The Watergate Scandal in United States History (4 page)

Segretti and his recruits damaged the Muskie campaign in many ways. They stole campaign schedules. In Southern white communities, they called voters at midnight to describe what Muskie would do to help black people. At a Wallace rally, they distributed handbills that supposedly came from Muskie’s camp. These handbills proclaimed, “If you liked [German dictator Adolf] Hitler, you’ll love Wallace.”
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Muskie expected a huge win at the New Hampshire presidential primary. Instead, events there destroyed him. The state’s largest newspaper printed a letter that accused Muskie of insulting French Canadians. The author of this letter was one of Segretti’s tricksters. Muskie got a disappointing vote total in his neighboring state.

In Florida the sabotage continued. Nixon forces circulated a letter accusing Humphrey and Washington Senator Henry Jackson of sexual misconduct. The letter had Muskie’s name on it. Three leading Democrats were slandered at once.

In late April, Muskie ended his devastated campaign. Kennedy decided not to run. McGovern, meanwhile, out-polled the other Democrats in the primaries. The Republicans would be getting their wish. The weakest candidate would be the Democratic nominee.

The Republican position appeared even stronger in May. A would-be assassin shot George Wallace, paralyzing him from the waist down. There would be no challenge from the feisty Alabaman. To many observers, Richard Nixon’s re-election was solidly in hand.

Gemstone

If Nixon’s campaign team could have predicted the primary results, the January 27, 1972, meeting might never have taken place. Mitchell, Dean, and Magruder met. Liddy presented an elaborate proposal.

He called the project Gemstone. It was a multifaceted plan involving a variety of illegal acts. Liddy suggested kidnapping possible protesters demonstrating at the Republican Convention and detaining them in Mexico. Organized crime figures, he said, would be happy to help. Liddy talked about employing prostitutes to compromise Democratic candidates, sabotaging the air conditioning system at the Democratic Convention, and bugging the Democrats’ telephone conversations. Liddy said his plan would cost a million dollars.

“I should have thrown Liddy out the window,” Mitchell later remarked. Instead, he merely said it was “not quite what we had in mind.”
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Liddy came back a week later. His revised plan omitted the Mafia kidnappers and faulty air conditioning. Dean told Haldeman the plan was “incredible, unnecessary, and unwise.”
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Haldeman agreed.

If Mitchell, as he later claimed, rejected the second plan outright, Liddy did not get the message. The former FBI man came back in early April. This time, out went the prostitutes. His new plan concentrated on bugging the Democrats. It would cost a quarter of a million dollars.

Mitchell claimed he told Magruder, “We don’t need this. . . . Let’s not discuss it any further.”
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However, Liddy said a Haldeman aide called him shortly after the meeting. “He relayed a message from Magruder that ‘You’ve got a “go” on your project,’” Liddy wrote.
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Armed at last with money, Liddy set to work. Former CIA agent James McCord worked with the White House as a security consultant. Over Hunt’s objections, Liddy enlisted McCord. Hunt called his friends Barker and Martinez. Two other Miamians came along: expert locksmith Virgilio Gonzalez and soldier of fortune Frank Sturgis.

Their target was the Democratic National Committee headquarters, on the sixth floor of the Watergate hotel and office complex. They particularly sought to bug the conversations of Democratic Chairman Lawrence O’Brien. On May 22 McCord set up ex-FBI man Alfred Baldwin in a room in a Howard Johnson hotel across from the Watergate. From there Baldwin could watch the sixth-floor headquarters and monitor wiretapped telephone calls.

Hunt, Liddy, and the Miamians set out to make the wiretaps on May 22. The break-in attempt failed, because someone was wandering around in the building. The would-be invaders tried again the following night. This time they failed because Gonzalez brought the wrong tools. Hunt sent him back to Miami to get the proper equipment.

The third time proved to be the charm. Barker, Martinez, Gonzalez, Sturgis, and McCord entered the building. The Miamians photographed documents while McCord set the wiretaps.

