The Original Watergate Stores

by The Washington Post

  The election — presumably the last in which Mr. Nixon would appear on the ballot — marked the end of a long generation in American politics.

  In came 26 years after his first victory — an upset House win over Democrat Jerry Voorhis — and 20 years after his election as Vice President on the Republican ticket headed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. It also came ten years to the day after the “last press conference” following his losing bid for the California governorship in 1962, a press conference in which he told newsmen, “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around.”

  The election ended a campaign that began last winter with the largest field of candidates in recent history and dwindled to one of the most desultory contests.

  No less than 11 Democrats were running active campaigns when the primary season began in New Hampshire and Florida last March. In addition, two Republican congressmen challenged Mr. Nixon from the opposite wings of his party.

  The President ignored his intra-party critics — liberal Rep. Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey of California and conservative Rep. John M. Ashbrook of Ohio — and their challenges melted in the glow of Mr. Nixon’s successful Peking and Moscow summitry.

  Meantime, the Democrats were beating each other with regularity, while the field of presidential aspirants dwindled slowly.

  It was not until the fourth primary in Wisconsin in April that McGovern managed to come out on top. Two of the first three contests — in New Hampshire and Illinois — went to the pre-primary favorite for the nomination. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine. But Muskie’s unimpressive margin over McGovern in New Hampshire and his fourth-place finish in Florida (won by Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace) severely dimmed his luster.

  With such lightly regarded contenders as Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, ex-Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota and New York Mayor John V. Lindsay sidelined by the end of the Wisconsin primary, it became essentially a four-man struggle among McGovern, Muskie, Wallace and Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, the 1968 Democratic nominee.

  A double loss on April 25 — to McGovern in Massachusetts and to Humphrey in Pennsylvania — finished Muskie, as far as active participation in the primaries was concerned.

  Wallace continued to run a strong race, despite lack of formal organization, exploiting the current of public protest with the slogan, “Send Them a Message.” After his Florida win, he came north and finished second to McGovern in Wisconsin, won North Carolina and Tennessee and scored his most impressive victories on May 16 by capturing both Maryland and Michigan.

  The previous day, however, Wallace was cut down by a would-be assassin while campaigning in Laurel, Md. The bullets fired by Arthur Bremer ended Wallace’s campaigning for the year and left him a cripple in a wheelchair.

  McGovern and Humphrey fought a series of inconclusive battles — Humphrey winning in Ohio, McGovern in Nebraska — an then in the crucial winner-take-all showdown in California on June 6, McGovern won by a margin of 175,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast.

  The California victory was a costly one for McGovern, however.

  Already a subject of some suspicion among party regulars because his support came primarily from students, peace movement activists and other “amateurs,” he was put on the defensive by Humphrey on two issues that were to haunt the rest of his campaign.

  McGovern had proposed in #31 billion reduction in the defense budget, which Humphrey said would “cut into the very muscle of our defense.” He also had proposed a $1,000-per-person income grant to all Americans as a substitute for the existing welfare system — a plan which Humphrey denounced as a “compounded mess” and whose cost, McGovern was forced to admit in debate, he could nor accurately estimate.

  Although McGovern completed a sweep of the late primaries in New Mexico, South Dakota, New Jersey and New York, he was on the defensive from the time of those California debates with Humphrey.

  Strongly pressured by George Meany and other union leaders who opposed McGovern’s nomination, Humphrey sanctioned a challenge to the California winner-take-all rule that awarded McGovern all 271 delegates for his plurality victory.

  A coalition of Humphrey-Muskie-Wallace backers on the convention Credentials Committee voted to strip McGovern of 151 of his California votes, putting his nomination in jeopardy, but after a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the issue was left to the convention itself to decide. On the opening night of the Miami Beach meeting, the McGovern forces — aided by a series of parliamentary rulings by party chairman Lawrence F. O’Brien — prevailed by a 380-vote margin and his nomination was thereby assured.

  The convention, however, was marked by a series of rebuffs to the “regular” Democratic elements that had opposed McGovern’s nomination, symbolized by a vote to unseat Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, most powerful of the surviving big-city bosses, in favor of an insurgent group.

  What came to be seen as the crucial decision of the convention was made by McGovern on the afternoon after he had won the nomination by a one-sided margin over Wallace and Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington, who inherited the labor-Southern-“regular” support after Muskie and Humphrey withdrew from the race.

  McGovern repeatedly pressed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate and when Kennedy gave his final refusal, just an hour before the deadline, the new nominee turned to Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri, a little-known freshman senator whose chief asset was that he was a border-state Roman Catholic acceptable to party elements that had opposed McGovern’s nomination.

  Ten days later, on July 25, McGovern and Eagleton jointly disclosed that — unknown to the public and to McGovern at the time of selection — the Missourian had been hospitalized three times between 1960 and 1966 for what Eagleton called “nervous exhaustion and fatigue.”

  Eagleton said the therapy had included shock treatment. McGovern said the disclosure in no way affected Eagleton’s status, volunteering in a comment that was to echo from then to election day that he stood behind his choice of Eagleton “1,000 per cent.”

