He brought his chair close to his oval table-desk, held his hand in the air to request silence and began reading. Simons was reading another set of carbons. Rosenfeld nervously swiveled his orange chair in quarter-turns. Occasionally, whispered comments went back and forth. Sussman sat quietly with his legs crossed.
“Fellas”—Bradlee broke the silence—“you’ve got one story here. Put it into one, fit it together. It’s all part of the same thing.”
He turned his chair 180 degrees to his own typewriter on the ledge behind the oval table, opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of two-ply paper.
“Never mind the first several paragraphs,” Bradlee said, “you work that out.” He began on a section which would deal with Clawson and the letter. He banged out two long paragraphs, then flipped the page across the table to Woodward. Bernstein, meanwhile, went to his desk and wrote:
FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.
The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders and—since 1971—represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.
Bernstein passed the draft around, first to Woodward and then to the editors who had gathered around his desk. All agreed. Not a word was changed, unusual on such a sensitive story, especially given the number of editors involved.
Woodward added the third paragraph:
During their Watergate investigation federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.
And, from suggestions made primarily by Sussman, the fourth paragraph:
“Intelligence work” is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented in scope and intensity.
Despite lack of specific examples, the crucial fifth and sixth paragraphs related that the espionage and sabotage included:
Following members of Democratic candidates’ families; assembling dossiers of their personal lives; forging letters and distributing them under the candidates’ letterheads; leaking false and manufactured items to the press; throwing campaign schedules into disarray; seizing confidential campaign files and investigating the lives of dozens of Democratic campaign workers.
In addition, investigators said the activities included planting provocateurs in the ranks of organizations expected to demonstrate at the Republican and Democratic conventions; and investigating potential donors to the Nixon campaign before their contributions were solicited.
Woodward called Shumway, CRP’s principal spokesman, read him the first six paragraphs and outlined the Segretti business and the allegations involving Clawson and the letter.
“Now read me that again,” Shumway said, apparently stunned.
Woodward repeated.
“That’s one I’ll have to get back to you on,” Shumway said. “Now let me get it straight. You’re doing that for tomorrow? . . . This never ceases to amaze me.”
Shumway called back an hour later, saying: “Now, are you ready? We’ve got a statement: “The Post story is not only fiction but a collection of absurdities.’ ”
Woodward waited.
“That’s it,” Shumway said.
Woodward asked about specific points.
“It’s no use, Robert,” said Shumway. “That’s all we are going to say. The entire matter is in the hands of the authorities.”
To Woodward and Bernstein, the latest non-denial seemed to confirm their account.
The two lead paragraphs, with their sweeping statements about massive political espionage and sabotage directed by the White House as part of a basic re-election strategy, were essentially interpretive—and risky. No source had explicitly told the reporters that the substance represented the stated conclusions of the federal investigators. But they knew that there was information in the files of the FBI and the Justice Department to support their conclusions. The story was based on strains of evidence, statements from numerous sources, deduction, a partial understanding of what the White House was doing, the reporters’ familiarity with the “switchblade mentality” of the President’s men, and disparate pieces of information the reporters had been accumulating for months. Those in the White House might dispute the interpretation in the lead—substituting the phrases “political intelligence-gathering” and “pranks” for “political spying and sabotage”—but the facts supported the aggressive language. Specific examples of some of the tactics listed in the fifth and sixth paragraphs were lacking, but the hard evidence was in the Canuck Letter and Segretti’s activities. Hopefully, the story would push the missing examples into the open.
Shumway’s statement ran as the seventh paragraph, accompanied by the refusal of the White House to comment on the story. The next 10 paragraphs dealt with the Canuck Letter. They reported that Ken Clawson had told Marilyn Berger, on September 25, that he had written the letter, and recorded his denial.
The Segretti findings were not mentioned until the 18th paragraph, the point at which the story was continued in the inside of the paper.
The involvement of “at least 50 undercover Nixon operatives [who] traveled throughout the country trying to disrupt and spy on Democratic campaigns” was not mentioned until the 19th paragraph. And the remaining text of the 65-paragraph story was a narrative of Segretti’s travels, job approaches, conversation with Bob Meyers and biographical details.
The four-column, two-line head on the top half of page one read “FBI Finds Nixon Aides/Sabotaged Democrats.”
The story went out over the Washington Post—Los Angeles Times News Service wire about 7:00 P.M. More than half of the 220 domestic subscribers used the story, several on page one, and non-subscriber coverage was broad.
In the newsroom of the New York Times’ Washington bureau, less than five blocks from the Post, a night editor began making hurried phone calls to senior editors in New York and members of the staff in Washington. Within two hours, the Times had contacted Shipley, Dixon and Nixt, each of whom confirmed the approaches by Segretti. The Times’ late city edition of October 10 carried a story at the bottom of page one, leading with Shipley’s account, then summarizing the Post’s allegations of a nationwide campaign of espionage and sabotage directed by the White House and CRP.
