11
JUDGE SIRICA wanted Bernstein and Woodward in his courtroom at 10:00 A.M. on December 19. A hearing before the Judge on another matter involving the press—a defense motion to force the Los Angeles Times to turn over tapes and notes of its interview with Alfred C. Baldwin—was already scheduled for that hour.
The reporters dressed neatly for their day in court. Woodward got his hair trimmed. The courtroom was packed, mostly with media people who were there for the confrontation over the tapes. Bernstein and Woodward took seats in the second row.
Sirica, they learned at precisely 10 o’clock, was capable of expressing his displeasure with a frown so deep as to leave no doubt about his reputation for toughness. He had decided to make the reporters the first order of business. The grand jurors had entered the courtroom. The audience obeyed the command of “All rise.” The Judge’s frown deepened. “Oh boy,” Woodward whispered to Bernstein, bouncing on his toes and sucking in his breath so the words sounded as if he were ordering a horse to stop. Bernstein was contemplating which fate he preferred—the ignominy of being stripped naked in front of his colleagues for his half-assed conduct, or the mitigating honor of being dispatched by “Maximum John.”
“It has recently come to my attention . . .” Sirica began recounting the unfortunate facts: grand jurors had been approached over the first weekend of December in an attempt to get information; but, judging from a transcript of the prosecutors’ subsequent discussion of the matter with the grand jury, no information had been disclosed; thus, the investigation had not been compromised. The jurors were to be commended for their silence. Their resolve could only be strengthened if once more they were reminded of the oath which had bound their deliberations “sacred and secret.”
The Judge peered out into the audience. “Now I want it understood by the person who approached members of this grand jury that the court regards the matter as extremely serious.”
The reporters were hanging on the Judge’s every word now, less confident than before that Ed Williams and the prosecutors had been convincing in their arguments.
Sirica was scowling. He noted thoughtfully that the person who had attempted to subvert the sanctity of the grand-jury proceedings was neither defendant nor counsel but . . . “a news media representative.” A buzz in the assembled press corps. Who among them? Bernstein and Woodward waited for the Judge to unmask them and, maybe, to ask if they wished to throw themselves on the mercy of the court.
First, however, Sirica desired to point out the legal ramifications and to remind the assembly that attempting to gain information from a grand juror is, “at least potentially,” a contemptuous offense. Then he excused the grand jury and strode from the court. The clerk declared a recess.
It took the reporters several moments to understand what had happened, that that was the end of it. They had gone free.
Bernstein and Woodward tried to look nonchalant as their colleagues asked who they thought was guilty. They declined to speculate. Dan Schorr of CBS, who knew a sham when he spotted one, was the first to suggest, privately, that Bernstein and Woodward were the offenders. Hearsay, innuendo and character assassination, protested Bernstein. Schorr responded with a knowing smile. The reporters had reluctantly agreed during a rush to the halls that only as a last resort would they deny the allegation outright; maybe they could get by with indignation and artful footwork.
The confused scene in the hallway did not lend itself to careful thought. Two dozen of their colleagues were shouting private theories or polling one another in search of the guilty party. Accused again, Woodward said the first thing that came into his head: the grand-jury contact had taken place over the first weekend in December. That was six weeks after he and Bernstein had written a major story. Somehow, the compelling illogic of the syllogism got by. Bernstein, feeling grubby, listened raptly to another newsman explain why the offender was probably a radio or television reporter, not someone from a newspaper. “Sirica specifically used the phrase ‘news media representative.’ That’s the term he always uses when he’s talking about radio and television reporters. When he means newspaper reporters, he says ‘the press.’” Yeah, said Bernstein, he thought he had noticed that, too.
Woodward and Bernstein were trying to avoid a colleague who was interviewing reporters in the hallway about the session in Sirica’s courtroom. He caught up with Woodward near the elevator and asked point-blank if the Judge had been referring to him or Bernstein.
Come off it, what do you think? Woodward answered angrily.
The man persisted. Well, was it one of them or wasn’t it? Yes or no.
