Bradlee, usually sensitive to such things, had been too pleased by the day’s events to notice. Between calls for interviews, he raced around the office, pounding Rosenfeld on the shoulder, attempting to exchange a jive handshake with Sussman (who almost lost his pipe) and proclaiming that Pat Gray had rescued the free press.
For the next two weeks, the reporters watched in amazement as, day after day, Gray attested to the ineptitude—if not the criminal negligence—of his supervision of the FBI’s investigation. Deep Throat’s implicit suggestion that Nixon had been frightened into nominating Gray became increasingly plausible as the nominee demonstrated a dangerous candor.
On March 22, Gray testified that John Dean had “probably” lied when he told the FBI on June 22 that he did not know if Howard Hunt had an office in the White House. The White House issued a statement “unequivocally” denying Gray’s charge, and Dean demanded a “correction.”
• • •
The day before, CRP’s subpoenas of the Post’s reporters and news executives had been thrown out of court.
14
THE NEXT MORNING, March 23, Woodward was walking down a corridor near the editorial-page offices when Herblock, the Post cartoonist, stopped him. “Hey, did you hear about McCord’s letter to the Judge? I heard it on the radio.”
The last time somebody had brought him news of Watergate from the radio, Woodward thought, the Haldeman story had blown up. No, he hadn’t heard, he said, and waited.
“Yeah, McCord’s saying there was perjury and pressure to keep quiet, and others are in on it.”
As Woodward bounded into the newsroom, Howard Simons, standing near the national desk, was waving a piece of wire copy and shouting.
It was the text of a letter from McCord to Sirica:
“Several members of my family have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter. . . . In the interests of justice . . . of restoring faith in the criminal justice system . . .” McCord was coming forward to tell what he knew. Woodward studied the letter’s charges: Political pressure had been applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. Perjury had occurred during the trial. Others involved in Watergate were not identified in testimony.
McCord had requested a meeting with Sirica after sentencing, “ . . . since I cannot feel confident in talking with an FBI agent, in testifying before a grand jury whose U.S. Attorneys work for the Department of Justice, or in talking with other government representatives.”
Woodward wondered whether McCord could prove his charges. An image of John Mitchell being led off by marshals flashed through his mind.
Simons, jubilant, told Woodward, “Find out what the hell he’s talking about—who committed perjury, who else was involved, who applied pressure.” He called Mrs. Graham in Singapore.
Bradlee was subdued. The letter might be a giant step, but it was vague.
“Names, fellas, we want names,” he said.
• • •
That Sunday, both reporters were in the office finding out that Howard Simons’ directions were more difficult to follow than to state. If McCord had yet told anybody what he had in mind when he unburdened himself, it was a well-kept secret. The prosecutors doubted that McCord knew much. The White House lid was on tight. The few presidential aides who returned phone calls knew nothing; they called back because they hoped to learn something from the reporters.
In mid-afternoon, Woodward was notified that Samuel Dash, the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate committee, was going to hold a press conference in an hour. Bernstein took a cab to Capitol Hill. Dash was sitting in his office behind a steel-gray desk, waiting for the camera crews to make their final adjustments. Speaking from notes, he said that he had interviewed McCord in two long, tape-recorded sessions over the weekend. McCord had “named names” and begun “supplying a full and honest account” of the Watergate operation. Bernstein could not understand why Dash was holding a press conference. He was not giving concrete details, merely building expectations about whatever it was that McCord had told him. There were going to be public hearings by the Watergate committee at which McCord would certainly testify. The press could blow the Watergate committee’s investigation out of the water if McCord’s charges leaked and could not be proved.
He went back to the office and unenthusiastically began to see if he could find a committee source who would say what McCord had said. He had made half a dozen unsuccessful calls when the item moved over the Los Angeles Times wire. McCord had told Dash that Jeb Magruder and John Dean had had advance knowledge of the Watergate bugging operation and were involved in its planning. The story was by Ron Ostrow and Robert Jackson. Bernstein knew they wouldn’t take a flier unless their source was absolutely reliable.
The information about Magruder was no surprise, but there had been no real hint from anyone that Dean had had anything to do with planning the bugging. If the man named by the President to investigate the bugging had been one of its planners, the consequences seemed incalculable. Already, the White House had issued a statement denying categorically the charges against Dean. The statement did not mention Magruder: the Nixon men had cut him loose.
Simons arrived at the office wearing hiking boots. Since receiving the initial tip on the Watergate break-in on June 17, he had been the senior editor most involved in the day-to-day progress of the story.
By evening, Bernstein had called more than 40 people—Senators, members of the Watergate committee staff, lawyers, CRP and White House sources, Justice Department officials, friends of McCord, even his minister. Nothing. He and Simons decided he would write a story quoting the Times and noting that the Post had been unable to confirm that McCord had made the allegations. Then Simons got a call from a lawyer who said he represented John Dean. He was threatening to file a libel suit if the Post ran the allegations about Dean. Simons told Bernstein to quote the threat and name the lawyer.
