Poisoning The Press

by Mark Feldstein

  Nonetheless, the Nixon administration publicly asserted that Anderson “blew our best intelligence source in the Soviet Union.” The muckraker insisted that the Russians already knew their phone conversations were monitored and the Justice Department soon publicly confirmed that fact. But CIA director Helms told Anderson that Soviet leaders sometimes seemed to forget about the eavesdropping and had resumed talking on their car phones; as a result, the columnist agreed not to publish any more articles that might remind the Kremlin about the bugging. Still, despite Anderson’s cooperation, Nixon’s men continued to claim that the reporter endangered national security, and embellished the details over time. “As the direct result of an Anderson story,” Nixon operative G. Gordon Liddy charged, “a top U.S. intelligence source abroad” was tortured or killed. No evidence was ever produced to support such an outlandish assertion. But it would soon become the rationale for a White House plot to assassinate Anderson.

  Meanwhile, the President worried what other secrets the muckraker might reveal. Her father “had been shaken” by Anderson’s classified disclosures, Julie Nixon Eisenhower remembered, and it “contributed to the feeling of vulnerability in the White House and the determination to prevent future breaches of security.” Nixon was particularly concerned about Yeoman Radford. “The P[resident]’s been doing a lot of thinking since this blew on the Anderson papers,” White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman wrote in his diary. “Anderson’s guy also has the dope on” secret negotiations in Paris that Henry Kissinger had been conducting for the past two and a half years with the North Vietnamese. “It’s a time bomb,” Nixon believed, and the “worst way for this to come out is via Anderson with his distorted view.”

  To head off Anderson, the President decided to publicize the talks himself. In January 1972, in a speech televised live to the nation, Nixon dramatically revealed the clandestine meetings even while acknowledging that they had been unsuccessful. “There was never a leak,” the Chief Executive declared proudly, “because we were determined not to jeopardize the secret negotiations.” As usual, the news media swallowed the White House line—Nixon’s “amazingly well-kept secret,” The Phoenix Gazette reported, “should surprise Jack Anderson”—but some administration officials were baffled about why the President suddenly decided to make the failed talks public. “I wouldn’t do it,” Nixon confided privately, “except for the . . . Anderson Papers.” In the words of one administration official: “They were afraid that Jack Anderson was going to scoop them.”

  At the same time, White House officials began a charm offensive to try to put the Anderson revelations behind them. The President’s PR advisors urged Kissinger to trot out gags from comedian Bob Hope at an upcoming Washington Press Club dinner. Kissinger agreed and duly amused reporters with what he called “Teutonic jokes” and satirical yarns “on [the] Anderson papers.” Nixon himself put in a cameo at the banquet and made fun of Kissinger over the Anderson leak. It went over so well that the President repeated the trick two weeks later at a news conference, although he ruined his joke by awkwardly explaining it afterward—and then immodestly congratulated himself for having kept his “good humor.”

  Privately, however, Nixon and his men were as humorless and vindictive as ever. “I would like to get ahold of this Anderson and hang him,” Attorney General Mitchell said.

  “Goddammit, yes,” the President replied. “So listen, the day after the election, win or lose, we’ve got to do something with this son of a bitch.”

  “I would,” Mitchell agreed.

  “The statute of limitations [for prosecuting Anderson] won’t have run [out], will it?” Nixon pressed.

  “Won’t have run [out] at all,” the attorney general advised.

  “He’s guilty as hell, isn’t he?” Haldeman asked.

  “No question about it,” the nation’s chief law enforcement official answered.

  Word of the President’s decision quickly spread through the White House. “Lay off Anderson [for] now and tell all our people,” Nixon instructed Ehrlichman. “We’ll prosecute Anderson and the rest of them after the election.”