Listen, Woodward snapped. Do you want a quote? Are we talking for the record? I mean, are you serious? Because if you are, I’ll give you something, all right.
The reporter seemed stunned. “Sorry, Bob, I didn’t think you’d take me seriously,” he told Woodward.
The danger passed. The nightmare vision that had haunted them all day—Ron Ziegler at the podium demanding that they be the object of a full federal investigation, or some such thing—disappeared. They tried to imagine what choice phrases he might use (“jury tampering”?), and they realized that they didn’t have the stomach for it. They felt lousy. They had not broken the law when they visited the grand jurors, that much seemed certain. But they had sailed around it and exposed others to danger. They had chosen expediency over principle and, caught in the act, their role had been covered up. They had dodged, evaded, misrepresented, suggested and intimidated, even if they had not lied outright.
• • •
That afternoon, Woodward returned to Judge Sirica’s courtroom for the hearing on the Los Angeles Times’ Baldwin material. The notes, tapes and related documents of reporters Jack Nelson and Ronald Ostrow had been subpoenaed by lawyers for the Watergate defendants.
The Times’ interview with Baldwin had been the most vivid piece of journalism in the whole Watergate saga, definitively portraying the difference between a “third-rate burglary attempt” and the brand of political gang warfare practiced by the President’s men. Woodward, remembering his own dealings with Alfred Baldwin’s lawyers, doubted there would have been any interview without assurances that the tapes and notes would remain in the Times’ possession. Certainly, the stories Bernstein and he had done could not have been written without such guarantees.
The Judge ordered John F. Lawrence, the Los Angeles Times’ bureau chief in Washington, to turn over the tapes, which the paper had placed in his custody.
“I must respectfully decline,” Lawrence, a thin man in his late thirties, said mildly.
Sirica held him in contempt and ordered him jailed.
Lawrence’s lawyer argued strenuously that jailing him while the First Amendment issue was being considered on appeal would serve no purpose. He also pointed out that it was Christmastime and that Mr. Lawrence had a wife and small children. But Sirica would not be swayed, and the marshals led Lawrence off to jail, not even permitting him to say goodbye to his wife.*
Bernstein had rarely seen Woodward so shaken. They were both painfully aware of the contrast. Lawrence, whose only offense had been to act professionally and to follow his conscience, was in jail. They had gotten off with a lecture and with their secret intact.
• • •
The grand-jury adventure was not the reporters’ last encounter with Judge Sirica or the prosecutors.
Several days after their court appearance, Woodward phoned a former secretary in the office of Morton B. Jackson, a Los Angeles lawyer with whom Hunt had stayed during the week following the Watergate break-in. Woodward identified himself and explained that he knew she had been interviewed by the FBI.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I have my life to live. I can’t stand it. Why do you want to bother me?”
Woodward said that he was checking information which indicated that she knew something about the purpose of Howard Hunt’s and Gordon Liddy’s travels to the West Coast.
“I’m nobod
y. Nobody at all. . . . Leave me alone.” She was crying. Woodward ended the conversation.
The next day, Bradlee called Woodward and Bernstein to his office. “Williams got another call from the prosecutors. . . . Some woman from California complained that one of you phoned her and said you were an FBI agent.”
Bernstein broke up laughing at the thought of Woodward as an FBI agent. But Bradlee was serious. During the hearing on the Baldwin tapes, Sirica had directed all potential witnesses in the case not to talk to reporters until after the trial.
“Now we’re back with Sirica,” Bradlee said. “The prosecutors had to go to the Judge. They don’t think you posed as an FBI agent. But they think you might have violated the witness rule.”
Bradlee said that Ed Williams would visit Sirica again. Bernstein complained that it would be impossible to continue the investigation if he and Woodward couldn’t talk to witnesses. Bradlee agreed. “Until we get it settled,” he said, “you’re going to have to stay away from witnesses completely.”
The reporters asked how they were supposed to know whether someone was a witness.
No way, Bradlee said, so you’ll have to stop your reporting—that is, stop digging new ground—until this is settled.
