named Herbert W. Kalmbach at the Madison Hotel. Kalmbach was Nixon's personal attorney in California, and he told Tony that he would be paid $22,000 a year, plus expenses, and that the checks would come from Kalmbach to Tony's home in New York. To avoid putting the private eye on the government payroll, Kalmbach was to pay him out of a war chest of unspent Nixon campaign funds. Ulasewicz requested and was promised credit cards in his own name and in that of a nom de guerre, Edward T Stanley. Shortly, he started on his first job for the Nixon White House. One day after Senator Edward M. Kennedy's car plunged off a bridge, killing a young woman, Tony Ulasewicz was at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, posing as a reporter, asking a lot of questions and taking photographs. He stayed a week, and phoned reports to Caulfield thrice daily.

Thereafter, he crisscrossed the country, investigating whatever the president or his subordinates thought proper targets for information such Democrats as George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, Vance Hartke, William Proxmire, and Carl Albert, Republican representatives John Ashbrook and Paul McCloskey, antiwar groups, entertainers, think tanks, reporters, even members of Nixon's own family.

By all accounts, in January 1973, Mr. Caulfield met with James McCord Jr., a former C.I.A. officer and one of the burglars in the Watergate break-in, to tell him that the White House was prepared to grant him clemency, money and a job in return for not testifying against members of the administration and accepting a prison sentence.

Mr. Caulfield further told Mr. McCord that the president knew about their meeting and that its outcome would be transmitted to him.

Testifying before the Senate Watergate committee in 1973, Mr. McCord said he was told that the clemency offer had come from “the highest levels of the White House.” Mr. Caulfield also appeared before the panel.

The account appeared to link Nixon directly to efforts to cover up the White House’s involvement in the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, the event that would lead to Nixon’s downfall.

But Nixon denied the allegation, and transcripts of White House tapes did not show that he had been behind the offer. John W. Dean III, the White House counsel, told investigators that it was he who had authorized Mr. Caulfield to broach the matter with Mr. McCord, though Mr. Dean insisted that he had done so with the president’s knowledge.

Mr. McCord was one of the first to be convicted in the Watergate affair, on conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping charges. Mr. Caulfield was not charged.