All the President's Men

by Woodward, Bob

  Then Kalmbach had to be one of the five persons with authority to approve disbursements from the secret stash in Stans’ safe, Woodward suggested.

  “Well, yes,” Sloan said. “But he had some of the money in California.”

  The money from Stans’ safe?

  It was all really one cash fund, whether it was in California or Washington, Sloan said; it had all showed up on the same burned books. It was a Special Projects fund.

  For espionage and political sabotage?

  “That’s what it was, but I didn’t know it at the time,” said Sloan. He responded with resignation, off-handedly, like a patient recounting a bad dream to a psychiatrist for the fourth time.

  Kalmbach had distributed other money from the fund, far in excess of the amount received by Segretti, Sloan said. But he would not disclose how much or to whom. “The cash fund seems to be at the center of this,” he understated.

  Woodward called Bernstein in the country and filled him in. Bernstein agreed that Kalmbach’s control over the fund was more important than the payments to Segretti and should lead the story Woodward would write. It would also include the Time material on Strachan, which Woodward had been unable to confirm.

  This time, the White House did not trouble to comment, and the next day’s front page of the Washington Post carried a two-column head above Herbert Kalmbach’s picture: “Lawyer for Nixon Said to Have Used GOP’s Spy Fund.”

  Woodward had taken time out to watch John D. Ehrlichman’s appearance on ABC-TV’s Issues and Answers. On TV, Ehrlichman resembled a snarling prune, he thought, one eyebrow cocked high, the other low. He was saying that everything in the papers about the Nixon campaign’s program of political espionage and sabotage involved “a lot of charges, not much proof, not any proof. . . .” He suggested that the McGovern campaign was somehow responsible for the allegations which people were reading in their newspapers and hearing on television.

  Reminding the audience that the election was only three weeks away, Ehrlichman said this was the “mud month,” when political charges would be thrown around. He was not personally aware of any campaign of political espionage mounted by Republicans in or out of the administration, he said; certainly nobody in the White House had known anything about Watergate in advance. He couldn’t “affirm or deny” the charge that Chapin was involved with Segretti. But, he added, it was important to distinguish between the Watergate bugging, which “involves a crime,” and such activities as “finding out what the other fellow’s schedule is.” Political pranks, said Ehrlichman, that kind of thing, “has been in American politics as long as I can remember.”

  Woodward and Bernstein concluded that Ehrlichman was perhaps the only high White House aide clean enough on Watergate to be safely trotted out before the TV cameras. Haldeman sure as hell couldn’t be sent out—not after the Chapin story. Both felt certain that Ehrlichman’s appearance signaled that he was clear. Maybe Deep Throat had been wrong when he said Ehrlichman had ordered Howard Hunt out of town.

  • • •

  Ehrlichman’s remarks on television were a mild prelude. The Chapin connection had brought Watergate to the doors of the Oval Office. Now the White House was ready to fight back. Although Time had developed information as damaging as the Washington Post’s, the paper had been selected as the target.

  It began with Ron Ziegler’s White House briefing the next morning, October 16.

  “Mr. Chapin has made a comment on that, and I don’t have anything to add to it,” Ziegler responded to the first question concerning the Segretti connection.

  QUESTION: “Is the President concerned about the report?”

  ZIEGLER: “The President is concerned about the technique being applied by the opposition in the stories themselves. I would say his concern goes to the fact that stories are being run that are based on hearsay, innuendo, guilt by association.”

  QUESTION: “Who is the opposition?”

  ZIEGLER: “Well, I think the opposition is clear. You know, since the Watergate case broke, people have been trying to link the case with the White House . . . and no link has been established . . . because no link exists. Since that time the opposition has been making charges which are not substantiated, stories have been written which are not substantiated, stories have been written that are based upon hearsay and on sources that will not reveal themselves, and all of this is being intermingled into an allegation that this administration, as the opposition points out, is corrupt. . . . That is what I am referring to and I am not going to comment on that type of story.”

  QUESTION: “Why don’t you deny the charges?”

  ZIEGLER: “I am not going to dignify these types of stories with a comment . . . it goes without saying that this administration does not condone sabotage or espionage or surveillance of individuals, but it also does not condone innuendo or source stories that make broad sweeping charges about the character of individuals.”

  The White House had decided that the conduct of the press, not the conduct of the President’s men, was the issue.

  “The President has confidence in Mr. Chapin,” Ziegler concluded.

  Speaking to an assembly of black Republicans at a downtown Washington hotel that afternoon, Senator Bob Dole, the Republican national chairman, delivered three pages of prepared remarks designed to link the Post’s investigative reporting with the failing fortunes of Senator McGovern’s campaign. Less restrained than Ziegler, Dole got right to the point:

  For the last week, the Republican Party has been the victim of a barrage of unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations by George McGovern and his partner-in-mud-slinging, the Washington Post. Given the present straits in which the McGovern campaign finds itself, Mr. McGovern appears to have turned over the franchise for his media attack campaign to the editors of the Washington Post, who have shown themselves every bit as sure-footed along the low road of this campaign as their candidate.

