He took a copy of the ad out of his desk and handed it to Woodward. Headlined “The People vs. the New York Times,” the advertisement criticized a Times editorial that had opposed the mining.
“Notice,” the man from CRP said, “it is signed by about ten supposedly independent people, leaving the impression that citizens are up in arms about the editorial, and are willing to fork over several thousand dollars of their own money to express their opinion. Not so. The ad was paid for by CRP with forty of those $100 bills from the pile in Stans’ safe.”
A line in the advertisement ran: “Who can you believe—the New York Times or the American people?”
Back at the office, Woodward called another CRP official. He said the attempt to drum up support for the Haiphong decision “put the entire staff in overdrive for two weeks. . . . The work included petition drives, organizing rallies, bringing the people in buses to Washington, organizing calls to the White House, getting voters to call their Congressmen.”
Bernstein remembered something that tied in. In May 1972, Barker and Sturgis had appeared uninvited at a meeting of Cuban exiles in Miami and attempted to take over plans for organizing a demonstration in support of the mining. Sturgis had driven the lead truck in a parade of support that followed.
Sussman told the reporters to write a story on the campaign of deception surrounding the Haiphong issue. “This hits home,” he said. “People understand attempts to tamper with public opinion.”
The day the story ran, James Dooley, a 19-year-old former head of the CRP mailroom, came to the Post newsroom and said he wanted to talk to someone about the Haiphong mining. Woodward took him into Sussman’s office.
“You don’t know everything that was done about Haiphong,” said Dooley. “We rigged WTTG’s poll on whether the people supported the President’s decision.”
The local Metromedia television station had asked its viewers to send in a card indicating whether they agreed or disagreed with the President on the mining. Sample ballots were placed in advertisements in the Post and the Star.
“The press office ran the project,” Dooley said, “and work ground to a halt. Everyone had to fill out fifteen postcards. Ten people worked for days buying different kinds of stamps and cards and getting different handwriting to fake the responses. . . . Thousands of newspapers were bought from the newsstands and the ballots were clipped out and mailed in.”
At a minimum, Dooley said, 4000 ballots supporting Nixon’s decision were sent from CRP. WTTG reported that 5157 agreed with the President and 1158 disagreed. Had the CRP ballots not been sent in, the President would, at best, have lost by one vote—1158 to 1157.
“When all the ballots were clipped,” Dooley continued, “people became afraid that the newspapers might be discovered, so someone said, ‘Shred them.’ McCord was in charge of the shredder and he was upset about a ton of newspapers all over the shredder room. . . . But all the newspapers were destroyed as directed.”
Woodward called CRP spokesman Devan Shumway and asked if the poll had been rigged. “When you’re involved in an election, you do what you can,” Shumway replied. “We assumed the other side would do it also. On that assumption, we proceeded. I don’t know if the other side did.”
Woodward asked if the other side Shumway was referring to was the North Vietnamese.
No, Shumway said, he meant the McGovern forces.
Following it down to the end, Woodward called Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern’s former campaign aide. “We didn’t do it,” he said, somewhat incredulously. “It didn’t occur to us, believe me. These guys are something. They assume we have the same sleazy ethics as theirs.”
• • •
No presidential decision affecting Watergate seemed so ill-advised or left the reporters more perplexed than the White House announcement in February that L. Patrick Gray’s name would be submitted to the Senate for confirmation as J. Edgar Hoover’s permanent successor. Gray was already the acting FBI director; his confirmation hearings would almost certainly become a congressional inquiry into the FBI’s conduct of the Watergate investigation; why risk the possible consequences of a senatorial fishing expedition to make his tenure permanent? The administration officials to whom the reporters posed the riddle seemed no less baffled. Several insiders professed to know only that there had been a mammoth struggle in the innermost Nixon circle. John Ehrlichman, it was said, had vehemently opposed the nomination, but the President had ultimately rejected his counsel. No one suggested that Gray had been nominated because of ability, or because the White House regarded the hearings as an opportunity to set the Watergate record straight.
Shortly before the hearings were to begin, the reporters decided it was time for Woodward to move the flower pot on his balcony. That night he traveled by foot and cab to the garage. Deep Throat was not there. Deep Throat had said he would leave a message on a certain ledge when he couldn’t make an appointment. Woodward, five foot ten, couldn’t reach it. He found a section of an old conduit pipe and fished around for it.
There was a small piece of paper on which Deep Throat had typed instructions to meet the next night at a bar Woodward had never heard of. A bar. Had Deep Throat gone crazy? Woodward wondered. Something must be wrong. When he got home, he looked the bar up in the phone book. There was no such listing. From a pay phone in his apartment building, he dialed information. An operator gave him the listing—an address on the outskirts of the city.
At nine the next night, Woodward walked a few blocks before taking a cab to a section of the city in the opposite direction from the bar. He walked another 15 minutes and took a cab to within a few blocks of the bar. It was really a tavern, an old wooden house which had been converted into a saloon for truckers and construction workers. Woodward, who was dressed casually, walked in. No one seemed to pay any attention to him. He spotted Deep Throat sitting alone at a side table and nervously sat down across from him.
Why here? he asked.
