All the President's Men Read online

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Photographs

  Index

  To the President’s other men and women—in the White House and elsewhere—who took risks to provide us with confidential information. Without them there would have been no Watergate story told by the Washington Post.

  And to our parents.

  Acknowledgments

  Like the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate, this book is the result of a collaborative effort with our colleagues—executives, editors, reporters, librarians, telephone operators, news aides. Since June 17, 1972, we have had their assistance, support and advice. Some persons stand out. Our particular gratitude to Katharine Graham, Benjamin C. Bradlee, Howard Simons, Harry M. Rosenfeld, Barry Sussman, Leonard Downie, Jr., Lawrence Meyer, Larry Fox, Bill Brady, Douglas Feaver, Elisabeth Donovan, Philip Geyelin, Meg Greenfield, Roger Wilkins and Maureen Joyce.

  Others contributed their time, energy and counsel to the preparation of this book. We are indebted to Taylor Branch, Mary Graham, Elizabeth Drew, Haynes Johnson and David Obst for their help and kindness. To Nora Ephron, Barbara Cohen and Richard Cohen, special affection and thanks.

  Richard Snyder and the staff of Simon and Schuster—in particular Chris Steinmetz, Elise Sachs, Harriet Ripinsky and Sophie Sorkin, who prepared the manuscript for production—extended us enormous tolerance as deadlines were missed, production schedules altered and complicated technical problems accommodated. Throughout, the staff, especially Dan Green, Milly Marmur, Helen English and Terry Mincieli, was a source of enthusiasm and, more important, friendship.

  This book would not have been possible without the work of Robert Fink, who assisted us in the research, lent us his ideas and gently offered us his criticism.

  And most of all, our appreciation and respect to Alice Mayhew, our editor, whose thought and guidance are reflected on every page.

  CARL BERNSTEIN

  BOB WOODWARD

  Washington, D.C.

  February 1974

  Cast of Characters

  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  RICHARD M. NIXON

  THE PRESIDENT’S MEN

  ALFRED C. BALDWIN III Security guard, Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP)

  ALEXANDER P. BUTTERFIELD Deputy Assistant to the President; aide to H. R. Haldeman

  JOHN J. CAULFIELD Staff aide to John Ehrlichman

  DWIGHT L. CHAPIN Deputy Assistant to the President; appointments secretary

  KENNETH W. CLAWSON Deputy Director of Communications, the White House

  CHARLES W. COLSON Special Counsel to the President

  KENNETH H. DAHLBERG Midwest Finance Chairman, CRP

  JOHN W. DEAN III Counsel to the President

  JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs

  L. PATRICK GRAY III Acting Director, FBI

  H. R. HALDEMAN Assistant to the President; White House Chief of Staff

  E. HOWARD HUNT, JR. Consultant to the White House

  HERBERT W. KALMBACH Deputy Finance Chairman, CRP; personal attorney to the President

  HENRY A. KISSINGER Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

  RICHARD G. KLEINDIENST Attorney General of the United States

  EGIL KROGH, JR. Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs; aide to Ehrlichman

  FREDERICK C. LARUE Deputy Director, CRP; aide to John Mitchell

  G. GORDON LIDDY Finance Counsel, CRP; former aide on John Ehrlichman’s staff

  CLARK MACGREGOR Campaign Director, CRP

  JEB STUART MAGRUDER Deputy Campaign Director, CRP, former Haldeman aide and Deputy Director of White House Communications

  ROBERT C. MARDIAN Political Coordinator, CRP; former Assistant Attorney General

  JOHN N. MITCHELL Campaign Director, CRP; former Attorney General

  POWELL MOORE Deputy Press Director, CRP; former White House press aide

  ROBERT C. ODLE, JR. Director of Administration and Personnel, CRP; former White House staff aide

  KENNETH W. PARKINSON Attorney CRP

  HERBERT L. PORTER Scheduling Director, CRP; former aide to Haldeman

  KENNETH RIETZ Youth Director, CRP

  DONALD H. SEGRETTI Attorney

  DEVAN L. SHUMWAY Director of Public Affairs, CRP; former White House press aide

  HUGH W. SLOAN, JR. Treasurer, CRP; former aide to Haldeman

  MAURICE H. STANS Finance Chairman, CRP; former Secretary of Commerce

  GORDON C. STRACHAN Staff assistant to Haldeman

  GERALD WARREN Deputy Press Secretary to the President

  DAVID R. YOUNG Staff assistant, National Security Council; aide to Henry Kissinger, John Ehrlichman

  RONALD L. ZIEGLER Press Secretary to the President

  THE BURGLARS

  BERNARD L. BARKER

  VIRGILIO R. GONZALEZ

  EUGENIO R. MARTINEZ

  JAMES W. MCCORD, JR.