  But there was no need to wait until after the election to begin gathering evidence against the columnist. Administration aides explored setting up a covert operation to open Anderson’s mail, but FBI officials convinced the White House that such a move would be “too risky.” Attorney General Mitchell suggested wiretapping the newsman’s phone but the President refused to approve that plan either. According to journalist Seymour Hersh, “Nixon apparently feared that Anderson’s contacts inside the FBI were so extensive that he would be tipped off about a legally authorized wiretap” and might learn of additional illegal taps ordered on others: “Nixon’s fear of Anderson—of what he knew, or could learn, about the workings of the White House—was acute.” So the President and his advisors instead decided to monitor Anderson indirectly through his source, Yeoman Radford. “Nixon was really very interested in pinning the whole thing on Anderson,” Ehrlichman explained.

  The attorney general contacted Deputy FBI Director W. Mark Felt, the source later immortalized as “Deep Throat,” who had investigated bogus allegations of White House homosexuality trumped up by Anderson two and a half years earlier. This time, Mitchell informed Felt that “Anderson had planted an informant” inside the White House and that “the President was gravely concerned over this . . . security breach.” Because the leak “was unquestionably related to national security,” Nixon wanted the FBI to spy on Radford. Felt warned Mitchell that physical surveillance of the yeoman “might be very dangerous because if Radford became aware of [it and told] Jack Anderson, even more damaging columns could result.” Wiretaps, however, were less likely to be discovered and were soon installed at Radford’s home and office and at his stepfather’s house. At the same time, the Pentagon secretly planted an informant to work alongside the yeoman and spy on his activities.

  No judge or court authorized the warrantless taps of Anderson’s source—the attorney general was careful not to put his order in writing—but FBI memos justified this departure from the law based on “the necessity for maintaining the fewest possible records” because of the “obvious” risk that the bugging would be “leaked to Jack Anderson,” a danger that was described as “very real and very great.” To ensure that the President and attorney general were “advised on a day-to-day basis of developments in this case,” agents hand-delivered daily summaries of the Radford taps to the White House and Justice Department inside sealed envelopes.

  Haldeman was skeptical that this spying would be useful. Radford “would know that he’d be tapped and he would go use a [pay] phone [and] leave his phone off,” the White House chief of staff cautioned. But the President wanted to proceed anyway. “You might get something,” Nixon pointed out. “You never know if the guy’s smart, and his wife may be dumb enough to make a call and you’ll learn a few things.”

  Sure enough, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover soon discovered that “the first person [Radford] called following his arrival on the [West] coast was Jack Anderson.” Ehrlichman reported the preliminary results of the FBI’s investigation: “On the telephone Radford had sounded very worried” and “got a little code worked out” with Anderson using pseudonyms and trusted intermediaries to signal when to speak on a safe, predesignated line. “And so they hang up and [Radford] goes off and uses a pay phone and calls Anderson.” The wiretaps, one investigator concluded, “did, in fact, reveal a rather close and somewhat surreptitious relationship between Radford and Jack Anderson.”

  Still, this was circumstantial evidence only, not enough to convict either the troublesome columnist or his source in court. Nixon’s men never uncovered the one action that might have led to successful prosecution of Anderson: his secret payment to Radford of several thousand dollars. The administration did know that the yeoman was pressed for money and that to supplement his income he worked part-time at other jobs, including as a newspaper deliveryman, a drugstore clerk, and
a $2.10-an-hour security guard. Radford’s “checking account has never been over $100” and was frequently overdrawn, federal investigators found, and he owed several thousand dollars to various creditors, including the J. C. Penney department store. Yet the yeoman suddenly acquired money and a new car, according to his commanding officer. “The only place Radford could have gotten the cash,” his navy supervisor believed, “is from Anderson.” But the federal government, with all its investigative might, was never able to prove it.