“A change,” Deep Throat said. “None of my friends, none of your friends would come here. Just a sleepy, dark bar.” A waiter came over; they both ordered Scotch.
There has to be more to this new meeting place, Woodward said.
“A little bit classier surroundings,” Deep Throat answered. “No chance you were followed? Two cabs and all?”
Woodward nodded.
“How’d the Post like its subpoenas?”
Just great, said Woodward.
“That’s only the first step. Our President has gone on a rampage about news leaks on Watergate. He’s told the appropriate people, ‘Go to any length’ to stop them. When he says that, he really means business. Internal investigations, plus he wants to use the courts. There was a discussion about whether to go the criminal route or the civil-suit route first. At a meeting, Nixon said that the money left over from the campaign, about $5 million or so, might as well be used to take the Washington Post down a notch. Thus your subpoenas, and the others. Part of the discussion was about starting a grand-jury investigation, but that’s for later.
“Nixon was wild, shouting and hollering that ‘we can’t have it and we’re going to stop it, I don’t care how much it costs.’ His theory is that the news media have gone way too far and the trend has to be stopped—almost like he was talking about federal spending. He’s fixed on the subject and doesn’t care how much time it takes; he wants it done. To him, the question is no less than the very integrity of government and basic loyalty. He thinks the press is out to get him and therefore is disloyal; people who talk to the press are even worse—the enemies within, or something like that.”
Woodward took a breath. Deep Throat sipped his Scotch gingerly, then wiped his mouth inelegantly with the back of his hand.
How worried was he?
“Worried?” Deep Throat leaned back and threw his arm over his chair. “It can’t work. They’ll never get anyone. They never have. They’re hiding things that will come out and even discredit their war against leaks. The flood is c
oming, I’m telling you. So the White House wants to eat the Washington Post, so what? It will be wearing on you, but the end is in sight. It’s building and they see it and they know that they can’t stop the real story from coming out. That’s why they’re so desperate. Just be careful, yourselves and the paper, and wait them out, don’t jump too fast. Be careful and don’t be too anxious.”
Woodward was anything but reassured by his friend’s assessment. He said he needed more details if he was going to tell the others at the Post that they were on the menu but weren’t going to be eaten. Deep Throat shook his head, indicating that he could not say much more.
What about Gray’s nomination? asked Woodward. That didn’t make any sense.
Deep Throat said it made all the sense in the world, though it was a big risk. “In early February, Gray went to the White House and said, in effect, ‘I’m taking the rap on Watergate.’ He got very angry and said he had done his job and contained the investigation judiciously, that it wasn’t fair that he was being singled out to take the heat. He implied that all hell could break loose if he wasn’t able to stay in the job permanently and keep the lid on. Nixon could have thought this was a threat, though Gray is not that sort of guy. Whatever the reason, the President agreed in a hurry and sent Gray’s name up to the Senate right away. Some of the top people in the White House were dead set against it, but they couldn’t talk him out of it.”
So good Pat Gray had blackmailed the President.
“I never said that,” Deep Throat laughed. He lifted his eyes, the picture of innocence.*
What about the Time magazine story? Had Gray been aware of taps on reporters and White House aides?
“Affirmative,” said Deep Throat, and cautioned that even he did not know all there was to know about the subject. “There was an out-of-channels vigilante squad of wiretappers that did it. Including taps on Hedrick Smith and Neil Sheehan of the New York Times, after the Pentagon Papers publication. But it started before that. All the records have supposedly been destroyed.” He explained that the wiretapping had been done by ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents who were hired outside of normal channels. Mardian had run the Justice Department end of the operation for the White House. Watergate was nothing new to the administration, Deep Throat continued.
There had been an election strategy session at which Haldeman pushed Mitchell to set up a wiretapping operation for the campaign. Mitchell had been reluctant, but Haldeman was insistent. Mitchell was instructed by the White House chief of staff to move part of the vigilante operation from the White House to the campaign. That meant Hunt and Liddy.
“In 1969, the first targets of aggressive wiretapping were the reporters and those in the administration who were suspected of disloyalty,” Deep Throat said. “Then the emphasis was shifted to the radical political opposition during the anti-war protests. When it got near election time, it was only natural to tap the Democrats. The arrests in the Watergate sent everybody off the edge because the break-in could uncover the whole program.”
Deep Throat and Woodward each had another Scotch, luxuriating in the unfamiliar comfort of their meeting place. Woodward wondered if his friend was intentionally flirting with the danger of being discovered. Did Deep Throat want to get caught so he would be free to speak publicly? Was there a love-hate dialectic about his government service? Woodward started to ask, then faltered. It was enough to know that Deep Throat would never deal with him falsely. Someday it would be explained.
The drinks were cheap. Woodward put a $5 bill on the table and left first.
• • •
The next morning, the reporters studied Woodward’s notes. They were now thinking in terms of a report which, like the October 10 story on the massive campaign of spying and espionage, would attempt to put Watergate in perspective. Just as the break-in had been but a small part of a massive election-year campaign of espionage and sabotage, the whole undercover effort to re-elect the President was, in its turn, part of a broader program directed by the President’s men, almost from the beginning, against those who they thought threatened the administration.
