All the President's Men Page 8

  When Woodward had an urgent inquiry to make, he would move the flower pot with the red flag to the rear of the balcony. During the day, Deep Throat would check to see if the pot had been moved. If it had, he and Woodward would meet at about 2:00 A.M. in a pre-designated underground parking garage. Woodward would leave his sixth-floor apartment and walk down the back stairs into an alley.

  Walking and taking two or more taxis to the garage, he could be reasonably sure that no one had followed him. In the garage, the two could talk for an hour or more without being seen. If taxis were hard to find, as they often were late at night, it might take Woodward almost two hours to get there on foot. On two occasions, a meeting had been set and the man had not shown up—a depressing and frightening experience, as Woodward had waited for more than an hour, alone in an underground garage in the middle of the night. Once he had thought he was being followed—two well-dressed men had stayed behind him for five or six blocks, but he had ducked into an alley and had not seen them again.

  If Deep Throat wanted a meeting—which was rare—there was a different procedure. Each morning. Woodward would check page 20 of his New York Times, delivered to his apartment house before 7:00 A.M. If a meeting was requested, the page number would be circled and the hands of a clock indicating the time of the rendezvous would appear in a lower corner of the page. Woodward did not know how Deep Throat got to his paper.

  The man’s position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive. He had never told Woodward anything that was incorrect. It was he who had advised Woodward on June 19 that Howard Hunt was definitely involved in Watergate. During the summer, he had told Woodward that the FBI badly wanted to know where the Post was getting its information. He thought Bernstein and Woodward might be followed, and cautioned them to take care when using their telephones. The White House, he had said at the last meeting, regarded the stakes in Watergate as much higher than anyone outside perceived. Even the FBI did not understand what was happening. The source had been deliberately vague about this, however, making veiled references to the CIA and national security which Woodward did not understand.

  The day after the indictments were handed down, Woodward broke the rule about telephone contact. Deep Throat sounded nervous, but listened as the draft of a story was read to him. It said that federal investigators had received information from Nixon campaign workers that high officials of the Committee for the Re-election of the President had been involved in the funding of the Watergate operation.

  “Too soft,” Deep Throat said. “You can go much stronger.”

  The Bookkeeper had been right about the money in Stans’ safe. It had financed the Watergate bugging and “other intelligence-gathering activities,” he said. John Mitchell’s top assistants were only “among those” who had controlled the fund. He would not say if the former Attorney General had had prior knowledge of the bugging attempt.

  The wiretap logs had reached some of the same Mitchell aides who had disbursed the spying funds, he said.

  Following the conversation, Woodward read his scrawled notes to Bernstein, who typed a new lead:

  Funds for the Watergate espionage operation were controlled by several principal assistants of John N. Mitchell, the former manager of President Nixon’s campaign, and were kept in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President, the Washington Post has learned.

  The story also reported: the fund contained more than $300,000 earmarked for sensitive political projects; Gordon Liddy was among those who received money from the fund; records relating to the account had been destroyed; Hugh Sloan’s resignation had been the result of his suspicions about Watergate. Perhaps more important than the specific details of the story was its larger meaning: The Watergate indictments had not broken the conspiracy. And some of CRP’s campaign workers had the answers to many of the remaining questions.

  As the 6:30 deadline for the Sunday paper approached, Woodward called Van Shumway for CRP’s response. Half an hour later, Shumway called back with a statement.

  There have been and are cash funds in this committee used for various legitimate purposes such as reimbursement of expenditures for advances on travel. However, no one employed by this committee at this time has used any funds [for purposes] that were illegal or improper.

  The statement, taken literally, did not flatly deny what had been reported.

  That afternoon George McGovern held a press conference and called the Watergate investigation a “whitewash. . . . What is involved here is not only the political life of this nation, but the very morality of our leaders at a time when the United States desperately needs to revitalize its moral standards,” he said. “And that is why I shall pursue this case the length and breadth of this land.”

  The next day, September 17, both the reporters went to the Bookkeeper’s house. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was not inclined to talk to reporters, especially when a page-one story in the Post contained facts that only she and a few others at the Nixon committee knew.

  But she would rather have the reporters out of view than on the doorstep, where they were imploring her to listen to some information they had. She let them inside. They wanted her to tell them exactly who “L” and “M” and “P” were. Liddy or LaRue? McCord? Mitchell? Magruder? Porter? How much money was paid out? What about the others on the list?

  The Bookkeeper was scared and was having second thoughts. But she was calling Bernstein by his first name.

  Woodward was silent at first. Bernstein was throwing out figures. He stopped at $700,000.

  “At least that, $350,000 is what’s left in the fund.”

  The ice seemed broken. Had she meant Liddy for the “L,” or had LaRue or someone else with that initial also gotten cash?

  She would not say.

  They said they knew Liddy was the only L to be paid from the fund.

  She confirmed it.

  An unstated agreement was in the making. She seemed willing to confirm or deny statements if the reporters remained casual and gave the impression that they simply needed confirmation, not primary information. If people were to be convinced that Sloan and Stans were innocent, they told her, it was critical that the Post’s reporting be precise. That was where she could help.