For the first time in six months, Bernstein and Woodward were called off.
Two days later, Bradlee put new ground rules in writing. Copies went to Rosenfeld, Sussman, Woodward and Bernstein: “Williams talked to Sirica this morning. It is OK for us to talk to witnesses . . . PROVIDED that the minute a witness tells us he or she has been forbidden by the court to talk to us, we call off the dogs. And that means the minute they tell us that. In other words, we can not try to talk a witness into talking if that witness has expressed an understanding that he or she is not supposed to talk. We must live up to the spirit and the letter of this ground rule.”
Later that week, they stopped by the office of Earl Silbert to discuss the guidelines. It was about 9:00 P.M. and the courthouse was almost deserted. Silbert seemed in a good mood. As usual in such sessions, he refused to discuss the case substantively, and they all chatted about the election. The chief prosecutor was a registered Democrat and his wife, an artist, had been a volunteer in the McGovern campaign. She had used her maiden name so that there would be no unfair connections made between her political activities and the prosecution of the Watergate case.
Like almost everything about Silbert, his office was meticulous. (His mother had once told an interviewer that Earl was so fastidious that he lined up the heels of his shoes in the closet.) The stacks of file folders and papers that covered almost every available inch of surface space in the room were arranged in perfect piles. Woodward noticed a letter on Silbert’s desk, and recognized the letterhead—The Watkins-Johnson Company of Rockville, Maryland. Woodward knew it was the company where McCord had bought some of the equipment used to bug the Watergate.
He mentioned it to Bernstein as they took a cab back to the Post. So what? Bernstein said. Woodward didn’t know, but he got on the phone to the company the next morning, and learned that McCord had left his CRP calling card when he bought the equipment, and had paid with $100 bills—35 of them.
Woodward wrote a brief story about the transaction which ran December 23 on the inside of the paper.
The next Monday, Bernstein got a call from Silbert saying that he wanted to see the two of them in his office at once. Bernstein had no idea what Silbert wanted. Woodward figured that Silbert had put together the information on the $3500 radio and their having seen the letter on his desk. Bernstein thought it was inconceivable that Silbert would be calling them down for such a trivial matter, especially since they already had some documents on McCord’s purchase.
When they arrived, Silbert and his associate, Seymour Glanzer, were wearing very stern expressions. Silbert demanded to know the source of the radio story. The letter was in the same position on his desk, at the far lefthand corner, clearly in sight from where Woodward sat. Woodward said he had seen the letter and decided to call Watkins-Johnson to learn if anything new had come up about the equipment since the reporters had last checked.
“For me to believe that,” Silbert said, “you’re going to have to tell me your original source of information.”
They refused.
Silbert was persuaded that their information had come from the letter, and only the letter. He threatened to circulate a memorandum in the U.S. Attorney’s office, telling everyone about the incident and recommending that no one there ever again talk with Woodward or Bernstein. He was considering taking legal action. If he let something slip in conversation, Silbert added, it was perfectly proper for the reporters to use it. But to get information off someone’s desk was “sneaky and outrageous.” Glanzer said it was dishonest.
Bernstein had learned years before that the ability to read upside down could be a useful reportorial skill, but he did not disagree strongly with the prosecutors, and he apologized profusely. Woodward also apologized, but he thought Silbert and Glanzer were being irrational, and said so.
Silbert said he didn’t know if he could ever trust the two reporters again.
If the prosecutors took any action on the matter, Woodward and Bernstein did not hear of it.
• • •
In December, a few weeks before the trial of the Watergate Seven was to begin, Woodward went to lunch with Sussman and Rosenfeld at the Jefferson Hotel. The editors—fraternally but insistently—wanted to know more about where the Post’s Watergate investigation was going.
Woodward had his fantasies about the future of Watergate: one was that Gordon Liddy invites Bernstein and Woodward out to his home, gives them drinks and spends the evening telling them the whole story while they get it on tape.
