Watergate: A New History

by Garrett M. Graff

That Sunday morning, the AP reported for the first time that one of the burglars, James McCord, was the security coordinator for the president’s reelection campaign, and John Mitchell issued a swift and stern statement from California: “The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system. He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests, and we have no knowledge of these relationships. We want to emphasize that this man and the other people involved were not operating on either our behalf or with our consent. There is no place in our campaign or in the electoral process for this type of activity, and we will not permit or condone it.”

Nixon was “ignoring” the incident and “taking no interest.”

In between, he talked repeatedly with Colson, Haldeman, Haig, Kissinger, and others weighing the evolving situation and dealing with other presidential business.

Back at the Post, Woodward and Bernstein focused Sunday on learning more about the burglars. It was the first time the two had ever worked together on a story, and they didn’t exactly have a warm relationship.

In their own way, the two men represented the nation’s political drift and divide. Woodward was the son of an Illinois judge, a Yale graduate, and a registered Republican, a true product of the conservative establishment, while Bernstein had a full head of long, shaggy hair indicative of his general disregard for authority.XI Woodward had voted for Nixon in ’68 and there seemed no doubt that Bernstein didn’t.

Their distrust was immediately mutual. Woodward knew Bernstein’s reputation around the office as someone who weaseled his way onto others’ stories to score a big byline. Bernstein had heard Woodward’s writing was atrocious. The office joke was that English wasn’t even the Yale grad’s first language. (Bernstein said later, “I didn’t really think a lot about most Woodward stories. I thought they were from the wham-bam school of journalism, making a lot out of very little.”) Bernstein by comparison was a flowery, energetic writer, a hearty practitioner of the “new journalism” style then evolving in magazines like New York and Esquire.

Woodward finally reached him and asked why Hunt’s name was in the address books of two Watergate burglars. “Good God!” Hunt exclaimed.

Woodward found equally strange information about Hunt; the White House confirmed he had worked on some projects, although it said Hunt hadn’t done anything since March. When Woodward called Robert Bennett, the head of the Mullen Company, Bennett volunteered, “I guess it’s no secret that Howard was with the CIA.” That was certainly news to Woodward. Now two people tied to the burglary had known CIA ties?

Now, reached about the Watergate burglary, Felt held Woodward to their agreement; none of what he said could be used in the paper, but he could confirm that Woodward was on the right track: The FBI considered Hunt a key suspect.

Together, the reporters and editors pulled together the scarce details they had into a story that ran the next day, headlined, “White House Consultant Linked to Bugging Suspects.”

Around 11 a.m., Dean summoned Liddy to the White House; when Liddy arrived, they went for a walk.I Both men were silent until they went outside and found a park bench by the Ellipse.II “Am I correct in assuming you’re the damage control action officer for this problem?” Liddy asked, ever the Walter Mitty operative. “If you’re the action officer, then you need to know it all.” Dean, exhausted already, nodded.

First, he asked who in the White House knew of the operations—Colson? “Fucking Magruder,” Liddy replied. He promised that McCord and the others wouldn’t talk, but as he began to fill Dean in on the full scope of their covert activities, including the Fielding burglary, Dean began to get nervous. Liddy added that the jailed men would expect “support,” as he put it, “the usual in this line of work—bail, attorney’s fees, families taken care of, and so forth.” While the White House counsel would deny saying it later, Liddy recalled Dean promptly confirming, “That goes without saying—everyone’ll be taken care of.”

As they parted ways outside the Executive Office Building, Dean said, “Gordon, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be talking with you anymore.” “Sorry about the way things turned out, John,” Liddy said, extending his hand. “It sure is a mess,” Dean replied, taking Liddy’s hand listlessly.III Afterward, Liddy called Hunt, introducing himself on the phone by his alias in case anyone was listening, and gave instructions to walk outside and turn left. Once he was confident Hunt wasn’t being tailed, Liddy intercepted him. They walked south, down toward the National Mall. He told Hunt that there were orders from “across the street” that he should head overseas. Hunt didn’t like it, saying it made him look like a fugitive. “Let’s get a lawyer for me, Gordon,” he countered, but ultimately agreed that he would use the $1,500 left in GEMSTONE funds to depart immediately. “Go as far as you can on that, and I’ll get more money to you somehow,” Liddy promised.

In press reports, security professionals scoffed at the seemingly amateur nature of the odd break-in, labeling it a “Mickey Mouse operation”—but the deeper reporters dug, the less the burglars appeared to be random thieves.

Szulc dug into Hunt’s history, tying him publicly to the Bay of Pigs invasion,

When the burglars’ photographs appeared in papers across the country that weekend, tips flooded in and the number of agents assigned to the case swelled from five to twenty-six by week’s end to manage them. One tip proved useful immediately: The manager of the Howard Johnson Motor Inn across from the Watergate had recognized the photo of James McCord and told agents he’d rented a room to the suspect that spring; McCord stuck out because after a few days, he’d switched rooms to a higher floor; there had also, the manager explained, appeared to be a second man staying in McCord’s room.