  While wire service stories on Dole’s and Ziegler’s statements piled up, the reporters were told that Clark MacGregor, Mitchell’s successor as director of the Nixon campaign, had scheduled a 5:00 P.M. press conference to discuss the latest charges of political espionage and sabotage. Both reporters hated press conferences and rarely attended them, but Bernstein decided to go to this one. He had never seen MacGregor and wanted to find out if his reputation of being open with reporters was deserved. When Bernstein arrived in the large conference room at CRP headquarters shortly before five, an unusually large crowd of about 100 reporters was waiting.

  MacGregor entered the room from the rear and walked up the middle aisle. He is a big man, six foot three inches, about 210 pounds. Arriving at the lectern, he grabbed both sides of it and gave a halfhearted smile. Because of the “unusual developments of the past few days,” MacGregor said, he would be unable to answer any questions.

  Clark Mollenhoff, six foot four inches and 230 pounds, Washington bureau chief of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, rose, his face contorted in anger. Mollenhoff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, had briefly served at the White House as resident ombudsman charged with keeping things honest. MacGregor and Mollenhoff looked like two giants getting ready to lay clubs on each other.

  “What credibility do you have?” Mollenhoff shouted. His voice was booming, and the other reporters fell silent. “What documents have you seen?” Mollenhoff demanded. “Because if you can’t tell us, you have no right to stand there.”

  When MacGregor had entered the room, copies of his prepared statement had been handed out, so the reporters knew what was coming. Others were shouting at him now, though none as vigorously as Mollenhoff. “Why should we sit here and listen to you, why should we print a word you say?” he insisted.

  “That will be a matter you will have to determine in consultation with your editors,” MacGregor replied. Then, looking into the television cameras, he began reading:

  According to the Gallup, Harris, Sindlinger and Yankelovich polls, the politic
al elitist movement known as McGovernism is about to be repudiated overwhelmingly by the American people. As it should be. But frustrated, 26 points behind in the polls, with three weeks to go, George McGovern and his confederates are now engaging in the “politics of desperation.” We are witnessing some of the dirtiest tactics and hearing some of the most offensive language ever to appear in an American presidential campaign.

  Lashing out wildly, George McGovern has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler, the Republican Party to the Ku Klux Klan, and the United States Government to the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. . . .

  And the Washington Post’s credibility has today sunk lower than that of George McGovern.

  Using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, anonymous sources and huge scare headlines, the Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate—a charge which the Post knows and half a dozen investigations have found to be false.

  The hallmark of the Post’s campaign is hypocrisy—and its celebrated “double standard” is today visible for all to see.

  Unproven charges by McGovern aides, or Senator Muskie, about alleged campaign disruptions that occurred more than six months ago are invariably given treatment normally accorded to declarations of war—while proven facts of opposition-incited disruptions of the President’s campaign are buried deep inside the paper. When McGovern headquarters in California was used as a boiler room to rally hardcore, anti-war militants to confront the President—that was apparently of no significance to a newspaper which has dispatched a platoon of reporters to investigate charges that somebody sent two hundred pizzas to a Muskie rally last spring.

  Bernstein groaned. It was the second time that day that the President’s surrogates had mentioned the “pizzas.” He and Woodward had considered leaving it out of the story they had written on the harassment of Muskie’s campaign because it might appear trivial. But they had listed it as among the tricks that had been intended to disrupt a Muskie fund-raising dinner—like sending a number of items COD, timed to arrive during the affair.

  Implying that the McGovern campaign was responsible, now MacGregor was demanding to know why the Washington Post hadn’t investigated . . .

  The Molotov cocktail discovered on October 8 at the door of the Newhall, California, Nixon headquarters?

  The extensive fire damage suffered September 17th by the Nixon headquarters in Hollywood, California?

  The arson of September 25th which caused more than $100,000 in damage to the Nixon headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona?

  The extensive window breaking and other trashing this fall at Nixon storefronts in New York City; Arlington, Massachusetts; and Los Angeles County?*

  MacGregor went angrily on for several more minutes about Mc-Govern’s encouragement of “Daniel Ellsberg to commit a deed for which he faces a possible 115 years in a Federal Penitentiary,” and about the Washington Post’s hypocrisy. By the time he had finished, he was flushed and shaking. He mentioned again the “unusual circumstances” that prevented him from entertaining questions, and strode from the room. A number of incensed reporters yelled their questions, and, less calm than when he’d arrived, Bernstein joined the shouting match. As MacGregor passed, Bernstein shouted, “Are you willing to deny the Chapin story?” But MacGregor merely looked at him blankly as he passed.

  When Bernstein returned to the office, Ben Bradlee was examining the statements by Ziegler, Dole and MacGregor, noting that all had emphasized the same things and had used similar language. At the Post, there was little doubt that the attacks were orchestrated and, if not ordered by the President, made with his knowledge and approval.

  Reporters from other news organizations were calling Bradlee for a response. He put a sheet of his two-ply paper in his typewriter and banged out a statement:

  Time will judge between Clark MacGregor’s press release and the Washington Post’s reporting of the various activities of CRP. For now it is enough to say that not a single fact contained in the investigative reporting by this newspaper about these activities has been successfully challenged. MacGregor and other high administration officials have called these stories “a collection of absurdities” and the Post “malicious,” but the facts are on the record, unchallenged by contrary evidence.