The editors were not interested in his fantasies; they wanted more legwork. Woodward inquired who was going to cover the trial for the Post. Rosenfeld said he had not decided. Woodward felt that he and Bernstein should cover it. Rosenfeld disagreed. More than ever, he said, it was important that the Post have irreproachably objective coverage. Other reporters more removed from the story should be assigned. Woodward insisted that they had earned the chance. Rosenfeld glared at Woodward and said no decision had been made.
Several days later, Rosenfeld informed the reporters that he had chosen Lawrence Meyer, the regular federal-court reporter. Woodward and Bernstein were to continue their investigation. One of them would attend the trial each day, looking for leads in the testimony.
Rosenfeld was right, but the reporters didn’t realize it at the time. They were resentful. The case was moving into a new phase; they were afraid the Post might write off the earlier Watergate stories as the excesses of the young.
Their fears increased when, just before the trial, Bernstein and Woodward drafted a long “news analysis.” Based on days of research, including long interviews with Justice Department officials, the burden of their story was that the government’s case would leave most questions about the financing and sponsorship of the Watergate operation unanswered, and ignore the extensive campaign of political espionage and sabotage. Rosenfeld rejected the piece: “Let’s wait and see what happens, then report.”
Two days before the opening of the trial, Bernstein heard that the Miami men were staying in a high-rise apartment house in Arlington, Virginia, with their families and lawyers. That night, he visited one of the men and was told of the defense with which they all hoped to support their not-guilty pleas. They would contend that they had been assured the Watergate raid was approved by high government officials and, therefore, that they had been working, clandestinely, on an authorized mission. There was one snag, Bernstein was told. Howard Hunt, though he wanted a unified defense, was vehemently opposed to any courtroom strategy that might suggest the conspiracy extended beyond the seven defendants.
On the morning of January 8, the opening day of the trial, a gray and gaunt Hunt arrived at the courthouse wearing a black topcoat with a small, aristocratic, though sligh
tly frayed fur collar. He puffed on his pipe and paced the corridors, whispering frequently to his partner, Gordon Liddy. The two walked down the hall talking. Hunt, whose wife had died in a plane crash a few weeks before, held his arm high on Liddy’s neck, as if seeking support.
Liddy had arrived smoking a large cigar, smiling, waving and strutting confidently. Later in the day, when he was introduced to the prospective jurors, he bounded to his feet and waved his right hand triumphantly, like a politician greeting a crowd. The four Miami men, looking tense, appeared with their attorney, Henry B. Rothblatt, who wore a toupee and had a small mustache that appeared to be accented with eyebrow pencil. McCord, looking serious, came in a few minutes later. He warded off reporters’ questions with a “No comment.”
The members of the prosecution team—Earl Silbert, 36, Seymour Glanzer, 46, and Donald E. Campbell, 35—were spruce and well groomed. Each carried a foot-thick stack of files. As they got off the elevator, reporters swarmed on them. “All your questions will be answered,” Glanzer said. “Just wait.”
U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. Sirica, who had assigned the case to himself, sat high on the bench, his wavy black hair making him look much younger than his 68 years. At a pre-trial hearing in December, he had expressed his intentions: “This jury is going to want to know: What did these men go into that headquarters for? Was their sole purpose political espionage? Were they paid? Was there financial gain? Who hired them? Who started this?”
Sirica’s critics—and he had many in knowledgeable legal circles, including the prosecutors—contended that a trial was not the place to conduct an investigation; that task properly belonged to the grand jury.
Woodward and Bernstein both attended the first day of the trial and listened as Silbert presented a two-hour opening statement. The chief prosecutor seemed rather exasperated when he said that he would be able to account for only $50,000 of $235,000 in presidential campaign funds that had been handed to Gordon Liddy in $100 bills. Basing his theory primarily on the statements of Jeb Magruder and Herbert L. Porter, Silbert contended that Liddy had been given the funds to conduct legitimate intelligence-gathering activities. Liddy, Silbert said, had gone off on his own, and planned and executed the illegal Watergate operation. It was the CRP “cover story” that had been described to the reporters months earlier, during their evening visits.
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