  “Morale is terrible in finance,” she said. “Those of us who know are tired of being suspected. There are little jokes all the time, like ‘What’d you do with the twenty-five grand, lady?’ ”

  Was that how much Liddy got?

  She shook her head no.

  More than $50,000? Woodward asked.

  She nodded.

  Magruder got at least that too, didn’t he?

  Again she nodded.

  Magruder was the only M to get money, right?

  Another nod. But, she indicated, there was more to know about Magruder. “Let’s just say I don’t trust him at all, especially where his own skin is concerned,” she said. “He’ll stop at nothing. The last three weeks he’s turned on the charm to me something fierce.”

  And LaRue? The reporters said they knew he was involved, too, even though he had received no money.

  “He’s very elusive, he covers his tracks,” she said. “He and Mitchell are like this”—she intertwined her fingers. But she would not say what LaRue knew.

  “P” was Bart Porter; they were sure of that, they said.

  “He got a lot of money. It was in $100 bills; everybody got $100 bills.”

  Bernstein reminded her of a joke she had made—“We’re Republicans, you know. We deal in big figures.”

  Porter, too, had gotten more than $50,000, she said.

  The Bookkeeper was disturbed by the narrowness of the indictments. “I went down in good faith to the grand jury and testified and obviously the results are not there. My feeling is that the FBI turns the information in and it goes upstairs. . . . I just want out now. Hugh Sloan made the wisest decision of all. He quit. Mr. Stans said, ‘I begged him to stay, but he wouldn’t.’ ”

>   She said that people had evaded the grand jury’s questions: “Rob Odle said to me after he’d come back from the grand jury, ‘Don’t you feel like you’ve been through the wringer?’ And I said, ‘No, and you wouldn’t feel so bad if you’d tell them the whole truth.’ ” She wouldn’t go into what Odle might have concealed.

  “The propaganda since the break-in has been, ‘We have nothing to do with this and hold your head up high,’” she told the reporters as they left.

  Back at the office, Woodward went to the rear of the newsroom to call Deep Throat. Bernstein wished he had a source like that. The only source he knew who had such comprehensive knowledge in any field was Mike Schwering, who owned the Georgetown Cycle Sport Shop. There was nothing about bikes—and, more important, about bike thieves—that Schwering didn’t know. Bernstein knew something about bike thieves: the night of the Watergate indictments, somebody had stolen his 10-speed Raleigh from a parking garage. That was the difference between him and Woodward. Woodward went into a garage to find a source who could tell him what Nixon’s men were up to. Bernstein walked in to find an eight-pound chain cut neatly in two and his bike gone.

  The tone of the conversation that Sunday afternoon was ominous. When Deep Throat heard Woodward’s voice, there was a long pause. This would have to be their last telephone conversation, he said flatly. Both the FBI and the White House were determined to learn how the Post was getting its information and to put a stop to it. The situation was far more dangerous than Woodward realized. The story about Mitchell’s aides had infuriated the White House.

  The call clearly was a mistake. His friend was displeased, even angry at him. But what struck Woodward even more was how frightened Deep Throat seemed. The fear had been building, but Woodward had not recognized it until now. Only a part of it was personal. It had more to do with the situation, the facts, the implications of what he knew about. Woodward had never known him to be so guarded, so serious. At their last meeting, he had seemed weighed down. If Woodward was reading his friend right, something was horribly amiss.

  Woodward told him what he and Bernstein had heard from the Bookkeeper about Magruder and Porter.

  “They’re both deeply involved in Watergate,” Deep Throat responded. He sounded resigned, dejected.

  Woodward asked him to be more exact.

  “Watergate,” he repeated. Then he paused and added, “The whole thing.”

  He confirmed that Magruder and Porter had received at least $50,000 from Stans’ safe. And Woodward could be damned sure that the money had not been used for legitimate purposes—that was fact, not allegation. That was all he would say. From there, Woodward and Bernstein would be on their own for a while.

  A touch of his old good humor returned: “Let’s just say I’ll be willing to put the blossoming situation in perspective for you when the time comes.” But there was disgust in the way he said it.

  Bernstein was already sparring with the typewriter. Woodward glanced at the lead:

  Two of President Nixon’s top campaign officials each withdrew more than $50,000 from a secret fund that financed the bugging of Democratic headquarters, according to sources close to the Watergate investigation.

  Woodward reached Powell Moore, the deputy press director of CRP, and told him in general terms what the Post intended to report in Monday’s paper. Moore was a jocular 34-year-old Georgian who had worked in the White House communications office before the campaign.

  “Thanks a lot,” Moore said. “That’s just what I need on a Sunday.” He was sure the story was untrue—the reporters were getting bad information somewhere, he didn’t know where, but he wished they would come off this crusade and check out these things better before putting them in the paper.

  Woodward saw a lever. The reporters were sure of their facts, he told Moore. They had verified the information with sources in enough different places. But there was always the possibility of some explanation that they might be unaware of. If Moore would get Magruder to call him and discuss the allegations substantively, Woodward would agree to hold the story until after Magruder had his say. And if Magruder could convince the reporters that the story was in any way wrong, or based on some misunderstanding, they would continue to hold it until everything was checked out.

