“Your perseverance has been admirable,” she said. “Apply it to what I say.”
Bernstein, who had no idea what to expect, thought she sounded like some kind of mystic.
She began with Haldeman: “Someone had to pull the strings. You have a lot of company in thinking it’s Haldeman. . . . John Dean is very interesting. It would be really interesting to know what Dean’s investigation really was. His involvement went way beyond that. . . . Magruder and Mitchell are very definitely involved. . . . Mitchell requires more perseverance.”
Bernstein had already interrupted her several times, but she would not be more specific. Involved in what? Dirty tricks? Wiretapping?
She advised him to consider Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and Mardian as a group. “Disclosure is the common thread,” she said. “ . . . Yes, of wiretap information.”
Meaning they had received information from the Watergate tap?
“Disclosure,” she repeated, “is the common thread. When people have jobs to lose in high places, they will go to any extent to protect them. The general theme is ‘Don’t blow the lid,’ even now. They are better organized now than before June 17. They are good organizers but, to a certain extent, very sloppy. Financing is the most important way to learn who is involved. Pursue other Segrettis. Kalmbach was the paymaster. A lot of activities grew out of Plumbing. It goes back a lot farther than the Pentagon Papers. The Plumbers are quite relevant; two of them were indicted. I’d like to know how many more Plumbers there were.”
Bernstein tried to learn more.
Z said there would be no further messages; he was forbidden to call her.
• • •
The next night, Woodward and Bernstein drove the familiar route to Hugh Sloan’s house. Perhaps he could help decipher Z’s message. Knowing that Sloan was always less than anxious to see them, they did not telephone ahead. As usual, he was too polite to close the door in their faces. He looked pale and defeated. He had lost weight. He invited them into the front hallway. The job-hunting was going badly, he said—the taint of Watergate. Equally awful, there was no end in sight to the trials and civil suits and depositions that were making him a professional witness at about $20 a day. They did not know how to respond. Visiting Sloan always made them feel like vultures.
The reporters outlined what they had learned from Z, but Sloan said he could make no more sense of it than they. Then he was apologetic about the Haldeman debacle, and finally it became painfully clear what had happened that night in the rain. Sloan had misunderstood Woodward’s question, thinking that Woodward had inquired if Sloan would have named Haldeman before the grand jury had he been asked.
Now he was more enlightening than before on Haldeman’s relationship to the fund and to CRP:
“Bob ran the committee through Magruder until Mitchell and Secretary Stans came over in the first part of ‘72. Jeb authorized the first payments to Liddy. I think Liddy was still working at the White House at the time, in the summer of ‘71. Actually, Haldeman stood behind all four who got bulk payments from the fund: Kalmbach, Liddy, Magruder and Porter.”
Haldeman was insulated from the fund. Magruder, Kalmbach, Stans and even Mitchell had effectively acted on his behalf, Sloan explained. Haldeman had never personally ordered Sloan to hand out any payments. But spending money was the province of the White House chief. “Maury [Stans] frequently complained that too much money was being given out [from the fund],” he said.
Woodward asked more about the structure of Haldeman’s office. Chapin was the presidential appointments secretary; Strachan, the political lieutenant; Larry Higby, the office manager and majordomo; and Alexander Butterfield supervised “internal security and the paper flow to the President.” Typing his notes that night, Woodward underlined the words “internal security.” That was the name of the Justice Department division in charge of government wiretapping, formerly headed by Robert Mardian.
• • •
While Woodward typed his notes, Bernstein pulled out a three-inch-thick file folder marked “To Be Checked.” Several days earlier, Lawrence Meyer, a city-staff reporter whose beat was the federal courthouse, had obtained a confidential copy of a routine legal agreement between the prosecutors and attorneys for the seven Watergate defendants—whose trial was to begin on January 8. Bernstein read the 12-page “stipulation.” It described telephone, travel and bank records that the prosecution and defense had agreed were accurate. Most of the information was already known to the reporters. Two matters intrigued them, however. There was evidence that Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt had traveled to Los Angeles together under false names on September 4, 1971, and also on January 7, 1972, and February 17, 1972. That included the period when both were working at the White House, months before the Watergate break-in. They also found a note that a telephone had been installed “on August 16, 1971, in room 16 of the Executive Office Building located at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C., and . . . disconnected on March 15, 1972.” It had been listed in the name and home address of Kathleen Chenow, of Alexandria, Virginia.
