All the President's Men (14 page)

Bernstein called him before eight.

Sloan said he had to clean up the house before his in-laws arrived, but if the reporters could get out to McLean quickly, they could stop by for a few minutes.

Sloan was dressed in sport clothes and, except for the broom he was holding in his hand, he still looked like the Princeton undergraduate he once had been. He shook hands with Woodward, who immediately volunteered to help clean up the house. Sloan declined the offer
and offered coffee. A framed Christmas card picturing the President and Mrs. Nixon at home in the White House hung near the kitchen table. There was a scrawled message from the Chief and First Lady.

In the living room were more mementoes: another Christmas card, White House matchbooks with the Presidential Seal (Bernstein lit a cigarette and pocketed one), souvenirs from the ‘68 campaign.

Sloan sat in a high-backed upholstered chair, tapping his coffee cup lightly with a spoon as he talked, rarely sipping from the cup, his face drawn. He was shy.

They were discussing Maurice Stans’ office—who worked there, the lines of authority. Sloan was devoted to Stans. People who thought Stans would knowingly have anything to do with political espionage did not really know the Secretary, he said. Stans was in anguish. He had allowed himself to be maligned in the press to protect the political people. He had never known what the money withdrawn by Liddy and Porter and Magruder was to be spent on.

Did that mean that Stans had known of the outlays beforehand?

Sloan hesitated. He was trying to plead Stans’ case and instead was getting him in deeper.

The Bookkeeper had refused to say whether Stans knew of the withdrawals when they took place. Bernstein tried playing devil’s advocate, suggesting that Stans would have been derelict had he not asked to be kept informed of disbursals of money from his own safe. Sloan agreed. Then he said that Stans had given his approval before Liddy, Porter and Magruder were authorized to make withdrawals from the fund. But that he had
not
given his authorization until after he had received assurances from the political managers of the campaign that they wanted the money disbursed.

Who were these political managers?

Sloan was uncomfortable with the question. It was enough to know that Stans had not acted on his own, he said.

Woodward jumped at the opening. In other words, a group of people in the political management of the campaign had the ultimate authority to approve disbursements from the secret fund?

That was right, Sloan said, but he did not want to go into it further.

Get those names and it will all be over, Bernstein was thinking.

Sloan was more interested in talking about the Mardian-LaRue story on CRP’s housecleaning. He was curious about how the reporters
had gotten their information. It was consistent with his own deductions, but he was surprised that anyone in a position to know things firsthand would have talked so explicitly.

Bernstein’s stomach began a slow dance of panic. He had been under the impression that Sloan had confirmed almost the whole story on the basis of firsthand knowledge, not deduction. Other sources had confirmed the underpinning of the story, true, but much of it rested primarily on what Sloan had said, and now he seemed to be backing off. They went through the story again, handicapped by not having it in front of them. As they took it point by point, Woodward and Bernstein relaxed a bit. Very little, if anything, that Sloan had said before was deduction. He was not sure that he would have characterized all the specifics in the story as evidence of a “housecleaning,” but that was a matter for the reporters’ judgment. He hadn’t known much about Odle; that, however, was of small concern because that information had come from somewhere else. Nothing in the story was at variance with what he understood to be true, Sloan said finally.

The discussion kept moving around the edges of the secret fund. Was there any chance that the money had been authorized for legitimate activities? For routine intelligence-gathering projects, such innocuous tasks as recording the opposition’s speeches and clipping newspapers? To almost every question dealing with the fund, Sloan would answer that circumstances had forced him to “assume the worst,” and then would ask the reporters what
they
thought. He had been at the White House, at CRP, and had worked in campaigns before, but maybe they knew things that would cause him to redirect his thinking.

They did not. Their thinking was directed toward the political side of the committee, particularly John N. Mitchell. Bernstein reminded Sloan of his remark that Mitchell had almost certainly known of the cash outlays from the secret fund. Was he one of those “authorized,” as Sloan had put it a few minutes earlier, to approve disbursements?

