All the President's Men (24 page)

“What credibility do you have?” Mollenhoff shouted. His voice was booming, and the other reporters fell silent. “What documents have you seen?” Mollenhoff demanded. “Because if you can’t tell us, you have no right to stand there.”

When MacGregor had entered the room, copies of his prepared statement had been handed out, so the reporters knew what was coming. Others were shouting at him now, though none as vigorously as Mollenhoff. “Why should we sit here and listen to you, why should we print a word you say?” he insisted.

“That will be a matter you will have to determine in consultation with your editors,” MacGregor replied. Then, looking into the television cameras, he began reading:

According to the Gallup, Harris, Sindlinger and Yankelovich polls, the political elitist movement known as McGovernism is about to be repudiated overwhelmingly by the American people. As it should be. But frustrated, 26 points behind in the polls, with three weeks to go, George McGovern and his confederates are now engaging in the “politics of desperation.” We are witnessing some of the dirtiest tactics
and hearing some of the most offensive language ever to appear in an American presidential campaign.

Lashing out wildly, George McGovern has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler, the Republican Party to the Ku Klux Klan, and the United States Government to the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. . . .

And the
Washington Post’s
credibility has today sunk lower than that of George McGovern.

Using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, anonymous sources and huge scare headlines, the
Post
has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate—a charge which the
Post
knows and half a dozen investigations have found to be false.

The hallmark of the
Post’s
campaign is hypocrisy—and its celebrated “double standard” is today visible for all to see.

Unproven charges by McGovern aides, or Senator Muskie, about alleged campaign disruptions that occurred more than six months ago are invariably given treatment normally accorded to declarations of war—while proven facts of opposition-incited disruptions of the President’s campaign are buried deep inside the paper. When McGovern headquarters in California was used as a boiler room to rally hardcore, anti-war militants to confront the President—that was apparently of no significance to a newspaper which has dispatched a platoon of reporters to investigate charges that somebody sent two hundred pizzas to a Muskie rally last spring.

Bernstein groaned. It was the second time that day that the President’s surrogates had mentioned the “pizzas.” He and Woodward had considered leaving it out of the story they had written on the harassment of Muskie’s campaign because it might appear trivial. But they had listed it as among the tricks that had been intended to disrupt a Muskie fund-raising dinner—like sending a number of items COD, timed to arrive during the affair.

Implying that the McGovern campaign was responsible, now MacGregor was demanding to know why the
Washington Post
hadn’t investigated  . . .

The Molotov cocktail discovered on October 8 at the door of the Newhall, California, Nixon headquarters?

The extensive fire damage suffered September 17th by the Nixon headquarters in Hollywood, California?

The arson of September 25th which caused more than $100,000 in damage to the Nixon headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona?

The extensive window breaking and other trashing this fall at Nixon storefronts in New York City; Arlington, Massachusetts; and Los Angeles County?
*

MacGregor went angrily on for several more minutes about Mc-Govern’s encouragement of “Daniel Ellsberg to commit a deed for which he faces a possible 115 years in a Federal Penitentiary,” and about the
Washington Post’s
hypocrisy. By the time he had finished, he was flushed and shaking. He mentioned again the “unusual circumstances” that prevented him from entertaining questions, and strode from the room. A number of incensed reporters yelled their questions, and, less calm than when he’d arrived, Bernstein joined the shouting match. As MacGregor passed, Bernstein shouted, “Are you willing to deny the Chapin story?” But MacGregor merely looked at him blankly as he passed.

When Bernstein returned to the office, Ben Bradlee was examining the statements by Ziegler, Dole and MacGregor, noting that all had emphasized the same things and had used similar language. At the
Post,
there was little doubt that the attacks were orchestrated and, if not ordered by the President, made with his knowledge and approval.

Reporters from other news organizations were calling Bradlee for a response. He put a sheet of his two-ply paper in his typewriter and banged out a statement:

Time will judge between Clark MacGregor’s press release and the
Washington Post’s
reporting of the various activities of CRP. For now it is enough to say that not a single fact contained in the investigative reporting by this newspaper about these activities has been successfully challenged. MacGregor and other high administration officials have called these stories “a collection of absurdities” and the
Post
“malicious,” but the facts are on the record, unchallenged by contrary evidence.

Bradlee was primed for a fight. He sensed that “the denials were not holding water.” Weeks earlier, he had told Bernstein and Woodward that he was not about to go on the defensive, and had urged them to use extra caution.

Now, in his office, he showed them his statement and offered some further advice. “I understated it before,” he said. “This is the hardest hardball that’s ever been played in this town. We all have to be very careful, in the office and out. I don’t want to know anything about your personal lives, that’s your business.” But if the reporters were doing anything that they didn’t want known, “cut it out,” Bradlee advised Watch who you talk to, who you hang around with; be careful on the telephones; start saving receipts for income taxes and get a lawyer to handle any future tax matters; make sure nobody brings any dope into your house; be restrained in what you say to others about the President and the administration.

Bradlee was saying nothing that the reporters hadn’t discussed between themselves, and they had taken those precautions.

“Okay, fellas?” Bradlee asked rhetorically, then tightened his fist and delivered a lightning-fast uppercut to the air. He grasped his biceps with his opposite hand as he followed through the punch.

Outside Bradlee’s office, Harry Rosenfeld was pacing around the newsroom, getting nervous. Bernstein and Woodward were budgeted to do a page-one story on the attacks. Few stories cause editors so much anxiety as those in which their newspapers and reporters are protagonists. Rosenfeld wanted to ensure that the story was absolutely fair to the administration. So did Bernstein and Woodward, but they were also insisting that it be fair to their reporting.