As suspicions and questions mounted, Mitchell and Republican National Committee Chair Bob Dole both released statements denying having anything to do with what the press was calling the “Watergate caper.” Ron Ziegler continued to dismiss not only any presidential tie, but even any presidential interest in the case, saying Nixon hadn’t even discussed the burglary with anyone like Mitchell. “I’m not going to comment from the White House on a third-rate burglary attempt,” he said, in a line that would prove to be one of the most famous—and infamous—in the entire scandal.

When they brought in Colson to discuss Hunt in depth, Ehrlichman and Colson each seemed to outperform the other about their ignorance of Hunt’s White House work. “He’s not been working for me for months,” Colson said, as nonchalantly as possible; later, as Colson explained that Hunt had a safe in his office that someone should check out, Ehrlichman was shocked: “You mean to tell me he even had an office here?!” The group ultimately decided that Dean should take custody of the safe’s contents. After the meeting broke up, Dean’s secretary handed him a note: “Meeting. 6 p.m. Mitchell’s Watergate Apartment.” It was the first time he’d even been invited to the inner sanctum of “Mr. Mitchell,” and the inclusion made his chest swell; he was on his way to being a trusted insider.

“Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs,” Nixon added.

The remaining group took stock of developments. Mardian had been golfing over the weekend in California when he found out about the burglary from Magruder, instantly recognizing trouble: “Burglary is bad enough—you might get away with it—boys will be boys, but bugging is disastrous.”

Dean’s account provided one of the reasons Ehrlichman would be later charged with obstruction of justice, but he would deny giving the order for Hunt to flee and the evidence is at least circumstantial that he never did.

Haldeman told Strachan. Strachan began shredding, while Colson had an aide chase down and destroy as many copies as he could find of the page in the White House telephone directory that listed Hunt as working for him.

Liddy, meanwhile, scoured his life for further links to the break-in after he put on the suit he’d worn the night of the burglary and discovered a Watergate room key in the pocket;

“Stonewall” would become the official playbook. Publicly deny, deny, deny—and quickly offer a lot of the money to the central players for their loyalty and silence.

On Wednesday, five days after the break-in, Liddy took matters into his own hands. He wrapped $5,000 around each leg, tucked into his socks, and flew to Los Angeles, purportedly on CREEP business.

On Thursday, June 22, Richard Nixon made his first public statement on the Watergate issue: “The White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident.” The phrasing left reporters across Washington wondering: If not this “particular” incident, were there others that the White House had been involved in?

City editor Barry Sussman explained to Bernstein that he had to go back to his regular Virginia beat—the paper needed him back covering the commonwealth. Bernstein pounded out on his typewriter a five-page memo about the strange unresolved questions around the break-in, pleading to be left on the case and speculating it might be directly tied into the reelection campaign’s leadership.IV Grudgingly, his editors kept him on the story.

While the news stories of Woodward and Bernstein would attract the nation’s attention and history’s spotlight, the reporting duo were hardly the only Washington Post staffers focused on the president.

Further investigation of Barker’s deposits uncovered that the money had appeared to come from Nixon campaign donors. By the end of the month, they’d interviewed a Minnesota Nixon finance leader named Kenneth Dahlberg, who had played a major role in both the ’68 and ’72 campaigns, as well as a Mexican corporate attorney who appeared to have been gathering cash for the campaign.

What they didn’t know was that Ehrlichman had called FBI Acting Director Gray on Wednesday morning and said, “John Dean is going to be handling an inquiry into this thing for the White House. From now on, you’re to deal directly with him.” By eleven-thirty, Dean was in Gray’s office, explaining that he intended to sit in on all FBI interviews of White House staff. Gray thought it a reasonable request—after all, the only staffer the FBI had interest in at that point was Chuck Colson, who had hired Hunt. “None of us in the FBI had any inkling that the Watergate conspiracy ran anywhere near the senior people in the White House,” Gray later recalled.

In multiple meetings on the 21st and 22nd, Dean and Gray discussed how to handle the case, though Dean already had privately settled on a two-part strategy: The White House and CREEP would have Hunt and Liddy take the fall, arguing that the two men had been rogue, redirecting funds meant for other purposes to criminal activity, and then CREEP would stop the FBI from tracing the burglars’ funds back through to campaign donors, a thread that could very easily lead to all manner of other scandals and campaign-related crimes.

The first part seemed easy enough to pull off, and the germ of the second came together as Gray filled Dean in on how the FBI had traced the money that had ended up in Barker’s wallet. The FBI director laid out the various theories the bureau was exploring: (1) a legitimate or illegitimate CIA operation; (2) a political espionage and intelligence scheme by people associated with the Republican Party or the president’s reelection campaign; (3) a Cuban right-wing mission; or (4) some kind of setup by a double agent. All seemed likely and unlikely in their own ways. “We just could not see any clear reason for this burglary,” Gray recalled later.

He suggested that going forward, Dean communicate directly with Mark Felt, who would be kept up to date on all aspects of the probe.