  Within 72 hours, while Eagleton was proceeding to campaign as if nothing happened, there was a crisis in the McGovern camp. Newspaper editorials and leading Democrats were questioning whether Eagleton — on the basis of his medical history and his efforts to conceal his condition — was fit for a job that put him in line of succession to the presidency. After a series of uncomfortable days in which McGovern himself and his top aides plated stories with newsmen suggesting that Eagleton should “voluntarily” resign from the ticket, the two men met again on July 31 and announced they had “jointly agreed that the best course is for Sen. Eagleton to step aside.”

  In the following days, McGovern offered the nomination to Kennedy, Humphrey, Muskie and several other Democratic senators- — all of whom publicly refused — before picking Sargent Shriver, the former Peace Corps and anti-poverty director who had never run for public office.

  By this time, with a month of campaign time squandered and the problems of reunifying his divided party incomparably increased, McGovern was facing an obviously uphill struggle against the incumbent President. His deficit in the public opinion polls increased from 10 points in May — just before Humphrey began his assault in the California primary campaign — to 34 points by the end of the Eagleton-Shriver affair in August.

  Meantime, Mr. Nixon was doing nothing to disturb political trends that appeared to be moving in his direction.

  Last Two Guilty in Watergate Plot: Jury Convicts Liddy, McCord in 90 Minutes; Ex-Aides of Nixon to Appeal

  By Lawrence Meyer

  Washington Post Staff Writer

  Wednesday, January 31, 1973

  Two former officials of President Nixon’s re-election committee, G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted yesterday of conspiracy, burglary and bugging the Democratic Party’s Watergate headquarters.

  After 16 days of trial spanning 60 witnesses a
nd more than 100 pieces of evidence, the jury found them guilty of all charges against them in just under 90 minutes.

  Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica ordered Liddy, who was also a former White House aide, FBI agent and prosecutor, and McCord, a veteran of the CIA and FBI, jailed without bond. Sirica said he would hold a hearing on bail after defense lawyers file formal written motions.

  Lawyers for both Liddy and McCord, said they would appeal the convictions, with McCords’s layer attacking the conduct of Judge Sirica during the trial.

  Five other men who were indicted with Liddy and McCord, including former White House aide and CIA Agent E. Howard Hunt, Jr. pleaded guilty early in the trial to all charges against them.

  Liddy, 42, had maintained a calm, generally smiling exterior throughout the trial. He stood impassive, with is arms folded as deputy court clerk LeCount Patterson read the jury’s verdict, repeating six times “guilty” for all eight counts against him.

  McCord, 53, also showed no emotion as Patterson read the word “guilty” for all eight counts against him.

  Liddy, former finance counsel for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, could receive a maximum sentence of 35 years. McCord, former security director for the committee, could receive a maximum sentence of 45 years. Sirica set no day for sentencing.

  Before being jailed by deputy U.S. marshals, Liddy embraced his lawyer, Peter L. Maroulis, patted him on the back, and in a gesture that became his trademark in the trail, gave one final wave to the spectators and press before he was led away.

  Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl J. Silbert said, after the verdict was returned, that it was “fair and just.”

  In his final statement to the jury, Silbert told the eight women and four men that “when people cannot get together for political purposes without fear that their premises will be burglarized, their conversations bugged, their phones tapped…you breed distrust, you breed suspicion, you lost confidence, faith and credibility.”

  Silbert asked the jury to “bring in a verdict that will help restore the faith in the democratic system that has been so damaged by the conduct of these two defendants and their coconspirators.”

  Despite repeated attempts by Judge Sirica to find out if anyone else besides the seven defendants was involved in the conspiracy, testimony in the trial was largely confined by the prosecution to proving its case against Liddy and McCord, with occasional mention made of the five who had pleaded guilty. The jury, which was sequestered throughout the trial, was never told of the guilty pleas.

  When Hunt pleaded guilty Jan 11, Sirica questioned him in an attempt to find out if anyone besides the persons indicted was involved in the conspiracy.

  Hunt’s lawyer, William O. Bittman, blocked Sirica’s questions, saying the prosecution had told him it intended to call Hunt and any other defendant who was convicted to testify before the grand jury.

  An apparent purpose of renewed grand jury testimony would be to probed the involvement of others in the bugging. Asked yesterday what steps he now intended to take, Silbert said, “I don’t think I’ll comment on anything further.”

  According to testimony in the trial, Liddy was given about $332,000 in campaign funds purportedly to carry out a number of intelligence-gathering assignments given him by deputy campaign direction Jeb Stuart Magruder.

  The prosecution said it could account for only about $50,000 of this money, and that it was used to finance the spying operation against the Democratic Party.

  In his argument to the jury, Silbert called Liddy the “mastermind, the boss, the money-man” of the operation.

  Maroulis, defending Liddy, attempted to put the blame on Hunt, who Maroulis said was Liddy’s trusted friend. “From the evidence here, it can well be inferred that Mr. Liddy got hut by that trust,” Maroulis said.