“Obviously,” Sloan said. There were five people with authorizing authority over the fund, and Mitchell was one of them. Stans was another.

Had Mitchell known of the disbursements that had gone to Magruder, Porter and Liddy?

Sloan nodded. But that was not proof Mitchell had known of the bugging. There was a remote possibility that the three had gone off on
their own and spent the money on unauthorized projects, although Sloan doubted it. He was being careful.

How had it worked? How had Mitchell exercised his authority over the fund? By voucher?

It was a routine procedure, Sloan said, and in the context of a campaign with a budget of over $50 million, it had seemed insignificant at the time. When Sloan had first been approached for money, he had simply picked up the telephone and called Mitchell at the Justice Department. It only took a few seconds. Mitchell would tell him to give the money out. There had been a number of phone calls, beginning in 1971.

The reporters avoided looking at each other. While he was Attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell had authorized the expenditure of campaign funds for apparently illegal activities against the political opposition. They wanted to be sure they had heard Sloan correctly.

They had. Not only was Mitchell one of the five people with control over the fund, but he had exercised it frequently. Indeed, initially he had been the sole person to authorize the expenditures. Later, the authority had been passed to others. Magruder was among them, said Sloan.

The Bookkeeper’s account of the fund was beginning to make sense. She had said that about six people were involved. But only three that she knew of—Porter, Liddy and Magruder—had received money. The others, she had said, had simply gotten phone calls. It was all coming together. The other names were those who could authorize payments. They had been called by Sloan before the cash was handed out. Magruder had initially received money from the fund on Mitchell’s authorization. Eventually, he had been given authority to approve payments to others as well.

Mitchell, Stans and Magruder—that left two others who could authorize the payments, by Sloan’s account. Were they also on the political side at CRP?

Neither worked for the re-election committee, Sloan said, but he would go no further.

Even aside from the names, the reporters still did not fully understand the purpose of the fund. Who else would have received cash from
Stans’ safe? Would they necessarily have known about the bugging?

Sloan had no reason to believe the other recipients were involved or that the money they received had financed anything illegal or improper. Only Porter, Liddy and Magruder had received large amounts of money. There were no comparable payments to others.

How could Sloan be so sure that the money withdrawn by those three had been put to illegal or improper use, if the remainder of the money was spent legitimately?

Again Sloan said he was assuming the worst. But it was more than guesswork. He had heard a lot, seen a lot.

Woodward, who had not met Sloan before, was impressed by his care and his unwillingness to mention the names of persons he had no reason to think had done anything wrong. Sloan’s credentials as a source seemed impeccable. He was thoroughly committed to the re-election of Richard Nixon and seemed convinced that the President had known nothing of the indiscretions committed by his campaign staff.

And he seemed to understand how they had occurred. Overzealousness, overkill, a desire to leave nothing to chance in the effort to re-elect the President—he had seen it all at the White House. One breathed a rarefied air when one was in the President’s service. And Sloan thought the White House might be involved in the bugging.

The other two persons authorized to approve payments from the fund, were they members of the White House staff?

Only one, said Sloan. The other was not an official in either the campaign or the administration, not a Washingtonian.

The reporters suggested that only three persons at the White House seemed likely to have had control over the fund: H. R. Haldeman, Charles Colson, and John Ehrlichman. Their money was on Colson.

Sloan shook his head. That wasn’t the way Colson operated, he said. Chuck was too crafty, too careful to put himself in jeopardy that way. If it had been Colson, he would have done it through someone else, and that hadn’t happened.

The only reason the reporters had mentioned Ehrlichman was because of his high position at the White House. If Stans and Mitchell had had to be consulted before the money could be disbursed, someone of similar stature at the White House must have been involved. Ehrlichman had no major role in the campaign, as far as the reporters
knew. Haldeman, because he was the overseer of CRP, and because of his reputation, seemed a more logical choice.