Debriefing the Gray-Dean conversation later that night with Mitchell, the Nixon team spotted the outlines of a new plan: The cloak of “national security” could bury the investigation.

The comments left little doubt of the intent; Nixon’s team intended to use the organs of government to cover up their own rogue operation, mislead investigators, and throw the cloak of national security over what was really a political mission.

“Haldeman said that the ‘bugging’ affair at the Democratic National Committee Hqs at the Watergate Apartments had made a lot of noise and the Democrats were trying to maximize.

Haldeman said that the whole affair was getting embarrassing and it was the President’s wish that Walters call on Acting FBI Director Patrick Gray and suggest to him that since the five suspects had been arrested that this should be sufficient

Dean enthusiastically confirmed, and soon after, Gray delivered the files personally—a total of eighty-three investigative reports through October, about half of all the FBI’s investigative materials in the case.

As Dean and Fielding cataloged, they realized much of the haul was troublesome, just as Hunt had promised. “Holy shit,” Dean had said to Fielding as they looked over everything from a briefcase of McCord’s electronics to Hunt’s work forging State Department cables to implicate the Kennedy administration in the assassination of South Vietnam’s president.

Dean made clear to the FBI leader that this special sensitive set of files shouldn’t be turned over to investigating agents. “I distinctly recall Mr. Dean saying that these files were ‘political dynamite,’ and ‘clearly should not see the light of day,’ ” Gray testified later.

Whether Nixon and Haldeman ever really thought of this conversation again over the next year is unknown—nor is it clear in the moment whether either man registered the depth of the corruption of their scheme. John Ehrlichman, who didn’t know about the conversation, would later come to believe that at least Nixon did and that it ate away at him over the months ahead, becoming to the president the beating, pulsing telltale heart of Edgar Allan Poe.

In the days since the break-in, Nixon had come to believe—likely incorrectly, as history would show—that John Mitchell had approved the burglary and related dirty tricks. With Haldeman, the president determined that the risk of allowing Mitchell to stay as the campaign director was too great. He had to go.

The onetime attorney general, who had been in charge of the campaign less than four months, came to the White House on June 30, where in as gentle a way as they could, Nixon and Haldeman pushed him to promptly resign. “The longer you wait, the more risk each hour brings. You run the risk of more stuff, valid or invalid, surfacing on the Watergate caper,” Haldeman said. “As of now there is no problem there. As of any moment in the future there is at least a potential problem.” “I’d cut the loss fast,” Nixon added. “I’d cut it fast. If we’re going to do it, I’d cut it fast.” Martha’s very public unraveling, they argued, was the perfect humanitarian excuse to step out of any possible Watergate spotlight. Mitchell should just say that his wife’s health and stability require his attention. Everyone would believe it. “A hell of a lot of people will like that answer—they would,” Nixon said encouragingly.

It was one of the saddest moments of Watergate, a turning point that could have averted the disaster to come. Nixon, shy and desperate as always to avoid personal confrontation, couldn’t take the opportunity to have a real conversation or inquire about the truth—even with one of the closest and most trusted aides in his world, a man who perhaps had no more foreknowledge of the burglary than he did. Mitchell followed the direction, announcing soon after, “I have found that I can no longer [carry out the job] and still meet the one obligation which must come first: the happiness and welfare of my wife and daughter.”

As Nixon and Haldeman predicted, most newspapers took Mitchell’s departure at face value. “Investigation today turned up no evidence that any pressure had been applied to Mr. Mitchell to resign,” the New York Times reported under a top-of-the-front-page headline reading, “Mitchell Quits Post, Putting Family First.”

Hunt’s biographer, Tad Szulc, would write that the onetime CIA officer’s post-burglary behavior was “a story of deceit, lies, blackmail, and disloyalty toward virtually everybody with whom he had been associated.”

Dean, notably, would tell the Senate Watergate Committee that permission to use campaign funds came from Mitchell during a meeting on June 28; the meeting, apparently, never happened. Later investigations would turn up that Mitchell was actually in New York on the day Dean says they met to plot the hush money.

“In our view, [Liddy] and Hunt considered themselves James Bond types, super sleuths and big macho-male types.”

The election would continue, and votes would be cast with no knowledge that anything unbecoming had unfolded in the midst of the campaign, much less that a bizarre local D.C. burglary potentially had ties to the Oval Office—until July 22, when the story roared back to life. That morning Newsday reported that Liddy had been fired from the campaign for refusing to cooperate with investigators. Later that week, the New York Times heightened the drama when it broke a major new revelation on its front page from one of its White House writers, Walter Rugaber.

Rugaber’s scoop spurred the Washington Post to reassemble their Watergate team—managing editor Howard Simons, annoyed, cornered city editor Barry Sussman with the Times in hand and demanded, “Why didn’t we have that?”I And by the end of the day, Woodward and Bernstein were back on the beat until further notice—though in its own way, the assignment of two young, inexperienced reporters amid a newsroom filled with respected veterans still indicated how little attention the Post expected to get out of the scandal.