All the President's Men (11 page)

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 drive, 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.

“I know,” she replied. It was spoken sadly. Her husband had been let down by people he believed in, people whose principles and values they had both thought were the same as their own. But the values of many of the others had been hollow. There was a flash of anger as she spoke, but mostly sorrow.

Bernstein wanted to move the conversation away from generalities. They had established a common ground philosophically, and seemed to like each other. He certainly liked her.

What had her husband’s reaction been when he realized what he was being asked to hand out money for? Bernstein was trying to cross the line slowly but she recognized it immediately.

That was something he would have to talk to her husband about. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to say. She asked for his phone number again and Bernstein wrote it on a page from his notebook. He had another appointment in McLean that evening, he lied; if it ended early enough, would it be all right to come back and talk to her husband?

Bernstein was welcome to come back, but she did not know if her husband would talk to him.

Maybe she could convince him? Bernstein smiled, trying to suggest a good-natured conspiracy.

She laughed. “We’ll see,” she said.

There was a pretty fair bike shop in McLean, and Bernstein drove there to kill a couple of hours and look halfheartedly for a replacement for his beloved Raleigh. But his mind was on Jeb Magruder. He had picked up a profoundly disturbing piece of information that day: Magruder was a bike freak. Bernstein had trouble swallowing the information that a bicycle nut could be a Watergate bugger. And Magruder really was a card-carrying bicycle freak who had even ridden his 10-speed to the White House every day. Nobody would ever steal Jeb Magruder’s bike, at least not there. Bernstein knew that, because he had ridden his bike to the White House on July 14—not the Raleigh, but a Holdsworth that he had had built in London—and as he went through the gate he knew no one would get near it.

So Bernstein had rested his bike against the wall of the little guardhouse at the entrance and not bothered to lock it. He was there to hear Vice President Agnew talk about cutting red tape to get help to victims of the Great Flood caused by Hurricane Agnes. And he had run into Ken Clawson in the hallway.

“You guys back at the
Post
are going to bark up the wrong tree one too many times on Watergate,” Clawson had said.

•   •   •

A few hours later, Hugh Sloan answered the door, looking as if he had just stepped out of the pages of
Management Intern News.
Thirtyish, slim, hair nicely trimmed just long enough, blue blazer, muted shirt, rep tie, quite handsome, maybe too thin.

“My wife told me to probably expect you,” he said, and let Bernstein step out of the rain and into the hallway. He left the door open. “As you know, I haven’t talked to the press.” It was stated apologetically. That was a good sign. One eye on the open door, Bernstein decided to shoot for the moon. The morning’s story had changed the situation, he argued. People now knew that Sloan was not guilty in Watergate. But Sloan knew who was, or at least he knew things that could lead to the guilty. Now that part of the story had come out, Sloan should put the rest on record, clear his own name and let people know the truth. Maybe there was a legitimate explanation for the cash handed over to
Liddy and John Mitchell’s aides. If there was, and that was the whole story, so be it. Maybe things were a lot worse even than that day’s story had suggested. If they were worse  . . .

“They’re worse,” Sloan interrupted. “That’s why I left, because I suspected the worst.” Suddenly he looked wounded. There seemed to be no vengeance, only hurt. He was shaking his head.