At the White House that noon, Ron Ziegler faced an increasingly skeptical press corps determined to challenge the administration’s refusal to discuss Watergate substantively. During a 30-minute briefing, a clearly uncomfortable presidential press secretary declined 29 times to discuss the Post story. His response was that CRP and Clawson had “appropriately” responded, and that the White House had nothing further to say.
While Ziegler was fending off hostile questions in the West Wing, Bradlee came over to Woodward’s desk in the Post newsroom and sat down in a chair. “Hey, you and Carl and I have got to have lunch this afternoon and have a little discussion,” he said.
Bernstein, however, was out of town attending the funeral of a friend, the wife of his former boss.
“Then you alone,” Bradlee said. “We gotta talk.”
They walked across 15th Street to the Madison Hotel’s Montpelier Room, an opulent French restaurant. Bradlee asked for a corner table, and began the conversation. “You’d better bring me up to date because . . .” He turned to order lunch in perfect French, and then turned back to Woodward. “ . . . our cocks are on the chopping block now and I just want to know a little more about this.”
Bradlee had a general idea of who the reporters’ sources were, “but that’s secondha
nd from Sussman and Rosenfeld,” he said. “I’d like it firsthand now—how the stories have been put together and where they’re coming from.” Bradlee was a reporter by background and instinct; he understood the reluctance to discuss sources with anyone, including the editor.
“Tell me what you feel you can,” he said. “Just give me their positions and tell me again that you’re sure, and that Carl is sure, and that these are people who have no big ax to grind on the front page of the Washington Post.”
Bradlee fidgeted in his chair. He and Woodward discussed how the stories had been covered, how the reporters had dealt with sources and under what circumstances they had met and communicated. The line was drawn at a point which satisfied Bradlee’s reportorial instincts and responsibilities as an editor, as well as Bernstein’s and Woodward’s promises of anonymity to their sources.
After more than an hour, Bradlee said, “Well, okay, I’m satisfied. Now what have you guys got for tomorrow?” Bradlee liked to keep the pressure on.
The reporters were working two major areas, Woodward told him: a White House-Segretti connection and a whole catalogue of dirty tricks that had plagued the Muskie campaign. But neither story would be ready for the next day.
At 3:00 P.M., when the editors filed into Bradlee’s office for the daily story conference, they considered two items as possible front-page follow-ups: the White House reaction (or lack of it) as expressed by Ron Ziegler, and a demand by Senator Muskie that President Nixon personally answer press reports of wrongdoing by White House staff members because the allegations were so serious. Muskie had insisted that any investigation of the case be done outside the Justice Department, saying it was inconceivable that the “President’s lawyers” there could objectively investigate corruption of the President’s staff.
Neither story generated much enthusiasm. Rosenfeld told Woodward that the editors were concerned: the lack of a strong follow-up could be interpreted as pulling back on the part of the Post. He urged Woodward to keep trolling for a story.
About six o’clock, Frank Mankiewicz, the crafty professional of the McGovern campaign, called Woodward. He had a list of 10 acts of alleged sabotage against the McGovern campaign, acts “so well engineered that they must have come from the Republicans,” Mankiewicz said.
They ranged from the serious—an attempt by someone impersonating a top McGovern aide to set up a bogus meeting between the candidate and the AFL-CIO president, George Meany—to harassing phone calls received on the switchboard at McGovern headquarters.*
Woodward asked if there was any evidence connecting the acts to the White House or the Nixon re-election committee. No, said Mankiewicz, but it sure sounded like part of the same operation the Post had written about that morning.
Rosenfeld wanted a page-one story on the Mankiewicz charges. Woodward argued strongly that the Post lacked evidence that the incidents were part of the broad CRP campaign. He was concerned that readers might justifiably conclude that the McGovern campaign was jumping onto a sabotage bandwagon. Why hadn’t McGovern’s people made the charges earlier? Ziegler’s reaction was a more legitimate story. But Woodward was overruled by Rosenfeld and the senior editors.
Woodward continued protesting even after he wrote a piece which stated pointedly that Mankiewicz had supplied no evidence connecting the activities with the President’s campaign.
The story was headlined “Democrats Step Up Sabotage Charges.” It would serve only to fuel White House charges that the Post and the McGovern campaign were conspiring in the last, desperate days of the Democrats’ campaign.
• • •
Bernstein, who had arrived back in Washington in the midst of the argument between Woodward and the editors, was doubly chagrined. He was a few phone calls away from confirming the last act in a long list of sabotage attempts against the Muskie campaign.
The day after he had talked to Alex Shipley, Bernstein had begun calling Muskie staffers. One by one, they had told horror stories about how their campaign had been repeatedly victimized by unexplained accidents that seemed as if they could only be the results of an organized effort: stolen documents, fake campaign literature, canceled rallies, outrageous telephone calls to voters in the name of Muskie campaign workers, schedule breakdowns and—of course—the Canuck Letter.
