White House aide John Ehrlichman presents the results of his “independent investigation” of Watergate (see March 27, 1973) to President Nixon and chief of staff H. R. Haldeman. Ehrlichman is candid in his assessment, telling Nixon that he “can’t just sit here.… You’ve got to make some decisions.” Of the “hush money” paid out to the burglars, Ehrlichman says: “There were eight or ten people around here who knew about this, knew it was going on. Bob knew, I knew, all kinds of people knew—” Nixon interrupts to say, “Well, I knew it.” Ehrlichman’s report, seven handwritten pages, is essentially accurate, though it slants the facts away from the criminality of the Watergate conspiracy and fixes the bulk of the blame on convicted conspirators E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, along with former campaign chief John Mitchell, Mitchell’s then-deputy Jeb Magruder, and White House counsel John Dean. The only involvement of Haldeman and Ehrlichman in Ehrlichman’s version of events is as knowledgeable onlookers; Nixon is not mentioned at all. The memo warns that many lower-level participants, including Dean, Hunt, and Magruder, are either talking to investigators or preparing to talk. Nixon tells Ehrlichman to inform Mitchell that he has to take the blame in his upcoming testimony. Ehrlichman has Mitchell fly to Washington to hear Nixon’s proposal, but Mitchell refuses to take the entire fall. “He’s an innocent man in his heart and in his mind and he does not intend to move off that position,” Ehrlichman reports. In essence, Dean, Magruder, and Mitchell each intend to fix the blame on one another and dodge the blame for themselves, Ehrlichman concludes. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 585-586]