There was no Kathleen Chenow in the phone book, but, using a crisscross directory, Bernstein found a former roommate who said Miss Chenow had moved to Milwaukee. He reached her there. It took only a few minutes to establish that Kathleen Chenow had been the “Plumbers’ ”secretary. She did not seem hesitant about talking. Bernstein, who could hardly remember the last time he had encountered a willing source, did not know quite where to start. He finally asked her just who and what the Plumbers were. Her answer was straightforward: The Plumbers were Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy, David Young and Egil (Bud) Krogh. They investigated “leaks” to the news media and reported to John Ehrlichman. Their office was in the Executive Office Building basement, across from the White House. Technically, she had been David Young’s secretary; he was on loan to Ehrlichman’s staff from Dr. Henry Kissinger’s office. Young had made regular reports to Ehrlichman on the progress of the Plumbers’ investigations. Krogh was one of Ehrlichman’s principal deputies.
“Originally the administration had wanted a study of how close the New York Times version of the Pentagon Papers was to the actual documents,” she explained. “Then they tried to determine how the Pentagon Papers got out. That started it all, the business of looking for leaks. For a while, they were studying State Department leaks. They checked embassy cables and tried to put two and two together about whose desks the cables went across. Most of Mr. Hunt’s work that I saw was State Department cables he had reviewed dealing with the substance of the Pentagon Papers.”
Bernstein asked if she could remember what specific leaks had been investigated.
“The Pentagon Papers, of course. Then there was a time when Jack Anderson was running columns on the administration, in December. They were checking those for leaks, too. Mr. Mardian from the Justice Department came down to the basement two or three times during that period.
“There was another occasion when Mr. Mardian was at a big meeting in Mr. Krogh’s office with Liddy, Hunt and three or four people I didn’t recognize,” Chenow said. “And David [Young] used to talk to John Mitchell . . . I don’t know what about; I don’t know how often.”
• • •
He asked about the telephone listed in the “stipulation.”
“That was Mr. Hunt’s phone. It was put in for me to answer and take messages for him. Mr. Barker always called on that phone; he was about the only one who ever called. It rang an average of once a week, sometimes two or three times a week.” Hunt and Bernard Barker “were always chummy on the phone: Mr. Hunt would usually say ‘How are you? What you been up to?’ . . . Sometimes when he talked to Mr. Barker he spoke Spanish; he apparently liked to speak Spanish for some reason. . . . No, I don’t speak Spanish. . . . I remember Mr. Hunt calling Mr. Barker and his [Barker’s] wife—nobody else. Sometimes Mr. Liddy might have used the phone to talk to somebody Mr. Hunt had placed a call to. I guess it was Mr. Barker. Most of the phone calls w
ere from August to November. The phone was taken out March 15; by then it hadn’t been used in ages.”
Bernstein asked the obvious. Why would a telephone in the White House complex, which had the benefit of the most sophisticated communications system in the world, be listed in the name and address of an individual in Alexandria?
“That’s a good question,” she replied. “They apparently wanted it in my name because they didn’t want any ties with the White House—for what reason I don’t know.”
Bills for the phone service had been mailed to her home and she had sent them to another Ehrlichman deputy, John Campbell—“so the White House would pay them. Apparently it had been arranged—by Mr. Hunt, Mr. Young and Mr. Liddy. They had talked to Mr. Campbell and he would take care of it.”
Chenow had left the White House staff on March 30, 1972 and was traveling in Europe at the time of the Watergate arrests. About two weeks later, she was located in Birmingham, England, by John Dean’s assistant, Fred Fielding.
