All the President's Men (17 page)

“The first time he called would have been 26 June, 1971. He had called and told me he would be in Washington, and he came to a dinner party at my apartment on 26 June. Nothing was said that night. On 27 June, I met him for breakfast. That’s when he first mentioned the deal. He asked would I be interested, because I was getting out of the Army? Both of us were getting out shortly. We were all captains in the Judge Advocate General Corps. None of us had anything lined up. He told me he had come to Washington for an interview at the Treasury Department.”

Bernstein wrote a note to himself: “Treasury—Liddy.” Gordon Liddy had worked at Treasury before he joined the White House staff,
at just about the time Shipley was talking about. But Shipley said he had never heard of Liddy before the Watergate break-in.

Shipley had picked Segretti up at the Georgetown Inn the morning of June 27, 1971 and driven him to Dulles Airport. “On the way to Dulles, he said, ‘How would you like to work in an operation doing a little political espionage?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘For instance, we go to a Kennedy rally and find an ardent Kennedy worker. Then you say that you’re a Kennedy man too but you’re working behind the scenes; you get them to help you. You send them to work for Muskie, stuffing envelopes or whatever, and you get them to pass you the information. They’ll think that they are helping Kennedy against Muskie. But actually you’re using the information for something else.’ It was very strange. About three quarters of the way to the airport, I said, ‘Well, who would we be working for?’ He said Nixon. I was really taken aback, because all the actions he had talked about would have taken place in the Democratic primaries.

“The main purpose was that the Democrats not have the ability to get back together after a knock-down drag-out campaign, he said. ‘What we want to do is cause enough havoc so they can’t.’ I said, ‘Well, it sounds interesting, let me think about it.’ ”

The following week, Segretti had called Shipley from Fort Ord, California, to renew the offer.

“On Thursday, 1 July,” Shipley continued, “I went and had an interview with a friend who had worked for Senator Albert Gore’s administrative assistant and asked him what I should do. I told him I wasn’t interested, but was wondering if it might help the Democrats if I played along. Or whether I should drop it immediately. He said, ‘Don’t stick your neck out, but don’t say no; see what you can find out.’

“On the 19th of July, Segretti called and asked that I think of five names of people that I might contact [to join the operation]. I don’t recall if I told him any or not. On Sunday morning, the 25th of July, he called me from Chicago and  . . . said he had made a similar proposal to another Army captain there—Roger Lee Nixt, who was stationed at an Army post in Chicago, Fifth Army headquarters, I think. He said he wanted to fly to Washington to talk to me. . . . The gist of that conversation was ‘Are you with me or not?’

“I asked him what he wanted me to do. He said ‘Enlist people—be imaginative.’

“One thing he did stress was asking people who were fairly free to travel, and he was asking lawyers because he stressed he didn’t want to do anything illegal. It wasn’t represented as strictly a strong-arm operation. He stressed what fun we could have. . . .”

He said that when a rally was scheduled for 7:00
P.M
. at a local coliseum “you would call up and represent that you were the field manager for the candidate and you had information that some rowdies, hippies and what-have-you were going to cause trouble. So you ask him to postpone the rally from seven o’clock, when it was actually scheduled, to nine o’clock, thereby insuring that the coliseum manager had the place padlocked when the candidate showed up.”

Then again on July 28, Segretti had called Shipley, and had asked him to fly to Atlanta to help enlist another former Army captain, Kenneth Griffiths. Shipley didn’t go.

The last time Shipley heard from Segretti was on October 23, 1971: “He called from California and asked me to check into Muskie’s operation in Tennessee. . . . All these times he would give me these proposals, I would say, ‘Sure,’ but I just never did anything about it.”

Did Shipley know where to get in touch with Segretti, where he lived?

“About two weeks ago, I tried to get a phone number in Los Angeles for him, but there was no listing. He told me he was going to be in a law firm by the name of Young and Segretti—he said it was a cover, that he would be doing only political work.”

Shipley had finished going through his notes. Bernstein asked him to try to recall his conversations with Segretti in more detail.

