10. Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm was one of the black politicians Nixon and his aides had discussed secretly financing, as a device to take votes away from the Democrats in 1972. See p. 355.
11. Dean claimed he told Haldeman that the Liddy plan was “unnecessary and unwise” and that the White House should have nothing to do with it. He did not say flat out that the plan itself should be dropped. Haldeman at first accepted that Dean had spoken along such lines, but later said he could not recall the episode. It was claimed recently that Dean could not have met Haldeman as he asserted, on the ground that Haldeman was out of Washington on the day of the alleged meeting, February 4, 1972. Persuasive evidence, however, suggests that he was in town. Interested readers should compare the passage at pages 119 and 258 of Silent Coup, op. cit., with p. 94 of Fred Emery’s Watergate, op. cit., (Dean on seeing Haldeman: E, Bk. 3, p. 930.)
12. Mitchell would deny in testimony that he gave the go-ahead. His aide Fred LaRue, also present, claimed that Mitchell said the decision need not be taken at that meeting. Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan, however, recalled that Magruder called from Florida to tell him Mitchell had decided the project could proceed. Liddy said he got the “go” from Magruder’s assistant Robert Reisner. Either Mitchell or Magruder evidently lied about this, or the meeting in Florida produced one of the most fateful misunderstandings in U.S. history. The wider controversy has been thrashed out most controversially in the book Silent Coup, by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, op. cit., which blames John Dean for massive deceptions. The most balanced account is Fred Emery’s Watergate: The Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon (New York Times Books, 1994; see also E, Report, p. 25.)
13. Haldeman’s aide Gordon Strachan testified that directly after the March 30 meeting with Haldeman in Florida, Magruder phoned to say a “sophisticated political intelligence-gathering system had been approved with a budget of $300,000.” Strachan then prepared a Political Action Memorandum for Haldeman, advising him of the development, and Haldeman checked the relevant paragraph to indicate he had read it. Strachan outlined the matter again in the Talking Paper prepared for Haldeman’s meeting with Mitchell on April 4. He testified that both documents were among those he shredded within days of the Watergate arrests, in line with Haldeman’s order to “make sure our files are clean.” A copy surfaced at the National Archives, however, during research for the television documentary series made for the BBC and the Discovery Channel in 1994. A second copy was found later by an archivist and drawn to John Dean’s attention. The copy retrieved by the documentary makers bears a circled letter that is either an incomplete P or an odd F. The copy provided to Dean bears a scribbled “OK/LH,” suggesting it was originally copied to Haldeman’s assistant Larry Higby. White House logs show that Nixon met with Mitchell and Haldeman for thirty-seven minutes on April 4, after Mitchell and Haldeman had talked separately for about an hour. (Strachan on Magruder call, documents: Gordon Strachan testimony, E, Bk. 6, pp. 2452, 2454, 2459, 2490; P/F? copy: Watergate: The Break-in, Program 1, Brian Lapping Associates Production for Discovery Channel and BBC, Discovery Communications, 1994, [home video] interviews of Dean and Haldeman reflected in program; “OK/LH” copy: provided to author by John Dean; RN met Mitchell: George to Jim memo, Aug. 3, 1973, and WSPF Summary “Prior Knowledge of the DNC Break-in,” Folder 53A-Z, Nixon memoranda, witness files, WSPF, NA, Apr. 4, 1972, entry, HD, CD.