Haldeman, known to the reporters by little more than his reputation for autocratic control of the White House staff, was the President’s eyes and ears in the campaign, Sloan confirmed. Through his political aide, Gordon Strachan, Haldeman was kept informed of every major decision made at CRP. Magruder was Haldeman’s man at the committee, installed there to make sure that John Mitchell did not run the committee without proper input from the White House.

Still Sloan would not say yes or no. But he said nothing to steer the reporters away from Haldeman, as he had with Colson. They were almost convinced it was Haldeman.

That left one more person—someone who worked for neither the White House nor CRP.

Murray Chotiner?

No, said Sloan.

Bernstein threw out a name Woodward had never heard before: Herbert Kalmbach, President Nixon’s personal lawyer. It was a guess. Sloan looked surprised.

Bernstein had remembered reading a piece in the
New York Times
the previous February that referred to Kalmbach as “Nixon’s personal attorney on the West Coast” and said that prospective clients who had business with the government couldn’t talk to him for less than $10,000. It related that his law practice had mushroomed and that he was second only to Maurice Stans on Nixon’s national fund-raising team. He was secretary of the Nixon Foundation, which was planning the Nixon Library. The story said he also worked frequently on private projects for the President and the White House.

Sloan said he didn’t want to get into a guessing game. The reporters could not tell whether this was because Kalmbach was a lucky guess or a ridiculous one. That could wait. Haldeman was the important name—if it
was
Haldeman.

The reporters had already helped themselves to three cups of coffee, going back to the kitchen to refill their cups. Sloan had been glancing at his watch and reminding them that he had to clean up the house. They had been there for more than two hours. It would be senseless to overstay their welcome. They tried once more on Haldeman.

If it was not Haldeman, then why not say so?

“I just don’t want to get into it,” said Sloan, doing nothing to shake the reporters’ belief that they were on the right track.

After a few more minutes of general talk about the campaign, the three of them walked to the door.

“Someday maybe you’ll be President,” Woodward told Sloan.

Bernstein was astonished at the remark, for it did not sound as if it had been made lightly. Woodward had meant it as a form of flattery, but there was an element of respect in it. And more—a hope that Sloan would survive the mess.

It was past noon when the reporters got to the office. Woodward placed a quick call to a source working on the federal investigation. By then, the reporters checked regularly with a half-dozen persons in the Justice Department and FBI who were sometimes willing to confirm information that had been obtained elsewhere. The sources rarely went further, often not that far.

This time Woodward was lucky. Sloan had told the whole story of the fund to investigators; so had the Bookkeeper. Mitchell, Stans, Magruder. That was right. The source would not volunteer the names of the other two persons who had controlled the fund. It was certain that the money had paid for espionage against the Democrats; whether it had financed the Watergate operation was unclear, depending on whom you believed. The details about the fund’s operation were as described by Sloan and the Bookkeeper, he said.

Haldeman?

The source would not say.

•   •   •

A few minutes later they met with Bradlee, Simons, Rosenfeld and Sussman in Bradlee’s office, a comfortable carpeted room with a picture window looking out into the newsroom, a modern oval rosewood table instead of a desk, and a black leather couch. During discussions in his office, Bradlee frequently picked up an undersize sponge-rubber basketball from the table and tossed it toward a hoop attached by suction cups to the picture window. The gesture was indicative both of the editor’s short attention span and of a studied informality. There was an alluring combination of aristocrat and commoner about Bradlee:
Boston Brahmin, Harvard, the World War II Navy, press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, police-beat reporter, news-magazine political reporter and Washington bureau chief of
Newsweek.

Simons, as restrained as Bradlee could be hard-charging and obstreperous, liked to tell of watching Bradlee grind his cigarettes out in a demitasse cup during a formal dinner party. Bradlee was one of the few persons who could pull that kind of thing off and leave the hostess saying how charming he was.