All the President's Men (20 page)

While Woodward was writing the Canuck Letter story, Bernstein was having trouble sketching a general story about the White House-directed espionage and sabotage. There were too many generalizations, and the meaty details were in the other two stories.

As he often did when he was experiencing difficulty writing, Bernstein walked across the newsroom to the water cooler. Marilyn Berger, a national-staff reporter who covers the State Department, came up to him as he scanned the bulletin board. She asked if he and Woodward knew about the Canuck Letter.

Sure, he said, they were writing it for tomorrow.

He took another sip before the peculiarity of the question struck him. Woodward had only found out about the Canuck Letter at six that morning. They were careful in the office not to talk about what they were working on. The only people Bernstein or Woodward had mentioned the letter to were Sussman, Rosenfeld, Simons, Bradlee and David Broder, the
Post’s
senior political reporter.

How did Marilyn know about it?

“Dave [Broder] hasn’t told you?” she asked.

Told them what?

“That Ken Clawson wrote the Canuck Letter,” Marilyn said.

Bernstein’s reply was loud enough to cause heads to turn in that corner of the newsroom.

Berger explained that Clawson, their former colleague on the
Post,
had told her matter-of-factly over a drink that he had written the Canuck Letter. He had said it several times.

The coincidence seemed too much. Bernstein suspected a set-up. On the same morning they learn that the White House is responsible for the Canuck Letter, Marilyn Berger waltzes into the newsroom and says Ken Clawson did it?

But Berger said Clawson had told her about it more than two weeks earlier—before Bernstein had ever heard of Segretti. Besides, he thought, Clawson was just the kind who would think nothing of pulling such a trick.

Bernstein tugged Berger by the arm and asked her to repeat to Woodward what she had said. Woodward had some doubts that Clawson would get involved in dirty tricks for the White House so soon after leaving the
Post
for the President’s staff. The Canuck Letter had been printed less than three weeks after Clawson had joined the administration. Woodward raised the point; then he remembered something: a friend at the White House had once told him of an initiation rite in which new members of the President’s staff were ordered to prove their mettle by screwing an enemy of the White House. Maybe the Canuck Letter had been Clawson’s initiation rite, winning him a fraternity paddle with the Presidential Seal from his new brothers in the USC Mafia.

Bradlee, Simons, Rosenfeld and Sussman joined the discussion around Woodward’s typewriter. All pretense of security had been abandoned and word spread through the newsroom: Clawson had written the Canuck Letter and there was a package of stories coming that would go through the White House like a rocket. It was decided that Berger should try to lunch with Clawson that afternoon and see if he would repeat himself.

Meanwhile, she filed a memo describing her conversation with Clawson.

Memo from M. Berger (Eyes Only). On the evening of September 25, 1972, at approximately 8:30
P.M
., Ken Clawson telephoned me at my apartment to invite me out for a drink. I said I had already eaten dinner, was very tired, but if he wanted to come over for a drink he could. I invited him because he had called twice before with the same invitation in the course of the previous weeks, and I had said “no” each time. When Ken arrived I offered him a drink. He accepted a scotch—I forget if it was with water or soda, but I know he took ice. We sat down to talk. I had Sanka. In the course of the discussion (I would say about the first ten minutes or so) we started talking about being a reporter and being a government official. He said we reporters knew only a fraction of what goes on. I asked him if, now that he was in the White House, he would be a better reporter when he left. He said he had covered the White House before, but could
really
cover it now. He may have said something about knowing where all the bodies are buried, but I’m not absolutely sure of that.

It was then that he said, “I wrote the  . . . letter.” I think he said the Canuck letter, but in any case he clearly announced that he wrote that [Muskie] letter. I was so shocked I felt queasy. I asked him why. He said it was because Muskie was the candidate who would represent the strongest opposition and they wanted him out. When I said Muskie must have reacted beyond all their expectations, he indicated “yes.”

I then asked him whether he had done that kind of thing when he was a reporter—i.e., that kind of dishonest thing. He said “No,” that he was a straight honest reporter. I asked how he could do such a thing as write that letter, and that’s when he said that’s politics, that’s the way things are. In the course of that conversation that evening he also spoke with enormous praise of Nixon, particularly about what a great guy he is, how warm he is, what a joker he is and how the President is always warning him and John Scali [now Ambassador to the United Nations] to behave. . . . This is the part of the conversation that evening that dealt with the Canuck letter and related matters. Naturally we spoke about a number of other things.

Berger, a 37-year-old former reporter for
Newsday,
is a diplomatic specialist. She knew that she was about to become part of the story—a situation that is congenitally distressing to reporters—but she reacted to her sudden appearance in the midst of the Watergate excitement with self-possession.

Clawson accepted her invitation for a one-o’clock lunch. Berger returned to the office about three and filed another memo.

Lunch at Sans Souci (he bought). I told Ken that Woodward and Bernstein were on to a big story of which the Canuck letter was a part, that they had traced it to the White House and that I had said, “That’s not new, Ken said he did it.” Ken looked very serious, as he had throughout the lunch. Dr. Lukash [President Nixon’s doctor] had just told him some days before that he has high blood pressure and he has to watch what he eats and drinks. He acted like he had determined to get off drinking altogether and to lose weight. He ordered a Caesar salad and didn’t even finish it.

He also mentioned that it takes a lot out of him when he has to “dress down” other officials, especially Cabinet officials. I asked him if he indeed dresses down Cabinet officials and he said he does. Concerning the Canuck letter, he said he wished I hadn’t said that to the boys. I said I didn’t know that was anything new. He said that Woodward and Bernstein “can’t possibly have traced it to the White House” or “it can’t possibly have been traced to the White House.” On the statement to me, he said he would “deny it on a stack of Bibles over his mother’s grave.” He dropped it, then returned to it, asking what they had. I told him I wasn’t entirely sure, but on the letter part they had traced some fellow from New England who went to Florida for the Muskie thing, etc. I was very vague. He said he would deny it.