  Decades later, Anderson confided what happened: the sailor called Anderson’s parents and told them about his financial difficulties. In turn, Orlando and Agnes Anderson relayed the conversation to their son. The columnist already felt guilty about Radford’s troubles. “He was naïve and I took advantage of him,” Anderson confessed. So the newsman phoned the yeoman. “I’d like to help you but I can’t give you any money because it would be misinterpreted and it would hurt you more than me,” Anderson explained. The navy clerk mentioned that he owned some undeveloped land in California located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Anderson had no interest in purchasing the property but to help Radford agreed to buy it anyway, sight unseen, for nine thousand dollars. To avoid the appearance of bribing a source, Anderson used his best friend from high school as a middleman to keep the newsman’s name off the property deed and thus hide the deal from prying eyes. “It was really a payoff,” the columnist admitted a few months before he died. “I could argue it wasn’t a payoff but it really was.”

  President Nixon and his men never uncovered Anderson’s “payoff” even though they maintained their tap on Radford’s phones for more than five months. Had they discovered the secret transaction, they might have tried to indict Anderson for bribery and conspiracy. Instead, hapless government investigators were forced to listen in on the Radford family’s phone conversations, day after day, week after week—and still they came up empty-handed. The administration finally discontinued this eavesdropping two days after Nixon’s men were caught bugging the Watergate office building. “At that point,” John Ehrlichman recalled, “Nixon decided to hang it up . . . The thing was just too touchy.”

  In early 1972, the Nixon administration escalated its war on Jack Anderson. Besides warrantless wiretapping and homosexual smears, the President’s men also dispatched CIA operatives to spy on the columnist. Under the law, the CIA was explicitly prohibited from domestic spying. Yet that is exactly what it did in a massive and illegal covert operation against Anderson code-named “Project Mudhen,” named for the swamp bird that digs in the dirt and squawks when it’s angry.

  CIA officials began the operation by dusting off their old files on the newsman. A 1967 CIA report described him as “opinionated, self-righteous, ambitious and highly envious (therefore belligerent) toward anyone in a position of power, especially ‘Establishment’ types.” Another memo stated that “ANDERSON’s politics are not known; however, it is generally conceded from most sources that he is a ‘first-class liar.’ ” To update its findings, analysts put together a new twenty-five-page study of the journalist, gathered from public records by officers using “assumed names” because of “the extreme sensitivity of this case and the requirement that under no circumstances” should Anderson “be alerted to this inquiry.” This CIA profile did not improve on earlier ones, mixing factual inaccuracies with unverified gossip in an unintentional parody of semiliterate bureaucratic nomenclature. Anderson “exhibits a flamboyant attitude and personal appearance” and “conducts his professional activities in an overt manner,” CIA spooks wrote:

  [His] column and writings are of the exposé, sensationalistic, muckraking variety . . . He readily admits to being a publicity seeker and is apparently basking in the focus of attention which has come his way as a result of his recent disclosures . . . He eludes [sic] to a network of informants which he says he does not pay . . . [who] will conceivably continue to provide him with classified material when they (sources) feel so inclined.

  Much of this “intelligence” was patently ludicrous. For example, operatives reported that “it is thought” that Anderson has “connections with unidentified officials of the New York Times,” a wholly unsurprising fact given his twenty-five-year career as a Washington journalist. “That must have been my paper boy,” Anderson later laughed.

  In January 1972, the CIA began physical surveillance of Anderson. The agency dispatched a team of sixteen undercover officers in eight different vehicles—equipped with two-way radios, binoculars, and telephoto lenses—to conduct their spying around-the-clock. Intelligence analysts assigned “operational cryptonyms”—aliases—to refer to the “Merry-Go-Round” staff. Thus teetotaling Anderson’s CIA code name was “BRANDY,” secretary Opal Ginn was dubbed “SHERRY,” and young legman Brit Hume was called “EGGNOG.” The spies put together black briefing binders filled with photos, neighborhood maps, and auto license plate numbers of their targets. In February, the CIA rented a room high up in the Statler Hilton Hotel, across the street from Anderson’s office, to watch and photograph the comings and goings of the newsman and his informants; ironically, it was located just around the corner from the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel, where Anderson had conducted his own electronic eavesdropping fourteen years earlier. The mudhens had come home to roost.