It was not a completely successful mission. One of McCord’s wiretaps did not connect properly. Liddy said Mitchell wanted them to go back and fix the bug. Hunt had reservations, but he went along with his partner.

The Miamians and McCord reentered the Watergate early on June 17. This time they were caught. When captured, McCord asked, “Are you the metropolitan police?”
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The burglars went quietly.

Chapter 4

“A CANCER GROWING ON THE PRESIDENCY”

Within moments of the arrests, the grounds of the Watergate began to look like a carnival. Squad cars with flashing lights surrounded the complex. Officers scurried all over the place.

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy were too busy to watch the spectacle. Bernard Barker had their hotel room key, and police could be there soon. They had to leave fast.

The two burglary team leaders packed their gear. Hunt told Liddy to go and find himself an alibi. They strolled past unsuspecting police to their cars. Hunt drove a couple of blocks, then walked back to Alfred Baldwin’s room in the Howard Johnson.

Hunt called a lawyer to free the burglars. Then he told Baldwin to get out of there. “Does this mean I’m out of a job?” Baldwin asked.
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The lookout then drove McCord’s van, which was loaded with surveillance equipment, to McCord’s suburban Virginia home. McCord’s wife drove him back to the Howard Johnson, and he drove his own car to his home in Connecticut.

After leaving the hotel, Hunt rushed to his White House office. He stuffed the burglary gear into his safe and removed ten thousand dollars in cash. Then he went home.

Unusual Burglars

The five men at the Democratic headquarters surprised the arresting officers. They were polite, quiet, well-dressed, middle-aged men—hardly typical burglars. They carried burglar tools, but they also had cameras, tear gas canisters, bugging devices, a wig, and radio transmitter/receivers. A search at the police station revealed something else unusual—the burglars were carrying thirteen one-hundred-dollar bills with consecutive serial numbers. The FBI later traced this money to Barker’s bank account. Barker was also carrying a check signed by E. Howard Hunt. A search of their hotel rooms revealed more hundred-dollar bills. Investigators also found address books on Barker and Martinez with a telephone number and “H. H.—White House.”

Most unusual was the lawyer. An attorney named Douglas Caddy came to the police station and posted bail for the burglars. Where did this lawyer come from? None of the defendants had called to request one.

In one respect the lawyer arrived too late. James McCord had already identified himself. A policeman in court recognized him as an employee of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. It would be the beginning of the end for the Nixon administration.

First Reactions

A few hours later, at mid-morning on Saturday, Liddy arrived at his office at the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Staff member Robert Odle saw him carrying a large pile of papers. Liddy asked Odle how to operate the shredding machine, then set to work. Liddy spent the next several hours destroying anything that might cast suspicion on him. He destroyed documents, one-hundred-dollar bills, and even soap wrappers saved from hotels he had visited.

After his shred-a-thon, Liddy called CRP leaders, who were vacationing in California. Magruder was furious at Liddy for bringing CRP employee McCord along on the break-in. He was even more angry at himself for not firing Liddy earlier. Word of the blunder got to recently retired Attorney General John Mitchell. Later that afternoon Mitchell told reporters that McCord and the other people involved in the break-in were not working with CRP approval.

Liddy went to talk to Richard Kleindienst, the new attorney general. Kleindienst was at a country club and did not want to be disturbed. Finally he agreed to listen. Liddy told Kleindienst it was a personal request from John Mitchell to release McCord. Kleindienst refused. He phoned his assistant Henry Petersen to make sure the Watergate burglars received no special favors.

Two FBI agents visited Hunt at his home that Saturday afternoon. He told them he would not speak to them without his lawyer present.