  Bradlee was primed for a fight. He sensed that “the denials were not holding water.” Weeks earlier, he had told Bernstein and Woodward that he was not about to go on the defensive, and had urged them to use extra caution.

  Now, in his office, he showed them his statement and offered some further advice. “I understated it before,” he said. “This is the hardest hardball that’s ever been played in this town. We all have to be very careful, in the office and out. I don’t want to know anything about your personal lives, that’s your business.” But if the reporters were doing anything that they didn’t want known, “cut it out,” Bradlee advised Watch who you talk to, who you hang around with; be careful on the telephones; start saving receipts for income taxes and get a lawyer to handle any future tax matters; make sure nobody brings any dope into your house; be restrained in what you say to others about the President and the administration.

  Bradlee was saying nothing that the reporters hadn’t discussed between themselves, and they had taken those precautions.

  “Okay, fellas?” Bradlee asked rhetorically, then tightened his fist and delivered a lightning-fast uppercut to the air. He grasped his biceps with his opposite hand as he followed through the punch.

  Outside Bradlee’s office, Harry Rosenfeld was pacing around the newsroom, getting nervous. Bernstein and Woodward were budgeted to do a page-one story on the attacks. Few stories cause editors so much anxiety as those in which their newspapers and reporters are protagonists. Rosenfeld wanted to ensure that the story was absolutely fair to the administration. So did Bernstein and Woodward, but they were also insisting that it be fair to their reporting.

  They described the attacks on the paper as having failed to answer the allegations. Rosenfeld struck the paragraph—it was “argumentative.” It was one thing to be fair to the White House, the reporters said, but Rosenfeld was being unfair to their work and to the paper. Rosenfeld insisted, maintaining that the offending paragraph gave the appearance of bias. He was getting angry.

  The first-edition story was very short because of the dispute. Writing for the second edition, Bernstein and Woodward renewed the debate, insisting that Dole, Ziegler and MacGregor had not addressed the substance of the Post’s allegations.

  Compounding the problem was Bernstein’s deadline-pushing. Both Woodward and Rosenfeld were hollering at him. Bernstein kept making language changes in what Woodward had written and Rosenfeld had approved, putting everyone’s nerves on edge. It took four hours to get a barely satisfactory story—a 52-inch monster that quoted endlessly and offered the reader little help in understanding the charges and countercharges. It had been a disastrous night.

  • • •

  Newspapers across the country reported the next day on the ire of the President’s men. The White House was pitting its credibility against the Washington Post’s, and in the process was giving the paper’s allegations more currency.

  On October 18, the New York Times published a story that severely undermined the White House position. The Times had obtained telephone records which showed that Donald Segretti’s telephone or credit card had been used for at least half a dozen calls to the White House and to Dwight Chapin’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. In addition, Segretti’s phone or credit card had been used for at least 21 calls to Howard Hunt’s home and office.

  The White House would have a rough time brushing aside that documentation as hearsay, innuendo, or geyser of misinformation. Bernstein and Woodward were in the Post’s newsroom about 11:00 P.M. on the night of the 17th when the Times front-page facsimile came over the UPL.* They were ecstatic, their competitive instincts abandoned in gratitude.

 
; At the White House the next noonday, October 18, Ron Ziegler faced a hostile and aggressive press corps. Asked repeatedly to deny specifically the allegations and evidence cited by the Post, the Times, and Time magazine since October 10, he dodged and darted, retreating each time to the break-in at the Watergate.

  “My observation on it [the New York Times story] is, in reading it, that it links Mr. Chapin by suggestion to the Watergate case. . . . I will repeat again today that no one presently employed at the White House had any involvement, awareness or association with the Watergate case.”

  What about political spying and sabotage aside from the June 17 break-in at the Watergate?

  “In the briefing yesterday and the day before yesterday, I made it clear that no one in the White House at any time directed activities of sabotage, spying, espionage, or activities that related to following people around and compiling dossiers on them or anything such as that.”

  Reporters tried to refine their questions to draw a direct response. Each time, Ziegler gave the same answer, carefully using the word “directed” and avoiding “involved.”

  An insistent reporter tried to nail the secretary: “Three times you’ve used the word ‘directed.’ Were they aware of what was going on?”

  “I think ‘directed’ is quite clear. As I said before, anyone who would have been involved in any such activity wouldn’t be around here any more.”

  “But are you asserting that nobody in the White House was involved in this?”

  “I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here.”

  Involved in what? Some of the reporters recalled that Ziegler’s talent for communication had first been tested as a Disneyland barker during summer vacations from college, taking tourists on the Jungle Ride. “Welcome aboard, folks. My name’s Ron. I’m your skipper and guide down the River of Adventure. . . . Note the alligators. Please keep your hands inside the boat. They’re always looking for a hand out. Look back at the dock; it may be the last time you ever see it. Note the natives on the bank; they’re always trying to get a head.”