  Over a period of three months, operatives recorded the movements of the Anderson family and staff in voluminous detail:

  January 13: “On most days, BRANDY goes to bed at approximately 0200 hours and awakes at approximately 0730 hours.”

  March 4: “12:05, Subject and spouse enter the RENWICK Art Museum . . . 13:06, Subject and spouse depart gallery . . . Spouse goes to a newspaper dispensing machine. She apparently has trouble and spouse assists.”

  March 20: “08:45, Subject’s spouse and two children depart house in Plymouth [auto], heading in direction of school. 17:00, Two unidentified Negroes depart office of subject.”

  What did the CIA learn from its surveillance? That Anderson is a “somewhat careless driver and often violates speed limits and related traffic procedures.” Meanwhile, his reporter Les Whitten “operates his personal automobile in a fast, impatient manner and will deviate from normal routes in order to avoid minor traffic delays,” while his legman Joe Spear was “maintaining a rather routine pattern of professional activities.” (“In other words, we were boring as hell,” Spear complained upon reading his file. “I kind of felt bad about that. How do you explain to your buddies that your own CIA spied on you . . . and concluded you were boring?”) The government operatives stalked the columnist to restaurants where he ate lunch, radio and television studios where he taped broadcasts, and universities where he delivered speeches. The spies sat and listened to the columnist’s lectures on the First Amendment, duly noting in one surveillance report that their nefarious target “concluded his discourse by declaring that our government is the best in the world.”

  At one point, CIA officers followed and filmed Anderson as he was being followed and filmed by a television crew from the CBS program 60 Minutes. The undercover spies shadowed the muckraker and his entourage while Anderson was interviewed in front of a range of visual backdrops at the White House, Pentagon, Justice Department, and U.S. Capitol. “The caravan of cars going from place to place must have made quite a ring-around-the-rosy,” Anderson realized later, “with me in the lead, the CBS crew tailing me, and the CIA bringing up the rear.”

  In one particularly madcap scene, CIA spooks bugged their own boss, Director Richard Helms, as he lunched with Anderson and asked the columnist not to publish details about U.S. eavesdropping on Kremlin telephones. The meeting was Helms’s idea, not Anderson’s, but paranoid CIA operatives decided that the muckraker might secretly record it: “There is documented evidence (e.g., the . . . Sherman Adams case) that BRANDY has previously engaged in audio operations” and had recently been spotted “in possession of portable recording equipment.” Why the newsman would even want to tape Helms in the first place was nev
er spelled out. After all, a conversation in which the notoriously taciturn intelligence chief urged Anderson not to publish government secrets did not promise significant newsworthy disclosures. Nevertheless, the overactive CIA posted two teams of undercover operatives in a restaurant while other agents spied on Anderson’s reporters to make sure they didn’t engage in “counter-surveillance.” “There was no explanation as to why [my staff] might spend their lunch hour taking pictures of me eating with Richard Helms,” Anderson later wrote, but “Helms was rigged with sophisticated electronic equipment capable either of detecting or neutralizing my non-existent recording device. A CIA technician, I understand, manned the dials in a nearby mobile unit or hotel room.” Afterward, the spies congratulated themselves on preventing any possible mishaps. But none of it helped the CIA with its ostensible objective: shutting down the journalist’s access to classified documents.

  For more than a month, Anderson and his staff were oblivious to the surveillance, but in late March, one of the newsman’s neighbors noticed some suspicious “loitering” in the parking lot of a church on a nearby hilltop. “Men in heavy coats carrying binoculars and cameras would emerge from their cars and study something off in the distance,” Anderson learned. “My friend naturally [became] curious about what they were watching. After they had driven off one evening, he strolled over to the parking lot and looked out across the landscape. Below, in full view, was my house. He hurried back home and gave me a call.” Suitably warned, Anderson “began keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. Sure enough, I noticed my car being tailed, awkwardly and conspicuously, by a series of other cars.” Anderson experimented with speeding up and slowing down, but the autos—especially a distinctive yellow sedan—always reappeared.