“He had flown to Europe to pick me up,” she said. “He said the White House was talking to the FBI and that they—the White House and the FBI—were going to have an investigation. Apparently, the FBI had asked Mr. Dean to find me. Mr. Fielding requested that I come back and said that I should just recall my work and that they would ask me questions about the telephone and to try and recall. . . . On the flight back, Mr. Fielding gave me a Time magazine and tried to bring me up to date. He asked, ‘Do you know anybody in the articles [on the break-in]?’ and I said, ‘Of course—Mr. Hunt.’ ”
She had reported to John Dean’s office at 8:45 A.M. the day after her return, the first week of July. Fielding and David Young were also there. “Mr. Dean said I’d be interviewed by the FBI at nine, that I would be asked what my role was, whether I knew about the bugging, and to give perfectly straightforward answers to the best of my ability.” The interview had lasted about 40 minutes as Dean, Fielding and Young sat by silently. “There were no questions asked by Mr. Dean and he didn’t take any notes.”
Afterward, she had talked briefly with Young. “He seemed kind of surprised that something like that [the bugging] could happen. He knew the telephone was in. I think after the whole thing came out he put two and two together.” The same week, Chenow had met with the Watergate prosecutors and testified before the Watergate grand jury. “Silbert never asked about Ehrlichman,” she said—“just Colson, besides Hunt and Liddy and Young.” Bernstein’s conversation with Chenow had lasted more than an hour and a half.
The next morning, Pearl Harbor Day, Woodward called Jack Harrington, the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company official in charge of White House service, who confirmed that Ehrlichman’s office had ordered the phone and had arranged the unusual billing system—the first of its kind he’d seen in 25 years.
Both reporters, meanwhile, had been told by White House sources that John Campbell had been Ehrlichman’s office manager. There was no chance that the phone would have been installed without Ehrlichman’s approval, the sources said.
By late afternoon, Bernstein had completed a 2000-word story on the secret phone installation, on Chenow’s report about the Plumbers, and on her interview with John Dean. Gerald Warren, the deputy presidential press secretary, told Woodward there would be no White House comment—because it might affect the upcoming trial. “By not commenting,” Bernstein wrote in the fifth paragraph, “the White House left unanswered the questions of how Hunt’s official duties could require a camouflaged telephone listing and why Ehrlichman’s office would approve the arrangements for such phone service.”
To his chagrin, Bernstein was alone in his enthusiasm for the story. For the first time, someone had said for the record that the Plumbers existed, that Ehrlichman’s office was involved in their activities, and that Hunt and other presidential aides had investigated “leaks.”
Rosenfeld didn’t seem much interested in the story and left it to Sussman. Sussman and Woodward were lukewarm and thought it “didn’t prove anything.” Bradlee expressed relief more than anything else: regardless of its shortcomings, it was the Post’s first strong Watergate story since the Haldeman report. He was inclined to give it a B-minus, but assigned extra points because its primary source was mentioned by name. The White House could argue its meaning, but not the facts. He wanted the story on the front page—if for no other reason than to demonstrate that, five weeks after George McGovern’s defeat, the Post was still in the Watergate business.
• • •
That night, Bernstein and Woodward left aboard a 747 for Los Angeles, hoping that, if they got lucky, Donald Segretti would be more forthcoming than during Bernstein’s last trip. Copies of Hunt’s and Liddy’s travel records were in their suitcases, and Woodward had talked by telephone to a secretary in Herbert Kalmbach’s law firm who had seemed friendly.
On the flight out, Bernstein got into a high-stakes poker game in the lounge of the 747. He was about $30 ahead when Woodward wandered back and asked to join, arousing Bernstein’s protective instincts. Sometimes, Bernstein worried that his partner didn’t have enough street savvy to keep himself out of trouble. (Woodward, conversly, frequently worried that Bernstein would be all too comfortable in fast company.) But Woodward held his own against the high rollers and broke even. Bernstein won $35 in the $5-ante game. (Woodward, Bernstein did not know, had spent a lot of weekends in Las Vegas while stationed at the Navy base in San Diego.) That night, they stayed in a $9-a-night tourist home in Marina del Rey; all the hotels in Donald Segretti’s swinging harbor village were filled. And Segretti was not home.