14. Suspect intrusions in early 1972 include four targetings of John Meier, a former aide to Howard Hughes then campaigning for the U.S. Senate; an apparent break-in at the office of Las Vegas newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun; the theft of a safe from the law office of Ralph Denton, who represented Greenspun; and the theft of interview tapes from the office of Benjamin Schemmer, who was writing a book on Howard Hughes. Nixon White House concern about Hughes at this time is reported later in this chapter. CBS newscaster Dan Rather interrupted a burglary at his home in April 1972. Valuables and cash had been left untouched, but Rather’s files had been disturbed. Rather, who had angered Nixon on occasion, asked the police to look into the burglary again after Watergate. One of the Watergate burglars, Frank Sturgis, later said he had taken part in two break-ins at the office of Sol Linowitz, former diplomat and senior adviser to Senator Muskie. Linowitz’s firm represented the Chilean government of Salvador Allende at the time, and there were also break-ins at the Chilean Embassy and the homes of Chilean diplomats. Sturgis said that he and some of the Watergate Cubans took part in the embassy break-ins. The Linowitz and embassy entries allegedly involved the installation or removal of bugs. As Haldeman noted in his diary, the Hunt men reportedly admitted later that they had “dropped bugs all over town.” In May 1973, a recently released tape shows, Nixon said the Chilean Embassy break-in was “part of the burglar’s plan, as a cover.” (Meier: Playboy [Sept. 1976]; Greenspun: Emery, op. cit., pp. 93, 97; Denton: int. Sally Denton; Schemmer: “Anatomy of a Break-in,” unpublished article in Jim Hougan collection; ints. Benjamin Schemmer; Rather: Wise, Police State, op. cit., p. 166–; WP, June 5, 1973; Linowitz: int. Andrew St. George; Robert Fink, “The Unsolved Break-ins,” Congressional Record, Oct. 9, 1974, p. S18595; Chilean Embassy: ibid., and Wise, Police State, op. cit., p. 178; WP, March 8, 1973; “bugs all over town”: Jan. 13, 1973, entry HD, p. 568, and see NYT, Jan. 14, 1973; RN “part of plan”: WHT, May 16, 1973, cited in WP, Feb. 26, 1999.)
15. The first psychiatrist to see Bremer under arrest said he believed he “might be a mental case.” The following day Bremer spit on a doctor and threatened to kill him. He had an obsession about germs. Of ten psychiatrists who eventually examined him, six found he had been sane on the day of the shooting, three thought not, and one was undecided. (C. W. Bates to Mr. Shroder, May 15, 1972, FBI 44-52576-15, Acting Director to Acting A.G., May 17, 1972, FBI 44-52576-3, Milwaukee to Acting Director, May 18, 1972, FBI 44-52576-68, SAC Baltimore to Director, Sept. 7, 1973, FBI 44-52576-772.)
16. Colson referred to the events of May 15–16 in two memos, dated May 16 and June 20, 1972. This author shares the suspicion that the “May 16” document was created during the flap after the Watergate arrests—and composed to cover the real facts. The June 20 memo, meanwhile, glosses over his exchange with Hunt in the aftermath of the Wallace shooting. (May 16: memo to file, Oudes, op. cit., p. 445; June 20: memo for the file, re: Howard Hunt, E, Bk. 3, p. 1170–.)
17. In a summary of his concerns passed to FBI Director Clarence Kelley in 1975, Wallace said he thought Bremer “would not have had the money to buy an automobile and two guns . . . and rent a limousine and stay at the Waldorf Astoria. . . . How was he able to . . . tail me all over the country?” Wallace also questioned the authenticity of Bremer’s diary, saying: “I believe somebody else wrote it and he copied it.” Others shared such doubts. (Wallace doubts: letter from [name censored] to FBI Director Clarence Kelley, Jan. 7, 1975, FBI 44-52576; others’ doubts: William Turner article in Blumenthal and Yazijian, eds., op. cit., p. 56, and Gore Vidal article in Scott, Hoch, and Stetler, eds., op. cit., p. 386.)
18. The offices burglarized two floors above the DNC, on May 6, were those of the Bank Operations Division of the Federal Reserve Board. The office broken into elsewhere in the complex, on May 15, was that of a law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman. Patricia Harris was acting chairperson of the Democratic Credentials Committee, and Sargent Shriver—a Kennedy brother-in-law—was occasionally mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate. Max Kampelman was an intimate of Hubert Humphrey’s, and another partner, Richard Berryman, was cocounsel for the Humphrey campaign. Harris and Shriver were on the “enemies list.” The FBI would sweep the offices for bugs following the June 17 arrests elsewhere in the Watergate and, according to Shriver, found a bug in Harris’s phone. (Federal Reserve: “The Unsolved Break-ins,” Congressional Record, vol. 120, No. 153, Oct. 9, 1974; Fried, Frank break-in: ibid.; bug found?: Miami Herald, Aug. 20, 1972.)