President Richard Nixon spent the weekend at the home of his friend Robert Abplanalp in the Bahamas. He returned to his Key Biscayne, Florida, home on Sunday. Nixon saw a
Miami Herald
story titled “Miamians Held in D.C. Try to Bug Demo Headquarters.” The story sounded ridiculous. “I dismissed it as some sort of prank,” Nixon wrote in his memoirs.
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The Money Trail

Bob Woodward was a young reporter working the metropolitan beat for the
Washington Post.
At first the burglary did not seem like much of a story. His interest picked up when he went to court and heard McCord say he was a security consultant and former CIA member. It definitely peaked when he heard that two of the burglars had address books with the telephone number of a White House employee.

Woodward called Hunt the following Monday morning. No one answered Hunt’s phone, but the White House receptionist suggested he try Charles Colson’s office. Colson’s secretary gave him the number of a public relations office where Hunt worked.

Hunt answered the phone. Woodward asked him why his name might have appeared in the address books of two Watergate burglars. “Good God!” Hunt shouted. He added, “I have no comment,” then hung up.
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On July 25,
The New York Times
reported that several calls had been made from Barker’s phone in Miami to a CRP phone used by Liddy. Carl Bernstein, another young
Post
reporter, decided to investigate these calls. A Miami district attorney had subpoenaed to see the telephone list, demanding a copy of it for the court. Bernstein flew to Florida to examine the list. He also found out from the district attorney that checks for more than one hundred thousand dollars had been deposited and withdrawn from Barker’s bank account.

Bernstein saw copies of four checks totaling $89,000 from Mexican lawyer Manuel Ogarrio Dagueirre. There was also a fifth check for $25,000 from someone named Kenneth Dahlberg.

Who was Kenneth Dahlberg? The bank’s manager knew him as a part-time Florida resident and director of a bank in nearby Fort Lauderdale. The Fort Lauderdale bank president said he believed Dahlberg headed the Midwestern campaign for Richard Nixon.

Using newspaper files, Woodward located Dahlberg in Minnesota. Dahlberg said the $25,000 was money he collected for Nixon’s campaign. He turned the check over to either CRP Finance Chair Maurice Stans or Treasurer Hugh Sloan. The money trail now led from CRP to the burglars.

Over the next year Woodward and Bernstein would write more than two hundred stories on the Watergate burglary and other White House misdeeds. These stories put pressure on all branches of government to pursue their Watergate investigations.

Both crafty reporters used a number of sources for their stories. The most famous was a shadowy character known as Deep Throat. Deep Throat was never quoted and never volunteered information. He would only confirm stories Woodward heard elsewhere. If Woodward cared to speak to this source, he left a red flag in a flowerpot on his balcony window. Deep Throat would then circle a page of a newspaper delivered to Woodward, along with the time they would meet in an underground garage.

“Check every lead,” Deep Throat advised Woodward. “It goes all over the map. Not one of the games [operations] was free lance. Every one was tied in.”
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Woodward never revealed Deep Throat’s name. Finally in 2005, he was revealed as FBI official W. Mark Felt.

Cover-Up

“No one ever considered that there would not be a cover-up,” CRP Deputy Director Jeb Stuart Magruder said later.
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From the time they heard of the break-in, top White House officials strove to keep themselves and CRP officials from being connected to the crime.

In the days following the break-in, they called or met with one another to sketch their plans. Magruder, CRP Director John Mitchell, Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Domestic Advisor John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean, Special White House Counsel Charles Colson, CRP Counsel Liddy, Mitchell advisor Frederick LaRue, and Haldeman assistant Gordon Strachan all knew of one or more White House horrors before Watergate. In some cases, they were actively involved in the illegalities.

Even if Nixon knew nothing of the break-in beforehand, he moved to hide it afterward. On June 23, 1972, he discussed the problem with Haldeman. The FBI was already investigating the crime, Haldeman said, “and it goes in some directions we don’t want it to go.”
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The chief of staff told Nixon that Barker’s money had already been traced to the CRP.

If J. Edgar Hoover were alive, the FBI might have found the Nixon link immediately. However, Hoover had died in May. L. Patrick Gray, a former Navy officer known mainly for his loyalty to Nixon, was chosen temporary FBI director.