Simons sensed Bernstein’s frustration at the day’s events. He told him to get accustomed to being beaten on stories. The days when the Post had dominated the Watergate story were over.
The next morning, Bernstein and Woodward searched frantically for confirmation of the Times account and came up finally with three people on Capitol Hill who said it was correct. One, a Republican politician, said McCord’s allegations were “convincing, disturbing and supported by some documentation.”
At the White House, Ron Ziegler announced that the President had personally telephoned Dean and expressed “absolute and total confidence” in him.
• • •
Watergate was going to burst. The McCord allegations were only part of the pressures building against the dam which Deep Throat had talked about. The rush was still distant, but it was streaming closer: Dean, Magruder, Mardian, Mitchell and—most important—H. R. Haldeman were likely to be swept away in the flood.
Woodward decided to ask the deputy press secretary, Gerald Warren, for an interview with the President. It was a long shot, an almost embarrassingly long one, but Woodward had always been struck by Richard Nixon’s affinity for the unexpected. If the President could open negotiations with Red China, why not with the Washington Post?
Woodward phoned Warren and asked if he could come over for a discussion. Warren hesitated then said, “Sure.” Woodward didn’t have a White House press pass. Warren said he would leave Woodward’s name at the gate.
March 27 was a warm, sunny day and Woodward worked up a moderate sweat walking the five blocks to the White House. The press lounge in the West Wing was deserted. He waited in a stiff-backed upholstered chair. After about 10 minutes, Warren came out of a long back hallway and took Woodward to his office; not much bigger than a dressing closet, it was just large enough for his desk and chair and a chair for a visitor. Warren, tall, bespectacled and neatly groomed, is rather scholarly in appearance and demeanor.
“Do you mind if I take notes?” Warren asked, adjusting the glasses on his nose, and flipping to a clean
page on his yellow legal-size pad.
Of course Woodward didn’t object. He explained that he and Bernstein had information indicating that Watergate was a much broader conspiracy than anyone had yet suggested publicly. The information was going to come out, Woodward said, and the Post was not going to be the only agent of disclosure. Perhaps the White House knew of things that might mitigate the effect. The Post wanted to explore those factors. The situation had reached a level of gravity where only direct responses by the President might lessen the damage.
Warren occasionally looked up from his note pad and asked for specific facts. Woodward said that he and Bernstein wanted to talk only to the President about the facts and hoped that Warren would consider this a formal request for an interview. Warren said he would, but that he assumed the request would be denied.
“I can tell you,” he said, “that it will be a decision I won’t make. I’ll forward the request up the line.” Woodward imagined it would get about as far as Ziegler, whom he had purposely not called. He tried again.
Judging from their evaluation of the information, Woodward said, the President was going to have to jump ship on the Watergate at some point soon. The Post was anxious to discuss specifics before that happened. Woodward said they had information about additional wiretaps, break-ins and other secret operations, all of which was going to come out.
Warren winced a little, and cast a skeptical glance at him. “If you could be more specific, it would help,” he said.
Woodward said that he wouldn’t go into specific details at that moment, but if the President agreed to be interviewed, then questions would be provided in advance. There would be no attempt to spring something on him.
Woodward felt a hideous rush of nervousness. This wasn’t working, he realized. Also, his awe of the Presidency clutched at him. That was part of the reason he was there, sitting in that closet office, he realized. It was to give warning. Warren, too, realized that. But not a threat, Woodward wanted to make clear. It was, in an odd way, friendly, and meant to convey respect and the possibility of a way out. Woodward was seeking an adjustment. He wanted the paper to persuade by facts and good reporting, but he had no wish to build a hostile wall.
Warren smiled as if to say: It doesn’t work that way, you either have the goods and print them or you don’t. But he sounded sympathetic at times, as if he had wanted to sweep the papers off his desk and say: Right, we’ve got to talk about this. It could have been Woodward’s imagination, and Warren’s gentle ways.
When Woodward finished his presentation, Warren laid his pen gently on his pad, stood and extended his hand. “I’ll be back to you,” he said.
Woodward replied that there was no hurry and shrugged his shoulders to say he knew what the answers would be. As he walked out of the crackerbox office and into the sun, he felt buoyant. He had tried.
Bernstein and he were well aware that they would have far less to do with events than before. Much bigger forces were firmly in charge. Government investigations were under way, and the instinct for survival could turn some of the President’s men into informers.
• • •
On Wednesday, March 28, McCord was scheduled to give his first sworn testimony behind closed doors to the seven Senators on the Watergate committee. Bernstein joined dozens of reporters waiting outside the hearing room. The reporters began discussing “leaks” which were bound to come out, and agreed on the dangers of trying to report what would go on inside. It was no longer a matter of “investigative” reporting—evaluating information, putting together pieces in a puzzle, disclosing what had been obscured. They would be merely trying to find out in advance the testimony of witnesses who would eventually take the stand in public. Judging which allegations were hearsay, which firsthand knowledge, and placing them in context would be difficult. Sensational charges and deliberate leaks by interested parties would be hard to evaluate. If some papers or networks searched out leaks, all the reporters would feel bound to compete.