  FRANK A. STURGIS

  THE PROSECUTION

  HENRY E. PETERSEN Assistant Attorney General

  EARL J. SILBERT Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; chief prosecutor

  DONALD E. CAMPBELL Assistant U.S. Attorney

  SEYMOUR GLANZER Assistant U.S. Attorney

  THE JUDGE

  JOHN J. SIRICA Chief Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

  THE WASHINGTON POST

  KATHARINE GRAHAM Publisher

  BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE Executive Editor

  HOWARD SIMONS Managing Editor

  HARRY M. ROSENFELD Metropolitan Editor

  BARRY SUSSMAN District of Columbia Editor

  THE SENATOR

  SAM J. ERVIN, JR. Chairman, Senate Watergate Committee

  1

  JUNE 17, 1972. Nine o’clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?

  Woodward had worked for the Post for only nine months and was always looking for a good Saturday assignment, but this didn’t sound like one. A burglary at the local Democratic headquarters was too much like most of what he had been doing—investigative pieces on unsanitary restaurants and small-time police corruption. Woodward had hoped he had broken out of that; he had just finished a series of stories on the attempted assassination of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Now, it seemed, he was back in the same old slot.

  Woodward left his one-room apartment in downtown Washington and walked the six blocks to the Post. The newspaper’s mammoth newsroom—over 150 feet square with rows of brightly colored desks set on an acre of sound-absorbing carpet—is usually quiet on Saturday morning. Saturday is a day for long lunches, catching up on work, reading the Sunday supplements. As Woodward stopped to pick up his mail and telephone messages at the front of the newsroom, he noticed unusual activity around the city desk. He checked in with the city editor and learned with surprise that the burglars had not broken into the small local Democratic Party office but the headquarters of the Democratic Nationa
l Committee in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex.

  It was an odd place to find the Democrats. The opulent Watergate, on the banks of the Potomac in downtown Washington, was as Republican as the Union League Club. Its tenants included the former Attorney General of the United States John N. Mitchell, now director of the Committee for the Re-election of the President; the former Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans, finance chairman of the President’s campaign; the Republican national chairman, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas; President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods; and Anna Chennault, who was the widow of Flying Tiger ace Claire Chennault and a celebrated Republican hostess; plus many other prominent figures of the Nixon administration.

  The futuristic complex, with its serpent’s-teeth concrete balustrades and equally menacing prices ($100,000 for many of its twobedroom cooperative apartments), had become the symbol of the ruling class in Richard Nixon’s Washington. Two years earlier, it had been the target of 1000 anti-Nixon demonstrators who had shouted “Pigs,” “Fascists” and “Sieg Heil” as they tried to storm the citadel of Republican power. They had run into a solid wall of riot-equipped Washington policemen who had pushed them back onto the campus of George Washington University with tear gas and billy clubs. From their balconies, anxious tenants of the Watergate had watched the confrontation, and some had cheered and toasted when the protesters were driven back and the westerly winds off the Potomac chased the tear gas away from the fortress. Among those who had been knocked to the ground was Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein. The policeman who had sent him sprawling had probably not seen the press cards hanging from his neck, and had perhaps focused on his longish hair.

  As Woodward began making phone calls, he noticed that Bernstein, one of the paper’s two Virginia political reporters, was working on the burglary story, too.

  Oh God, not Bernstein, Woodward thought, recalling several office tales about Bernstein’s ability to push his way into a good story and get his byline on it.

  That morning, Bernstein had Xeroxed copies of notes from reporters at the scene and informed the city editor that he would make some more checks. The city editor had shrugged his acceptance, and Bernstein had begun a series of phone calls to everybody at the Watergate he could reach—desk clerks, bellmen, maids in the housekeeping department, waiters in the restaurant.

  Bernstein looked across the newsroom. There was a pillar between his desk and Woodward’s, about 25 feet away. He stepped back several paces. It appeared that Woodward was also working on the story. That figured, Bernstein thought. Bob Woodward was a prima donna who played heavily at office politics. Yale. A veteran of the Navy officer corps. Lawns, greensward, staterooms and grass tennis courts, Bernstein guessed, but probably not enough pavement for him to be good at investigative reporting. Bernstein knew that Woodward couldn’t write very well. One office rumor had it that English was not Woodward’s native language.

  Bernstein was a college dropout. He had started as a copy boy at the Washington Star when he was 16, become a full-time reporter at 19, and had worked at the Post since 1966. He occasionally did investigative series, had covered the courts and city hall, and liked to do long, discursive pieces about the capital’s people and neighborhoods.

  Woodward knew that Bernstein occasionally wrote about rock music for the Post. That figured. When he learned that Bernstein sometimes reviewed classical music, he choked that down with difficulty. Bernstein looked like one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised. Bernstein thought that Woodward’s rapid rise at the Post had less to do with his ability than his Establishment credentials.

  They had never worked on a story together. Woodward was 29, Bernstein 28.

  The first details of the story had been phoned from inside the Watergate by Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran of 35 years of police reporting for the Post. Lewis was something of a legend in Washington journalism—half cop, half reporter, a man who often dressed in a blue regulation Metropolitan Police sweater buttoned at the bottom over a brass Star-of-David buckle. In 35 years, Lewis had never really “written” a story; he phoned the details in to a rewrite man, and for years the Washington Post did not even have a typewriter at police headquarters.