The next day, they drove to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel—a Beverly Hills elephant of marble and red-velvet plush where Hunt and Liddy had stayed in September 1971. The reporters talked to the security chief there, an elderly former police captain who had no idea where the hotel’s telephone records were kept. The hotel’s chief accountant, who might have received his CPA and green eyeshades from Central Casting on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard, was only slightly more helpful. Surrounded by stacks of bills and financial statements in his disheveled backroom office, he resolutely informed the reporters that he had given the FBI his word never to discuss Hunt’s and Liddy’s visit. In a corridor, Bernstein asked the accountant’s secretary if she would care for a drink in the bar, then or later. “You’re kidding,” she said, and walked off slowly.
Bernstein said he wasn’t kidding.
“You should be,” she said.
Woodward later reached one of Segretti’s alleged contacts on the telephone and proposed a visit. “I’ll shoot you if you come out here,” he replied.
Woodward drove south to Kalmbach’s law offices at Newport Beach. The President’s personal lawyer was out of town. The secretary to whom Woodward had spoken on the phone gave him a cup of coffee and offered her opinion: “Mr. Kalmbach is one of the finest men I know. He is an honest man, and when all of this is over, you will understand that.” She would say no more.
At Kalmbach’s home, a woman came to the door and said, “Absolutely not,” when he asked for a moment of her time. She escorted Woodward out the inner courtyard gate and slammed it behind him.
They ate lunch with Larry Young, Segretti’s ex-friend who had been so helpful in October; he knew nothing new. After four days, they finally reached Segretti by phone, and he agreed to meet them in a nearby Howard Johnson’s. Over milkshakes and banana splits, they talked for about an hour. Segretti was unyielding about talking for the record in the foreseeable future.
The reporters returned to Washington on the night of December 11. At the White House press briefing the next noonday, Ron Ziegler, pressed again on the matter of Howard Hunt’s secret telephone and the Plumbers, gave the first White House acknowledgment that the Plumbers had been in the business of investigating leaks to the news media. But he seemed to deny that either Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy had been a Plumber. “To the best of my knowledge,” said Ziegler, Liddy was never assigned to the team. Hu
nt? “I don’t believe so, no.”
Neither Bernstein nor Woodward had attended Ziegler’s briefing. Convinced that they could learn more elsewhere, and concerned that their presence might further personalize Ziegler’s responses, they customarily avoided the White House press room.*
Around this time, the White House began excluding the Post from covering social events at the Executive Mansion—first, a large Republican dinner; then, a dinner for past, present and newly designated Cabinet officers; then, a Sunday worship service; finally, a Christmas party for the children of foreign diplomats. The immediate target was Post reporter Dorothy McCardle, a gentle, 68-year-old grandmotherly fixture of the Washington press corps, who had covered White House social events for five administrations.
On the same day Mrs. McCardle was barred from the prayer meeting at the White House, Bernstein had dinner with friends, among them a reporter from the Washington Star.
The Star reporter told him an interesting story about a conversation he’d had with Colson a few days before November 7:
“As soon as the election is behind us, we’re going to really shove it to the Post,” he quoted Colson as saying. “All the details haven’t been worked out yet, but the basic decisions have been made—at a meeting with the President.” Colson advised the Star reporter to “start coming around with a breadbasket” because “we’re going to fill it up with news” that would make reading the Star indispensable, while freezing out the Post. “And that’s only the beginning. After that, we’re really going to get rough. They’re going to wish on L Street [location of the Post] that they’d never heard of Watergate.”
Soon, challenges against the Post’s ownership of two television stations in Florida were filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The price of Post stock on the American Exchange dropped by almost 50 percent. Among the challengers—forming the organizations of “citizens” who proposed to become the new FCC licensees—were several persons long associated with the President.
All the President's Men Page 24