Still, almost all agreed, the Muskie campaign had self-destructed because of the candidate’s vacillation on the issues and because of what they regarded as his ineptitude. They didn’t know who was responsible for the vicious things that kept occurring; but whoever had done them had been guilty of gross overkill. Some had guessed Hubert Humphrey’s backers, others George Wallace’s.
Bernstein had traveled with Muskie as a reporter for a week during the 1968 campaign, when the Senator was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, and knew him slightly. He wanted to get to Muskie before anything was printed in the Post suggesting his bid for the Presidency had been the object of sabotage.
Woodward had been told by Roger Wilkins, a Post editorial writer,* that Muskie had sought legal advice during the campaign when he suspected members of his family were being followed and investigated. Wilkins, the former director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service under Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the 40-year-old nephew of NAACP president Roy Wilkins, had said: “Muskie got a lawyer because one of his children was being followed and inquiries were being made at the child’s school.”
Bernstein’s meeting with Muskie on Capitol Hill lasted more than an hour. With no prodding, Muskie revealed that he had long suspected that the Nixon forces were behind “a systematic campaign of sabotage” that had harmed his campaign.
“Our campaign was constantly plagued by leaks and disruptions and fabrications,” Muskie said, “but we could never pinpoint who was doing it. . . . Somebody was out to ambush us. We assumed it was being done by Nixon people because that’s the nature of this administration; they have no sensitivity to privacy or decency in politics. But we had no proof it was them.”
Muskie described more than a dozen incidents he suspected were the results of sabotage, covering much the same ground as members of his staff. Since he had learned in 1970 that FBI agents had been assigned to report on a speech he made for Earth Day on April 22 of that year, the Senator said, “I have assumed I’ve been followed by the Republicans.”
Had members of his family been followed?
“We thought we were being followed, but we never were able to establish a connection with Republican espionage.” The Senator refused to be more specific or talk about what—if anything—had happened with one of his children. “Whatever happened with members of my family is private,” he said.
His tone, angry and insistent, conveyed real bitterness. Bernstein kept trying to find out what might be behind it. He asked Muskie if somebody had tried to learn something specific about one of the children, like whether they smoked dope. “I’m just not going to talk about it,” Muskie said.
On October 12, Bernstein wrote a story on the sabotage of the Muskie campaign, based on interviews and memoranda obtained from Muskie and his staff before the October 10 story had been published. He had been able to confirm that:
In July 1971, facsimiles of Muskie’s Senate stationery were used to mail a Harris Poll reprint dealing with Senator Edward Kennedy and the incident at Chappaquiddick to Democratic members of Congress. It resulted in complaints to Muskie about unethical campaigning.
On April 17, 1972, a Muskie fund-raising dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel had been harassed, as unordered liquor, flowers, pizzas, cakes and entertainers arrived COD.
Several days before the Florida primary, a flier on bogus Muskie stationery was distributed, accusing both Senator Humphrey and Senator Henry Jackson of illicit sexual conduct.
During the New Hampshire primary campaign, voters had been awakened in the middle of the night by phone calls from persons who identified themselves as canvassers from the Harlem for Muskie Committee, urging that New Hamp
shire voters cast their ballots for Muskie “because he’d been so good for the black man.”
During 1971, raw polling data twice disappeared from the desk of the Muskie polling expert at campaign headquarters. This convinced Muskie that he had a middle-level spy, and members of Muskie’s staff said they were subsequently warned by columnist Rowland Evans that there was a spy in their camp.
• • •
Woodward was reading over the Muskie story in the October 12 paper when Robert Meyers called from Los Angeles that morning. He had found Larry Young, a fraternity brother of Segretti’s during their USC undergraduate days, who was to have been the other half of the firm Young and Segretti. Segretti had told Young a good deal about his connections with the Nixon campaign. Woodward started typing.
“Segretti told [Young] that the FBI found out about him from telephone records from the phone of E. Howard Hunt; a lot of phone calls one way, all from Hunt to Segretti. . . . Hunt would give him instructions, but Young doesn’t know what events the specific instructions were connected to. . . . It wasn’t the bugging. . . .”
Woodward was amazed. It had not occurred to the reporters that Segretti’s operation was tied to Hunt’s plans.
“Segretti said to Young, ‘I’m working for a wealthy California Republican lawyer with national connections and I get paid by a special lawyer’s trust fund.’ ”
Kalmbach. Woodward asked Meyers if he had tried the name of the President’s personal lawyer on Young. Meyers said Young didn’t know who Kalmbach was:
“Young is convinced that Segretti met with Dwight Chapin and with Hunt. Because Segretti talked about his going to Miami to meet with all the ‘key people’ he had always worked with on the phone. And he had earlier told Young that it was Hunt, and Chapin was the general organizer. Segretti would always say, ‘I have to talk with DC. I have to meet with DC.’ At first, Young thought he meant District of Columbia. Then he became convinced DC was Dwight Chapin. . . . Young, too, is said by others to have been a good friend of the USC Republican Mafia and kept contacts with them. . . .
All the President's Men Page 16