19. See pp. 66 and 504 n. 15 for references to Russell’s rol
e with Nixon on the Hiss case and later on the Onassis operation. The Washington investigator and lobbyist for whom he worked in the late sixties and early seventies was James Juliana, whose links with Caulfield, Colson, Chotiner, and Mitchell are acknowledged in Juliana’s interview with staff of the Senate Watergate Committee. Juliana had been in charge of ballot security and thus in touch with Chotiner and Mitchell. He said he knew Nixon “quite well,” and the president appointed him to his Committee on Retardation. Juliana had helped in a White House effort to get information on the medical condition of ailing AFL-CIO leader George Meany. The information on Russell’s request to see Nixon, and his meeting with Rose Woods, comes from Anatoli Granovsky, who arranged the visit, and from Woods’s testimony. The Washington stockbroker whom Russell met not long after the White House visit was William Birely. Birely told the author in 1998 that he had known Nixon since 1947, and Rose Woods about as long. Russell’s role in the White House probe of Chappaquiddick was mentioned by his daughter, Jean, his doctor, George Weems, and Clifton DeMotte, a Howard Hunt contact Russell had visited. Russell’s daughter, Jean Hooper and his friend Ruth Thorne, have been useful sources. (Juliana: Paul Summit to Terry Lenzner, re: conversation with James Juliana, Nov. 5, 1973, Hughes-Rebozo file 804, WSPF, NA, and deposition of James McCord, Dec. 17, 1981, summary, in files of Henry Rothblatt, courtesy of Rothblatt family, Washington Evening Star & Daily News, Oct. 12, 1972; Meany: WP, June 28, 1974; report on Russell: director, FBI to attorney general, Apr. 14, 1971, FBI 67-37816; Woods, Russell: D. E. Moore to C. D. Brennan, subject Anatoli Granovsky, Aug. 17, 1970, FBI 100-356092, and Woods testimony, E, Bk. 22, p. 10250, and see Rose Woods to Lou Russell, Jan. 9, 1971, Lou Russell papers supplied to author by Jean Hooper; Birely: ints. William Birely, Washington Evening Star & Daily News, Oct. 12, 1972; Chappaquiddick: note of DeMotte int. by Jim Hougan, cited in Hougan to Philip Manuel, transcript of int. Dr. George Weems, and Hougan notes of int. Jean Russell Hooper, all in Hougan Collection and Washington Evening Star & Daily News, Oct. 12, 1972; Russell daughter. int. Jean Hooper.)
20. In his book Secret Agenda, which challenged the conventional account of Watergate, Jim Hougan raised multiple questions about the bugging evidence. He pointed out that, on checking after the Watergate arrests, neither FBI agents nor Watergate technicians found any bugging devices in any DNC phone.
A bug did turn up in Spencer Oliver’s office phone months later, in September, following a report of a malfunction by an Oliver secretary. The bug was defective, however, and a reading of FBI technical reports suggests it could never have made the transmissions logged by Baldwin. The consensus, Hougan wrote, was that it was a “throwaway,” a device planted in the phone with the intention that it be found. Some, including Nixon and Robert Finch, suspected this bug was “one they [the Democrats] planted themselves” to keep the story alive.
The burglar responsible for planting the bugs, James McCord, claimed to the contrary that the bug removed in September was one of the two he claimed to have installed. The second, McCord claimed in his book and in grand jury testimony, remained in place—“on an extension off a telephone call director carrying Larry O’Brien’s lines”—until early April 1973. An FBI report, however, says an April 9, 1973, check of all DNC phones found no second device.