  McCord’s lawyer, Gerald Alch, told the jury that McCord “is the type of man who is loyal to his country and who does what he thinks is right.” At one point, Judge Sirica interrupted and told Alch he was only giving his “personal opinion.”

  Alch criticized Sirica during a recess, saying the Judge “did not limit himself to acting as a judge-he has become in addition, a prosecutor and an investigator … Not only does he indicate that the defendants are guilty, but that a lot of other people are guilty. The whole courtroom is permeated with a prejudicial atmosphere.”

  Alch said that “in 15 years of practicing law” he had not been previously interrupted by a judge while giving his final argument.

  McCord and Liddy were each convicted of the following counts:

  “Conspiring to burglarize, wiretap and electronically eavesdrop on the Democratic Party’s Watergate headquarters. (Maximum penalty-five years’ Imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.)

  “Burglarizing the Democratic headquarters with the intent to steal the property of another. (Maximum penalty-15 years imprisonment.)

  “Buglarizing the Democratic headquarters with the intent to unlawfully wiretap and eavesdrop. (Maximum penalty-15 years.)

  “Endeavoring to eavesdrop illegally. (Maximum penalty-five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.)

  In addition, McCord was convicted of two additional counts:

  “Possession of a device primarily useful for the surreptitious interception or oral communications. (Maximum penalty-five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine).

  “Possession of a device primarily useful for the surreptitious interception of wire communications. (Maximum penalty-five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine).

  Although the total number of years Liddy could be sentenced to adds up to 50 and McCord’s total sentence adds up to 60 years, neither, according to legal sources, can receive consecutive sentences for both burglary counts.

  As a result, Liddy’s maximum sentence could be 35 years and a $40,000 fine and McCord’s maximum could be 45 years and $60,000 fine.

  In addition to Liddy, McCord and Hunt, four men from Miami were named in the indictment — Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis, Virgilio R. Gonzalez and Eugenio R. Martinez.

  All four pleaded guilty Jan. 15 to the seven counts with which they were charged.

  They face maximum sentences of 40 years in jail and fines of $50,000. The four men were arrested, with McCord, by Washington police in the Democratic Party headquarters at 2:30 a.m. on June 17. The arrests marked the beginning of the Watergate affair.

  These five men, dressed in business suits and wearing rubber surgical gloves, had electronic bugging equipment and sophisticated cameras in film. In their possession or their rooms they had $5,300 in $100 bills.

  The story unfolded slowly. The day after the arrests, it was learned that one of the five men was the security coordinator for the President’s re-election committee. That was McCord, one of the two defendants left in the Watergate trial yesterday.

  Two days after the break-in White House consultant Hunt was linked to the five suspects. Hunt pleaded guilty to all counts in the opening days of the trial.

  Near the end of July, it was learned that the finance counsel to the Nixon Re-election Committee was fired because he refused to answer FBI questions about the Watergate bugging and break-in. The counsel was Liddy, a former Treasury and White House aide who was the other defendant to remain in the trial.

  On Aug. 1, The Washington Post reported that a $25,000 cashier’s check intended as a contribution tot he Nixon re-election effort has been deposited in the Miami bank account of one of the Watergate suspects. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, ordered an immediate audit of the Nixon campaign finances.

  The audit report concluded that former Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans, the chief Nixon fund-raiser, has a possible illegal cash fund of $350,000 in his office safe.

  The $25,000 from the cashier’s check and another $89,000 from four Mexican checks passed through that fund, the GAO concluded.

  Last Friday, the Finance Committee to Re-elect the
President pleaded no contest in U.S. District Court to eight violations of the campaign finances law. The complaint charged, among other things, that finance committee officials filed to keep adequate records of payments to Liddy. The committee was fined $8,000.

  In September, reports surfaced that a former FBI agent and self-described participant in the bugging had become a government witness in the case. He was Alfred C. Baldwin III, who later was to testify that he monitored wire-tapped conversations for three weeks from a listening post in the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge across the street from the Watergate.

  On Sept. 15, the federal indictment against the seven original defendants was returned.

  The next day, The Post reported that the $350,000 cash fund kept in the Stans safe was used, in part, as an intelligent - gathering fund. On Sept. 29, The Post reported that sources close to the Watergate investigation said that former Attorney General John N. Mitchell controlled disbursements from the intelligence found or so-called “secret fund.”

  On Oct. 10, The Post reported that the FBI had concluded that the Watergate bugging was just one incident in a campaign of political sabotage directed by the White House and the Nixon committee.

  The story identified Donald H. Segretti, a young California lawyer, as a paid political spy who traveled around the country recruiting others and disrupting the campaigns of Democratic presidential contenders.

  Five days later, the President’s appointments secretary, Dwight L. Chapin, was identified as a person who hire Segretti and received reports from him. Segretti’s other contact was Watergate defendant Hunt. Segretti received about $35,000 in pay for the disruptive activities from Herbert W. Kalmbach, the President’s personal attorney, according to federal investigators.

  This Monday it was announced that Chapin was resigning his White House job. Segretti was not called as a witness in the trial.

  3 Top Nixon Aides, Kleindienst Out; President Accepts Full Responsibility; Richardson Will Conduct New Probe