They described the attacks on the paper as having failed to answer the allegations. Rosenfeld struck the paragraph—it was “argumentative.” It was one thing to be fair to the White House, the reporters said, but Rosenfeld was being unfair to their work and to the paper. Rosenfeld insisted, maintaining that the offending paragraph gave the appearance of bias. He was getting angry.

The first-edition story was very short because of the dispute. Writing for the second edition, Bernstein and Woodward renewed the debate, insisting that Dole, Ziegler and MacGregor had not addressed the substance of the
Post’s
allegations.

Compounding the problem was Bernstein’s deadline-pushing. Both
Woodward and Rosenfeld were hollering at him. Bernstein kept making language changes in what Woodward had written and Rosenfeld had approved, putting everyone’s nerves on edge. It took four hours to get a barely satisfactory story—a 52-inch monster that quoted endlessly and offered the reader little help in understanding the charges and countercharges. It had been a disastrous night.

•   •   •

Newspapers across the country reported the next day on the ire of the President’s men. The White House was pitting its credibility against the
Washington Post’s,
and in the process was giving the paper’s allegations more currency.

On October 18, the
New York Times
published a story that severely undermined the White House position. The
Times
had obtained telephone records which showed that Donald Segretti’s telephone or credit card had been used for at least half a dozen calls to the White House and to Dwight Chapin’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. In addition, Segretti’s phone or credit card had been used for at least 21 calls to Howard Hunt’s home and office.

The White House would have a rough time brushing aside that documentation as hearsay, innuendo, or geyser of misinformation. Bernstein and Woodward were in the
Post’s
newsroom about 11:00
P.M
. on the night of the 17th when the
Times
front-page facsimile came over the UPL.
*
They were ecstatic, their competitive instincts abandoned in gratitude.

At the White House the next noonday, October 18, Ron Ziegler faced a hostile and aggressive press corps. Asked repeatedly to deny specifically the allegations and evidence cited by the
Post,
the
Times,
and
Time
magazine since October 10, he dodged and darted, retreating each time to the break-in at the Watergate.

“My observation on it [the
New York Times
story] is, in reading it, that it links Mr. Chapin by suggestion to the Watergate case. . . . I will repeat again today that no one presently employed at the White House had any involvement, awareness or association with the Watergate case.”

What about political spying and sabotage aside from the June 17 break-in at the Watergate?

“In the briefing yesterday and the day before yesterday, I made it clear that no one in the White House at any time directed activities of sabotage, spying, espionage, or activities that related to following people around and compiling dossiers on them or anything such as that.”

Reporters tried to refine their questions to draw a direct response. Each time, Ziegler gave the same answer, carefully using the word “directed” and avoiding “involved.”

An insistent reporter tried to nail the secretary: “Three times you’ve used the word ‘directed.’ Were they aware of what was going on?”

“I think ‘directed’ is quite clear. As I said before, anyone who would have been involved in any such activity wouldn’t be around here any more.”

“But are you asserting that nobody in the White House was involved in this?”

“I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here.”

Involved in what? Some of the reporters recalled that Ziegler’s talent for communication had first been tested as a Disneyland barker during summer vacations from college, taking tourists on the Jungle Ride. “Welcome aboard, folks. My name’s Ron. I’m your skipper and guide down the River of Adventure. . . . Note the alligators. Please keep your hands inside the boat. They’re always looking for a hand out. Look back at the dock; it may be the last time you ever see it. Note the natives on the bank; they’re always trying to get a head.”

Now Ziegler was running the President’s Jungle Ride.

Was Mr. Nixon concerned about the allegations raised about his aides?

“His concern goes to the fact that stories are being run that are based on hearsay, innuendo, guilt by association.” Etc., etc.

Ziegler’s response and the
Times’
findings on Segretti’s phone records were on the front page of next day’s
Washington Post.

Spared the brunt of the attack, the
New York Times
provided, in addition, an analysis of the White House behavior by Robert B. Semple, Jr., then the
Times’
White House correspondent:

The essence of the Administration’s recent counterattack to the charges that some of President Nixon’s assistants created or at least condoned a network of political espionage and disruption has been to denounce the newspapers that print them without explicitly discussing them. Behind the strategy lie two assumptions that tell much about the Administration’s perceptions of the voters and newspapers that serve them. Judging by recent interviews with Mr. Nixon’s aides, these assumptions seem to be widely shared in his inner circle. First, at the moment, the White House feels, the alleged conspiracy is perceived by most of the public as a distant and even amateurish intrigue far removed from the Oval Office, and thus a denial or even discussion of the charges by the White House would give those charges undeserved visibility and currency.

The second is that the public—softened up by three years of speeches from Vice President Agnew—has less than total confidence that what it reads and hears—particularly in the so-called Eastern Establishment media—is true and undistorted by political prejudice. Hence the recent Administration attacks on the
Washington Post,
which has been giving the corruption allegations front-page treatment. . . . Repeated requests to senior White House aides to get the full story, as they see it, have gone unanswered. This leaves the field to Mr. Ziegler, who appears increasingly uncomfortable with questions about Mr. Chapin and Mr. Segretti.

“Do you know why we’re not uptight about the press and the espionage business?” one White House aide—not Mr. Ziegler—asked rhetorically the other day. “Because we believe that the public believes that the Eastern press really is what Agnew said it was—elitist, anti-Nixon and ultimately pro-McGovern.”

9

F
ROM HUGH SLOAN
, the reporters knew that the fifth person who controlled the secret fund was a White House official. There were many reasons for believing that it was H. R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff. Indeed, there was some cause to suspect that behind Watergate stood Harry Robbins Haldeman.