The committee session with McCord lasted four and a half hours. Afterward, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, the Republican vice chairman of the committee, announced that McCord had provided “significant information . . . covering a lot of territory.”
Bernstein and Woodward began the ritual phone calls, starting with the Senators. “Okay, I’m going to help you on this one,” one told Woodward. “McCord testified that Liddy told him the plans and budget for the Watergate operation were approved by Mitchell in February, when he was still Attorney General. And he said that Colson knew about Watergate in advance.”
But, in answer to Woodward’s questions, he added that McCord had only secondhand information for his allegations, as well as for his earlier accusations that Dean and Magruder had had prior knowledge.
“However,” the Senator said, “he was very convincing.”
Bradlee was able to get a second Senator to corroborate the story, and Bernstein received the same version from a staff member.
The next day’s story, though calling attention to the hearsay nature of McCord’s testimony, quoted the unnamed Senator’s evaluation.
The flood of “McCord says” stories continued. McCord appeared again on Thursday, and the reporters went through the same exercise. McCord stated that Liddy had told him that charts outlining the Watergate operation had been shown to Mitchell in February. Three sources gave identical versions of the testimony.
At this point, press secretary Ronald Ziegler announced that the President, seeking to “dispel the myth . . . that we seek to cover up,” had ordered members of his staff to appear before the grand jury and testify, if called. The Star-News interpreted this as a change of policy and reported that it “appears to be a significant relaxation of Nixon’s firm policy of sheltering the staff under the doctrine of executive privilege.”
Concerned that the Post would make the same error, Bernstein and Woodward went to Dick Harwood, the national editor. Ziegler himself had said that there was nothing new in the policy. Several White House aides had already either testified before or given sworn depositions to the grand jury. The President had never asserted a claim to executive privilege on their behalf to protect them from testifying in criminal investigations, but only in congressional hearings.
The reporters suggested strongly to Lou Cannon, a Post national-staff reporter who was writing the story, that the newest Ziegler announcement did not represent a change of policy. Cannon’s Republican sources were considerable, and he had written some of the Post’s finest pieces about the effects of Watergate on the White House and the GOP. Now he was furious. He had discussed the matter with the most experienced members of the White House press corps, and they had agreed that the President had relaxed his position on sweeping executive privilege.
Watergate had been, for some months, a strain on the never very cozy relations between the city and national desks at the Post. Bernstein and Woodward were outraged by the tenor of Cannon’s story, and also by its position as the lead in the next day’s paper.
The next day, their White House sources confirmed that Ziegler’s statement was nothing more than a public-relations gesture. But the Senate committee and staff now charged, more importantly, that it was intended to divert attention from the President’s claim of executive privilege in the Senate investigation. Senate sources suggested an additional reason for the President’s willingness to cooperate with one inquiry and not another—the grand jury’s proceedings would be secret, and under the supervision of the administration’s Justice Department. The Senate hearings would be public, and independent of the Executive.
Nine months after Watergate, the White House demonstrated once again that it knew more about the news business than the news business knew about the White House.
• • •
If there was one Washington reporter unlikely to be taken in by White House manipulations, Bernstein and Woodward thought it was Seymour Hersh of the New York Times. A mutual friend had arranged for Bernstein and
Woodward to have dinner with Hersh on April 8.
Hersh, 36, horn-rimmed and somewhat pudgy, showed up for dinner in old tennis shoes, a frayed pinstriped shirt that might have been his best in his college freshman year, and rumpled bleached khakis. He was unlike any reporter they had ever met. He did not hesitate to call Henry Kissinger a war criminal in public and was openly attracted and repelled by the power of the New York Times. Hersh had broken the story of the cover-up of My Lai and had spent years reporting on military and national-security bureaucracies. He was uniquely qualified to understand the ramifications of Watergate. “I know these people,” Hersh said. “The abiding characteristic of this administration is that it lies.”
He could be just as tough on the New York Times: “Lies, lies, lies,” he remarked of a story written by one of his colleagues.
During dinner, Bernstein and Woodward brought up one of the President’s men who was under suspicion in Watergate.
“I’d really love to get that son of a bitch, too, I know him from way before Watergate,” Hersh said. “But he’ll get no cheap shots from me; either I get him hard, with facts, solid information, evidence, the truth, or I don’t touch him.”
The three exchanged their sense of some of the witnesses and principals in Watergate, being careful not to tip their hands. Later that evening, Bernstein joshingly asked Hersh what Watergate story he was going to unload when the Times front page arrived at the Post that night.
“Just a little something,” Hersh replied.
Bernstein and Woodward couldn’t tell if he was kidding. Woodward called the office. Hersh wasn’t kidding. His “little something” was the first report that McCord had testified that the cash payoffs to the Watergate conspirators had come directly from CRP. The connection was one of the keys they had all been waiting for. Since January, everyone had assumed that CRP had bought the conspirators’ silence, but now someone was finally saying so from the inside.
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