How to explain the muddle? Acting U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert thought the FBI “goofed” in its initial check of the DNC phones and missed finding the bugs. Internal FBI correspondence denied any such lapse but declared the anomalies “insoluble.” So must this author. He agrees with author Hougan that the discrepancies are serious and were never sufficiently aired or investigated. (Hougan, Agenda, op. cit., pp. 218–, 243; O. T. Jacobson to Director, July 5, 1974, FBI 139-4089-2790; R. E. Gebhardt to Mr. Felt, Apr. 6, 1973; re: DNC search following McCord grand jury testimony: FBI 139-4089-1975, W. W. Bradley to Mr. Conrad, Apr. 9, 1973; re: negative result of DNC search: FBI 139-4089-1988, and McCord, op. cit., p. 24–. Nixon’s discussion of a DNC “plant” is in WHT, Sept. 15, 16, 1972; AOP, pp. 147, 152.)
21. Mitchell testified that he did not see Liddy between early February and June 15 and that his records showed Magruder had never shown him the logs. Magruder’s assistant Robert Reisner, however, recalled his boss handing him GEMSTONE material at the relevant time in preparation for a meeting with Mitchell. Liddy, for his part, has denied Magruder’s claim that Mitchell called him into such a meeting and chastised him over the useless product from the bugging. By one account, Liddy suggested Magruder confused Mitchell with Strachan, who, Liddy acknowledged, summoned him to the White House to tell him that the take from the phone intercepts was useless. Anthony Lukas, author of Nightmare, reported that most contemporary investigators seemed to believe Magruder’s version rather than Mitchell’s denial. (Mitchell testimony: E, Bk. 4, p. 1620; Reisner: E, Bk. 2, p. 494; Liddy denied: Liddy, op. cit., p. 497; Magruder confused: Hougan, Agenda, op. cit., p. 166; contemporary investigators: NM, p. 203.)
22. See p. 229–.
Chapter 30
1. It was also suggested, Hunt said, that funds were reaching the Democrats from North Vietnam. (Int. Howard Hunt in Wise, Police State, op. cit., p. 159.)
2. Sturgis may have been referring to the burglary of May 15 at the offices in the Watergate complex of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman, which housed several leading Democrats. See Chapter 29, Note 18.
3. The author knew the late Frank Sturgis and spoke extensively with Andrew St. George, who conducted the Sturgis interview cited here. Although Sturgis was a swashbuckling, controversial character, there is no reason to doubt the essential points of his account.
4. See p. 176–.
5. See p. 191.
6. The Castro plots, discussed in chapters 16 and 17, continued during the Kennedy administration.
7. See pp. 157 and 279–.
8. See p. 198.
9. Charles Colson, who was also at the Hofstra conference, dismissed this Magruder account of the motive for the break-in as “a convenient answer to a question he’s never been able to answer before.” (Colson Oral History Interview, June 15, 1988, NP, NA.)
10. The transmissions from the functioning DNC bug were supposedly first noted by Baldwin in longhand, then typed up for transmission to Liddy. Liddy then edited them before showing them to colleagues, and apparently shredded them following the Watergate arrests. Magruder burned the copies in his possession. The tape and transcript of an interview Baldwin did with the Los Angeles Times were sealed by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in early 1973. Although most of the transcript was unsealed in 1980, passages relating to the contents of the intercepted conversations remain censored. Baldwin declined to tell the Senate Watergate Committee about the content of the conversations he overheard, citing a federal statue prohibiting the divulging of intercepted communications. According to Baldwin and McCord, none of the intercepted conversations was recorded even though there were two tape recorders in Baldwin’s room at the Howard Johnson’s. McCord said he had been unable to hook them up to the receiving units, a claim that defies belief. If tapes were in fact made, what became of them? (Baldwin note process: Alfred Baldwin testimony, E, Bk. 1, pp. 401–, 410; McCord, op. cit., p. 26; Liddy edited: Liddy, op. cit., p. 323; destroyed: ibid., pp. 340, 347–; Magruder burned: Magruder, American Life, op. cit., p. 226; LAT tape, transcript sealed: Charles Morgan, Jr., One Man, One Voice, New York: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston, 1979, p. 217–; LAT transcript unsealed: transcript of int. Alfred Baldwin by Jack Nelson and Ronald Ostrow, released with redactions, Oct. 3, 1980, U.S. v. G. Gordon Liddy, et al., Case 1827- 72, U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C.; Baldwin declined: Alfred Baldwin testimony, E, Bk. 1, p. 400; not recorded: LAT transcript, supra., p. 62–; summary of Baldwin’s Watergate trial testimony, Jan. 17, 1973, FBI 139-4089-2144; Liddy, op. cit., p. 322; Emery, op. cit., p. 123–; Hougan, Agenda, op. cit., p. 162.)