But the reporters would need more—details, examples, others who could confirm what had happened.
Pat Gray’s confirmation hearing was set to begin February 28.
The night before, Bernstein talked to Tom Hart, a young aide to Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was the Senate Democratic whip and a member of the Judiciary Committee. Hart had compiled a card index of the newspaper and magazine stories and, from these, had filled a loose-leaf binder with lists of contradictions and unanswered questions about Watergate.
The questions were being circulated to selected members of the committee. Until they were answered, and buttressed by evidence from the FBI’s Watergate files, Gray would remain on the witness stand, Hart said. Even if the Judiciary Committee reported out a positive recommendation, Byrd would use his considerable influence to oppose the nomination on the Senate floor if the contradictions were not cleared up.
The hearings opened on February 28 with Gray chewing on throat lozenges and insisting that the Watergate investigation had been “a massive special,” a “full-court press,” with “no holds barred.” Then, without being asked, he volunteered that he had turned over the files of the investigation to John Dean and could not guarantee that Dean hadn’t shown them to Donald Segretti.
The Senators were astonished. Woodward was relieved that Bernstein wasn’t there to hear Gray’s testimony. He had been maintaining for months that they should write a story on Dean’s receipt of the files. Woodward hadn’t thought it important, which was exactly what Gray was presently contending, without much success. He was offering to make the FBI’s Watergate files available to the Senators. But the impression that Pat Gray had acted as valet for John Dean, more than 20 years his junior, had sunk in. The Gray hearings were going to become the Dean hearings as well. That was clear.
The next day, Thursday, Bernstein read his file on John Dean. Dean, who had come into possession of the contents of Howard Hunt’s safe after June 17, had waited at least seven days to turn them over to the FBI. One notation indicated that two notebooks belonging to Hunt had not been listed in Dean’s inventory. A Justice Department attorney told Bernstein that the prosecutors had first heard of them on October 11, when Hunt had filed a motion demanding the return of belongings he had left at his office.
“The White House claimed they never saw the notebooks,” Bernstein was told. “We didn’t know what to think. We still don’t.”
He called Hunt’s attorney, William Bittman. Bittman confirmed the story and told Bernstein that the notebooks contained names and addresses which the prosecutors had told him might lead to others involved in the Watergate conspiracy. “We thought the FBI had them and had used them in their investigation. I was going to argue that the government’s whole case was tainted because their information had come from material [the notebooks] obtained in an illegal search. I was going to call Dean and other people at the White House to show that Hunt was still using his office in June and that he had not abandoned his property in the White House.
“When we found the FBI never got the notebooks, the whole issue became moot,” Bittman said. “All I can say is . . . that the whole thing was very strange. I don’t know where they went.”
Bernstein asked how useful Hunt thought the notebooks would be in building a case against higher-ups.
“I’ll let you guess,” Bittman said. “Valuable enough for someone to want them to disappear.”
On Friday, March 2, at an impromptu news conference, President Nixon announced that he would claim executive privilege against any demand that Dean testify at the Gray hearings. The story of the missing notebooks and Dean’s role in turning over the material in Hunt’s safe ran with an account of the President’s remarks.
Four days later, Gray told the Senators he was “unalterably convinced” that Dean had withheld nothing from Howard Hunt’s safe. Almost simultaneously, the White H
ouse issued a statement asserting that Dean had turned over all its contents.* But the matter was eclipsed by a more startling development at the hearings.
That afternoon, a group of reporters, including Woodward, filed into Tom Hart’s anteroom to pick up copies of documents Gray had supplied in answer to some of the Senator’s earlier questions. One was headed “Interview with Herbert W. Kalmbach.”
“Mr. Kalmbach said that in either August or September, 1971, he was contacted by Mr. Dwight Chapin and was informed that Capt. Donald H. Segretti was about to get out of the military service and that he may be of service to the Republican Party.” It was all there. Kalmbach had admitted, in the interview, that he had paid Segretti for undercover activities, on instructions from Chapin. In one irretrievable step, Patrick Gray had undermined the basic claim of White House innocence. In the process, he had helped establish the credibility of the Washington Post.
Bernstein and Woodward had difficulty finishing the Gray story by deadline. Newspapers, networks, radio and television stations were phoning for comments on the Post’s “vindication.” Almost all the callers used that word.
Bernstein’s and Woodward’s story reflected 10 months of pent-up anger and frustration. They threw quote after quote of White House denials back at the President’s men. But the article was unintentionally packaged like an ax murder. Leading the paper under a three-column head: “FBI Chief Says/Nixon’s Aides/Paid Segretti,” the text was juxtaposed with oversized pictures of Chapin, Kalmbach and Segretti. The unfortunate combination of their placement running down the side of page and the captions under the pictures made them look like mug shots sent over from homicide. “Chapin: reported Segretti available. . . . Kalmbach: just a disbursing agent. . . . Segretti: linked to Nixon staff.” In the excitement, the effect went unnoticed at the Post. But not at the White House. The reporters were told by officials there and elsewhere in the administration that the story’s treatment had generated as much hatred of the Post as anything.
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