“At one time, Segretti said it might be good to get a false ID to travel under, that it would be harder for anyone to catch up with us. He mentioned he might use the pseudonym Bill Mooney for himself. Just in passing, he said, ‘Why don’t you think up a good one and get an ID card?’ I said, ‘I’m not particularly good at that kind of thing.’ He also told me we would be taken care of after Nixon’s re-election. I would get a good job in the government. I said, ‘How in hell are we going to be taken care of if no one knows what we’re doing?’ And Segretti said, ‘Nixon knows that something is being done. It’s a typical deal. Don’t-tell-me-anything-and-I-won’t-know.’ ”

How sure was Shipley that Segretti was working for the Nixon campaign?

“I don’t know if he ever worked for Nixon,” he said, “I don’t have
any proof. He could have been working for Kennedy, Muskie or Sam Yorty, for all I know.” But Segretti had told Shipley that if he stayed with the operation, it would lead to a permanent job in the administration.

Bernstein asked whether Shipley knew of others Segretti had approached.

Peter Dixon, an attorney in San Francisco.

“All the people whose names I listed were in Vietnam together as Army captains in JAG in ‘68 and ‘69. Nixt is working for a law firm in Denison, Iowa, I think. Griffiths is still in Atlanta.”

What other details could he remember?

“Well, Segretti said that the people who contacted him about the operation were Los Angeles people. They could have been law-school people, old friends of the family, I have no idea. He never told me any names. He said that’s the way we’ll operate. I was not to tell him the names of any operatives working for me. . . . He said he wanted to cover the country. Frankly, I don’t think he could do it because he’s not that kind of guy, he doesn’t have the right personality. He’s a small guy with a big smile on his face all the time—naïve.”

Bernstein asked for a physical description of Segretti.

“Short, baby-faced, less than five foot eight, maybe 150 pounds.”

Shipley didn’t know much about Segretti’s politics. “I always assumed he was fairly liberal. I don’t think we ever had a political discussion.”

Segretti had said that he “would more or less be the head coordinator of the operation for the whole country,” but a lot of the things he proposed to do didn’t seem that damaging: “He said we could get a post-office box in Massachusetts in the name of the Massachusetts Safe Driving Committee and award a medal to Teddy Kennedy.

“One thing that struck me was that he seemed to be well financed. He was always flying across the country. He said that money was no problem, that the people we would be working for wanted results for the cash that would be spent.”

Shipley had pressed him on the financing, but Segretti had said, “‘Don’t ask me any names because I’m not going to tell you any.’ I had the feeling it was some big spender, but not a government man.”

Bernstein asked Shipley not to discuss the information with anyone else, and called Woodward at home. They were on the way, Bernstein
said. It would take a few days, but the story was in sight. This time, Woodward was intrigued.

Kenneth Griffiths, Roger Lee Nixt and Peter Dixon all had listed phone numbers.

Nixt didn’t want to talk about it. “I had just one conversation about it with Don. He’s a friend and I’m just not going to discuss it, out of consideration for him. . . . I didn’t do anything. . . . Yes, he proposed some undercover work for the Nixon campaign, but I’m not going to talk about it.”

At Griffiths’ home in Atlanta, there was no reply. That left Dixon in San Francisco. His secretary said he was on a camping trip, but was expected to arrive that afternoon in Reno, Nevada, at the home of a friend, Paul Bible.

The Senator’s son? asked Bernstein.

Yes.

That was great. Senator Alan Bible of Nevada and his family had lived next door to the Bernstein family in Silver Spring, Maryland, for more than a dozen years. Paul was a few years older than Bernstein, but they knew each other, had played street football together. He remembered when Paul had gotten his ‘58 Chevy Impala. It was jet black, lowered, and had dual exhausts and spinners. Bernstein had been envious.

He called Bible in Reno and told him what he was working on. He was sure Paul would help.

Bible was flabbergasted. Segretti? He couldn’t imagine it. Bible, too, had served in the Army with Segretti, and Don wasn’t the type of guy to get into this kind of mess. He would have Dixon call back and meanwhile gave Bernstein the names of other officers who had served in Segretti’s outfit.

Dixon called from Bible’s house: “Don called and asked if I’d be interested in doing some work for the re-election of the President. I said, ‘Gee, Don, I’m not interested in political matters, I’m not a Republican anyway.’ He didn’t go into it any further.”