11. The author obtained the tape of an April 1973 conversation in the White House between John Ehrlichman
and Jeb Magruder, in which Magruder said the Baldwin logs he saw included the conversations of a “young Democrat politician” who “was calling girls in Mississippi saying, ‘Honey, I’ll be down there for the weekend,’ and discussing the bipartisan group Young American Political Leaders. Stuff like that.” Mitchell’s assistant Fred LaRue, with whom Magruder also talked, recalled Magruder’s saying that “one of the conversations involved Spencer Oliver talking to someone down in Mississippi about a date.” (Transcript of Ehrlichman meeting with Magruder and attorneys, Apr. 14, 1973, Ref. SR 7304141, NP, NA, and see John Ehrlichman testimony, E, Bk. 7, p. 2764; LaRue: int. Fred LaRue, and see Emery, op. cit., p. 124.)
12. The key was seized by arresting officers from one of the burglars, Rolando Martinez, on the night of June 16–17, 1972. When Martinez reached for his pocket, having been told to raise his hands above his head, Officer Carl Shoffler thought he might be going for a gun. Instead Shoffler found a notebook, with a key taped to it, in Martinez’s pocket. The FBI discovered that the key, a Vanguard model HL-311, fitted the desk of Maxie Wells, and according to a veteran locksmith, the chances it would have fitted any other DNC desk were “slim to zero.” Wells has said that both she and her colleague Barbara Kennedy, who had been given a copy during Wells’s recent vacation, still had their keys after the break-in. She had no idea why her desk should have been of special interest to the burglars, and said that the only reason she kept it locked was to prevent colleagues from taking her office supplies. Burglar Martinez claimed total ignorance of the key when interviewed in 1981 but in 1990 vaguely recalled having been given the key by either Liddy or Hunt before the break-in. The latter have both denied it. Martinez said he was also given a chart of the DNC office, marked with crosses to denote burglary targets. Targets so marked included Spencer Oliver’s desk and others nearby. If Martinez had the key to Wells’s desk, how to explain the fact that the only two known keys were still in the possession of the two secretaries at the time of the break-in? Since Kennedy was not given her key until early June, one could speculate that it was in the desk at the time of the May 28 break-in, and the burglars took an impression of it then. But why was there any special interest in Maxie Wells’s desk? It is an important issue, one that was apparently never properly investigated. (Key seized: police lists of seized items, Exhibits in Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy, Case JFM-97-946, U.S. Dist. Ct. for Dist. of MD, N. Div., provided to author; ints. former officers Paul Leeper, Carl Shoffler, and John Barrett; Barrett testimony in U.S. v. G. Gordon Liddy, et al., Case 1827-72, U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., p. 670; key fitted: FBI agent Michael King report, June 26, 1972, FBI WFO 139-166-356; Wells, Kennedy: reports of ints. Maxie Wells by FBI agent Michael King, June 27, 1972, and Barbara Kennedy, also June 27, both FBI WFO 139-166-359; Wells no idea: Wells int. by Jim Hougan, 1983, Hougan Collection; Martinez ignorance: int. Martinez by Jim Hougan, 1981, Hougan Collection; Martinez vaguely recalled: Benton Becker to files, March 13, 1990, on meeting with Martinez, supplied to author; Liddy denied: ibid.; Hunt denied: John Garrick to Joan Hoff, March 3, 1998, www.watergate.com.)
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