  The five men arrested at 2:30 A.M. had been dressed in business suits and all had worn Playtex rubber surgical gloves. Police had seized a walkie-talkie, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35-millimeter cameras, lock picks, pen-size tear-gas guns, and bugging devices that apparently were capable of picking up both telephone and room conversations.

  “One of the men had $814, one $800, one $215, one $234, one $230,” Lewis had dictated. “Most of it was in $100 bills, in sequence. . . . They seemed to know their way around; at least one of them must have been familiar with the layout. They had rooms on the second and third floors of the hotel. The men ate lobster in the restaurant there, all at the same table that night. One wore a suit bought in Raleigh’s. Somebody got a look at the breast pocket.”

  Woodward learned from Lewis that the suspects were going to appear in court that afternoon for a preliminary hearing. He decided to go.

  Woodward had been to the courthouse before. The hearing procedure was an institutionalized fixture of the local court’s turnstile system of justice: A quick appearance before a judge who set bond for accused pimps, prostitutes, muggers—and, on this day, the five men who had been arrested at the Watergate.

  A group of attorneys—known as the “Fifth Street Lawyers” because of the location of the courthouse and their storefront offices—were hanging around the corridors as usual, waiting for appointments as government-paid counsel to indigent defendants. Two of the regulars—a tall, thin attorney in a frayed sharkskin suit and an obese, middle-aged lawyer who had once been disciplined for soliciting cases in the basement cellblock—were muttering their distress. They had been tentatively appointed to represent the five accused Watergate burglars and had then been informed that the men had retained their own counsel, which is unusual.

  Woodward went inside the courtroom. One person stood out. In a middle row sat a young man with fashionably long hair and an expensive suit with slightly flared lapels, his chin high, his eyes searching the room as if he were in unfamiliar surroundings.

  Woodward sat down next to him and asked if he was in court because of the Watergate arrests.

  “Perhaps,” the man said. “I’m not the attorney of record. I’m acting as an individual.”

  He said his name was Douglas Caddy and he introduced a small, anemic-looking man next to him as the attorney of record, Joseph Rafferty, Jr. Rafferty appeared to have been routed out of bed; he was unshaven and squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. The two lawyers wandered in and out of the courtroom. Woodward finally cornered Rafferty in a hallway and got the names and addresses of the five suspects. Four of them were from Miami, three of them Cuban-Americans.

  Caddy didn’t want to talk. “Please don’t take it personally,” he told Woodward. “It would be a mistake to do that. I just don’t have anything to say.”

  Woodward asked Caddy about his clients.

  “They are not my clients,” he said.

  But you are a lawyer? Woodward asked.

  “I’m not going to talk to you.”

  Caddy walked back into the courtroom. Woodward followed.

  “Please, I have nothing to say.”

  Would the five men be able to post bond? Woodward asked.

  After politely refusing to answer several more times, Caddy replied quickly that the men were all employed and had families—factors that would be taken into consideration by the judge in setting bond. He walked back into the corridor.

  Woodward followed: Just tell me about yourself, how you got into the case.

  “I’m not in the case.”

  Why are you here?

  “Look,” Caddy said, “I met one of the defendants, Bernard Barker, at a social occasion.”

  Where?

  “In D.C. It was cocktails at the Army-Navy
Club. We had a sympathetic conversation . . . that’s all I’m going to say.”

  How did you get into the case?

  Caddy pivoted and walked back in. After half an hour, he went out again.

  Woodward asked how he got into the case.

  This time Caddy said he’d gotten a call shortly after 3:00 A.M. from Barker’s wife. “She said her husband had told her to call me if he hadn’t called her by three, that it might mean he was in trouble.”

  Caddy said he was probably the only attorney Barker knew in Washington, and brushed off more questions, adding that he had probably said too much.

  At 3:30 P.M., the five suspects, still dressed in dark business suits but stripped of their belts and ties, were led into the courtroom by a marshal. They seated themselves silently in a row and stared blankly toward the bench, kneading their hands. They looked nervous, respectful and tough.

  Earl Silbert, the government prosecutor, rose as their case was called by the clerk. Slight, intent and owlish with his horn-rimmed glasses, he was known as “Earl the Pearl” to Fifth Streeters familiar with his fondness for dramatic courtroom gestures and flowery speech. He argued that the five men should not be released on bond. They had given false names, had not cooperated with the police, possessed “$2300 in cold cash, and had a tendency to travel abroad.” They had been arrested in a “professional burglary” with a “clandestine” purpose. Silbert drew out the word “clandestine.”

  Judge James A. Belsen asked the men their professions. One spoke up, answering that they were “anti-communists,” and the others nodded their agreement. The Judge, accustomed to hearing unconventional job descriptions, nonetheless appeared perplexed. The tallest of the suspects, who had given his name as James W. McCord, Jr., was asked to step forward. He was balding, with a large, flat nose, a square jaw, perfect teeth and a benign expression that seemed incongruous with his hard-edged features.

  The Judge asked his occupation.

  “Security consultant,” he replied.

  The Judge asked where.

  McCord, in a soft drawl, said that he had recently retired from government service. Woodward moved to the front row and leaned forward.