Later he returned to it and asked if I wanted to take down what he wanted to say about it or if I wanted to let them [Woodward and Bernstein] call. Then he said better let them call.

Bradlee, the other editors and Bernstein and Woodward studied Berger’s memo. Clawson had not denied saying that he had written the letter. Woodward called Clawson at the White House. Now Clawson asserted that he had not admitted writing the letter in the first place and that the entire matter was a misunderstanding.

Woodward said that the editors believed Berger and that the
Post
was going to use what she had reported.

Clawson said: “That’s your privilege. I just hope you include my denial. Marilyn misunderstood. She’s a professional and did not deliberately do anything unprofessional. We were just shooting the breeze about the election. We were not in an interview situation.”

Woodward asked where all this shooting the breeze had taken place. Clawson said he didn’t recall.

Woodward asked if Clawson had ever known Berger to get anything wrong or misquote someone. Clawson, growing more annoyed, lashed out: “You are not going to ask a bullshit question like that. Don’t give me that crap. That’s straight out of Wichita, Kansas. She writes in the area of foreign affairs and I don’t read very much in foreign affairs. I don’t know how to answer that.”

Clawson maintained that the first time he had heard of the Canuck Letter was when “I saw it on television” following Muskie’s February 26 appearance. “I know nothing about it” aside from that, he insisted.

Shortly after the conversation with Clawson, Berger rushed over to Woodward’s desk. “Ken Clawson is on the telephone. What should I do?”

Woodward thought perhaps Clawson was going to make some sort of personal plea to Berger. No one at the
Post
doubted that Clawson had told Berger he had written the letter; but they all tended to believe that he had been bragging and oversimplifying. It seemed likely that he had merely had a hand in the episode, and that he had taken the credit for it. Both possibilities seemed in character. When Clawson was on the national staff at the
Post,
he had a habit of leaving off the bylines of local reporters who occasionally worked with him on stories.

While Berger left Clawson on “hold,” a secretary got on an extension to transcribe.

Clawson seemed much less concerned about the Canuck Letter than the circumstances in which he and Berger had discussed it. “It just occurs to me—where were we when this alleged conversation took place?” Clawson asked Berger.

“Alleged conversation? Are you denying  . . .?”

“Look, I said it was a misunderstanding. I said I thought you were a fine reporter and we probably had a misunderstanding.”

Berger said something about a drink.

“Can’t we have had it in a restaurant?” Clawson asked.

No, Berger said, because it had been at her apartment.

“Are you serious? No. Christ! You going to tell them that?”

“I told them already.”

“You told them that?”

“Well, you did come over for a drink.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake.”

“What’s wrong with coming over for a drink?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” she said.

“You and me in your apartment.”

“Well  . . .”

“You have already told them that?” Clawson said. “Jesus Christ. Well, you have just shot me down. If it appears in the paper that I am over at your house having a drink  . . . do you know what that does?”

“I don’t see why.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I have a clear conscience.”

“Jesus Christ. Who did you tell?”

“I told the guys.”

“That’s incredible. Just incredible,” he repeated.

“I don’t see what’s so wrong about that.”

“Marilyn, I have a wife and family and a dog and a cat.”

“Well, I have lots of people come over to my house for a drink.”

“Oh, boy. That’s the worst blow.”

“There’s nothing bad about it.”

“Well, there sure is.”

“[It] should not look bad,” Berger insisted.

“Incredible. Just incredible.”

“It’s incredible that you [are so upset] about that when this other thing is really substantive,” Berger told him.

There was a long silence. “Okay. Amazing.”

“I have nothing to be embarrassed about,” Berger said.

“That’s the most embarrassing thing of all.” He hung up.

A few minutes later, Clawson called Bradlee to ask that the
Post
not say that he’d been in Marilyn Berger’s apartment during the conversation.

Bradlee was not interested in where the conversation had taken place, aside from the fact that it gave him leverage over Clawson. He had had no intention of even hinting at the context of the conversation in print.

Clawson denied to Bradlee, too, that he had claimed authorship of the letter or had anything to do with it.

At about 6:00
P.M
. the editors and Bernstein and Woodward had a final meeting with Bradlee on the stories.

“What do you have and how are you saying it?” Bradlee asked.

The reporters had abandoned the earlier plan for three stories. Instead, Woodward was writing an account of the Canuck Letter, including Clawson’s alleged role, and Bernstein was writing a Segretti-espionage-sabotage story. Copies of the half-finished accounts were passed to Bradlee.

He brought his chair close to his oval table-desk, held his hand in the air to request silence and began reading. Simons was reading another set of carbons. Rosenfeld nervously swiveled his orange chair in quarter-turns. Occasionally, whispered comments went back and forth. Sussman sat quietly with his legs crossed.

“Fellas”—Bradlee broke the silence—“you’ve got one story here. Put it into one, fit it together. It’s all part of the same thing.”

He turned his chair 180 degrees to his own typewriter on the ledge behind the oval table, opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of two-ply paper.

“Never mind the first several paragraphs,” Bradlee said, “you work that out.” He began on a section which would deal with Clawson and the letter. He banged out two long paragraphs, then flipped the page across the table to Woodward. Bernstein, meanwhile, went to his desk and wrote:

FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders and—since 1971—represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.

Bernstein passed the draft around, first to Woodward and then to the editors who had gathered around his desk. All agreed. Not a word was changed, unusual on such a sensitive story, especially given the number of editors involved.

Woodward added the third paragraph:

During their Watergate investigation federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.