Two acknowledgments. Bernstein reached Griffiths after two more tries. He didn’t want to talk about his dealings with Segretti. They had lunched together, had talked about the campaign. Segretti had tried to recruit him to do something for the President; the word “undercover” or “underground” had come up—he didn’t remember which.
“I said that, much as I’d like to do something for the President, I didn’t have time to do more than send him a contribution.”

Between calls, Bernstein tried to find a number for Donald Segretti. There was no such listing in Los Angeles. There was no law firm listed under Young and Segretti. There were several Segrettis, however. After several calls, Bernstein reached Mrs. A. H. Segretti in Culver City. She said she was Don’s mother.

Bernstein bent the rules a bit. The
Post
had a firm policy that its reporters were never to misrepresent themselves. But he didn’t tell Mrs. Segretti he worked for the
Washington Post.
When he left his name and numbers, they were for both his and Woodward’s apartments. Bernstein neglected to tell Woodward about the call.

Woodward was playing Scrabble with a friend at his apartment when the phone rang that afternoon.

“Is Carl Bernstein there?”

Woodward said Bernstein wasn’t there, and asked who was calling.

“Don Segretti.”

Woodward froze. Why was Segretti calling Bernstein at his place? Bernstein had mentioned only the highlights of his conversation with Shipley. Woodward wasn’t familiar enough with the details to put much pressure on.

After a long pause, Woodward said, “Oh.”

“Who is Carl Bernstein?” Segretti asked.

Woodward sensed he was trapped and tried to recover. Both of them were reporters for the
Washington Post,
he said and—without letting Segretti get in a word—added that they wanted to ask him about some rather serious allegations involving political undercover work he had done for the Nixon campaign.

“The
Washington Post?”
Segretti asked. He said he didn’t know what Woodward was talking about. Besides, he was too busy to talk, he said, and hung up.

Woodward called Bernstein at the office and asked what the hell was going on. Bernstein was furious with himself. They had lost the edge.

Bernstein and Woodward tried to figure out what to do next. One of them, or another reporter, should get on Segretti’s tail right away. They called Sussman at home. He suggested using the
Post’s
West Coast correspondent or a “stringer” recommended by the national desk.
Robert Meyers, a 29-year-old former
Newsweek
stringer—the term for a reporter hired by a newspaper for special assignments on a story-by-story basis—would track down Segretti. Meyers projected an image more professorial than reporter-like—pipe-smoking, a wispy goatee, rimless eyeglasses. When Bernstein reached him at home, he was soaking in the bathtub. He had followed the
Post’s
Watergate coverage closely, and Bernstein brought him up to date on Segretti.

There were two other calls that afternoon. A woman at the Georgetown Inn was prevailed upon to search the hotel’s records for the week of June 21, 1971, for a record of Donald Segretti or Bill Mooney. The other call was to Gordon Liddy’s home.

Bernstein went into an unoccupied office near the newsroom. He was really going to break the rules this time, and he didn’t want Bradlee or anybody else to walk by his desk and hear him doing it. Besides, there was no question about the security of that phone.

He closed the door and rehearsed his number: “Gordon  . . . This is Don Segretti. I think we’ve got big troubles. . . .” All he wanted was some sign of recognition, something like, “What’s the problem, Don?”

Unfortunately, Bernstein had not designed a scenario to deal with the possibility that Mrs. Liddy would answer the phone and ask who was calling. If Mrs. Liddy had ever heard of Donald Segretti, she gave no indication. And if her husband did know Segretti, he would probably phone him in California and find out the caller had been an impostor—probably from the
Washington Post,
whose reporters had also been in touch with Segretti and his family earlier in the day. Bernstein got off the phone in a hurry.

•   •   •

All the lines were out. The next call, Monday afternoon, from the Georgetown Inn, confirmed that Donald H. Segretti had registered on June 25, 1971, and checked out on the 27th. There was no record of the phone calls he had made.

Bernstein renewed a contact made in June when he had been retracing the movements of the five men arrested inside the Watergate. He had called an employee of a credit-card company who, if promised anonymity, said he could obtain selected records.