  Moore agreed. It was a breakthrough, the reporters felt: an opportunity to penetrate the committee’s haze of anonymous and ambiguous statements. Magruder called about half an hour later and said it was “absolutely untrue” that he received any money from any secret fund. “I only received my salary and expense account,” he told Woodward.

  Then how did he account for the fact that the federal investigation had determined he had received at least $50,000 from the fund in Stans’ safe?

  “I was questioned about it, but it was discarded . . . and it was agreed by all parties that it is incorrect.” The FBI had questioned him extensively. “That’s on background,” he added as an afterthought.

  Woodward told him he should know better than to try to put something on background after saying it. Magruder had served as the number-two man in the White House communications office before becoming deputy campaign manager.

  “But you’ve got to help me,” Magruder pleaded. “I’ll get in trouble if I’m quoted.”

  Woodward told him he might put that statement in the paper, too. Then, at Magruder’s request, they went on background. Woodward told him the Post intended to go ahead with the story unless Magruder could come up with a convincing reason to hold it. Magruder did not argue. But he asked Woodward to write that “government investigators,” rather than the FBI, had informed Magruder of allegations against him. “You’ve got to help me on some of this.”

  It was a small point. Magruder obviously thought that an allegation attributed to the FBI sounded more serious than “government investigators.” The request didn’t seem unreasonable. Woodward agreed. Magruder’s tone had made more of an impression on Woodward than his words. He was second in command at CRP. His job at the White House had been to deal with the press. But his voice had been shaking as he talked to Woodward.

  A section of the story was about Hugh Sloan. Deep Throat had said that Sloan had had no prior knowledge of the bugging, or of how the money was to be spent. He had quit as treasurer of CRP shortly after the bugging because he “wanted no part of what he then knew was going on.” The story quoted the Bookkeeper anonymously. “He didn’t want anything to do with it. His wife was going to leave him if he didn’t stand up and do what was right.”

  There was one problem in writing the story. Deep Throat had been explicit in saying the withdrawals financed the Watergate bugging. But the Bookkeeper—who suspected as much—could not confirm it. The reporters conferred with Sussman and Rosenfeld, who decided to fall on the cautious side and say the money was used to finance widespread “intelligence-gathering activities against the Democrats.” Gradually, an unwritten rule was evolving: unless two sources confirmed a charge involving activity likely to be considered criminal, the specific allegation was not used in the paper.

  The next morning, the New York Times did not mention the secret-fund stories. At the White House, Ron Ziegler was not asked about them. The networks carried neither of the stories, and most papers didn’t either. On Capitol Hill, the Republican leader of the Senate, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, told an informal morning press conference that the Watergate case was not of concern to the average voter but of interest to “just Senator McGovern and the media.” “Nobody is paying any attention to what you’re writing,” he said. In the newsroom, Bernstein and Woodward waited for the first edition of the afternoon Washington Star-News to arrive. The only Watergate story was about a George Washington University law professor who had filed a motion in federal court seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor in the case.

  Late that afternoon, Bernstein signed out a company car and drove to McLean, in the Virginia suburbs, to visit Hugh Sloan, the former treasurer of CRP. The trip, ordinarily half an hour’s dr
ive, took more than an hour and a quarter in the rain; Sloan lived in a new development, and Bernstein had trouble finding it.

  The development consisted of imitation Tudor houses clustered along little concrete-and-grass pedestrian lanes. The place was doubtless designed for families with young children; traffic and parking areas were safely isolated and almost every house seemed to have a tricycle or some form of hobbyhorse overturned on the lawn. Bernstein got soaked as he searched on foot for Sloan’s house.

  Mrs. Sloan answered the door. She was very pretty and very pregnant. Bernstein introduced himself and asked for Sloan. He was downtown and would not be home until 7:30 or so. She was friendly, and asked where Bernstein could be reached. Bernstein was looking for a way to talk to her at least for a while. She had worked at the White House as a social secretary, he knew, and she had been an important influence in her husband’s decision to quit the Nixon campaign.

  He guessed she was about 30. There was a softness about her good looks that seemed to suit the idea of becoming a mother. She had big brown eyes. Bernstein thought these must be awful days for the Sloans—a former assistant on the President’s staff, out of work and under a cloud of suspicion, and his wife expecting their first child. At this time when they should be happiest, his name was showing up in the papers every day in a way usually associated with mobsters . . . she spent her time waiting for him to come back from the grand jury . . . FBI agents were talking to their friends and neighbors . . . reporters were knocking on their door at all hours . . .

  Bernstein shared these thoughts with her, trying to dissociate himself from the hordes.

  She sensed his discomfort. She understood he was only trying to do his job, she said. Like her husband. “This is an honest house.” It was a declaration, proud, firm.

  Had she read the Post’s story? Mrs. Sloan nodded. She had been pleased; it had been a relief finally to see what she knew in print. Bernstein told her the Post’s staff had no preconceived notions. And there were some people who were not concerned about the truth, he added, much less about what happened to her husband.