All the President's Men (32 page)

She had reported to John Dean’s office at 8:45
A.M.
the day after her return, the first week of July. Fielding and David Young were also there. “Mr. Dean said I’d be interviewed by the FBI at nine, that I would be asked what my role was, whether I knew about the bugging, and to give perfectly straightforward answers to the best of my ability.” The interview had lasted about 40 minutes as Dean, Fielding and Young sat by silently. “There were no questions asked by Mr. Dean and he didn’t take any notes.”

Afterward, she had talked briefly with Young. “He seemed kind of surprised that something like that [the bugging] could happen. He knew the telephone was in. I think after the whole thing came out he put two and two together.” The same week, Chenow had met with the Watergate prosecutors and testified before the Watergate grand jury. “Silbert never asked about Ehrlichman,” she said—“just Colson, besides Hunt and Liddy and Young.” Bernstein’s conversation with Chenow had lasted more than an hour and a half.

The next morning, Pearl Harbor Day, Woodward called Jack Harrington, the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company official in charge of White House service, who confirmed that Ehrlichman’s office had ordered the phone and had arranged the unusual billing system—the first of its kind he’d seen in 25 years.

Both reporters, meanwhile, had been told by White House sources that John Campbell had been Ehrlichman’s office manager. There was no chance that the phone would have been installed without Ehrlichman’s approval, the sources said.

By late afternoon, Bernstein had completed a 2000-word story
on the secret phone installation, on Chenow’s report about the Plumbers, and on her interview with John Dean. Gerald Warren, the deputy presidential press secretary, told Woodward there would be no White House comment—because it might affect the upcoming trial. “By not commenting,” Bernstein wrote in the fifth paragraph, “the White House left unanswered the questions of how Hunt’s official duties could require a camouflaged telephone listing and why Ehrlichman’s office would approve the arrangements for such phone service.”

To his chagrin, Bernstein was alone in his enthusiasm for the story. For the first time, someone had said for the record that the Plumbers existed, that Ehrlichman’s office was involved in their activities, and that Hunt and other presidential aides had investigated “leaks.”

Rosenfeld didn’t seem much interested in the story and left it to Sussman. Sussman and Woodward were lukewarm and thought it “didn’t prove anything.” Bradlee expressed relief more than anything else: regardless of its shortcomings, it was the
Post’s
first strong Watergate story since the Haldeman report. He was inclined to give it a B-minus, but assigned extra points because its primary source was mentioned by name. The White House could argue its meaning, but not the facts. He wanted the story on the front page—if for no other reason than to demonstrate that, five weeks after George McGovern’s defeat, the
Post
was still in the Watergate business.

•   •   •

That night, Bernstein and Woodward left aboard a 747 for Los Angeles, hoping that, if they got lucky, Donald Segretti would be more forthcoming than during Bernstein’s last trip. Copies of Hunt’s and Liddy’s travel records were in their suitcases, and Woodward had talked by telephone to a secretary in Herbert Kalmbach’s law firm who had seemed friendly.

On the flight out, Bernstein got into a high-stakes poker game in the lounge of the 747. He was about $30 ahead when Woodward wandered back and asked to join, arousing Bernstein’s protective instincts. Sometimes, Bernstein worried that his partner didn’t have enough street savvy to keep himself out of trouble. (Woodward, conversly, frequently worried that Bernstein would be all too comfortable in fast company.) But Woodward held his own against the high rollers and broke even. Bernstein won $35 in the $5-ante game.
(Woodward, Bernstein did not know, had spent a lot of weekends in Las Vegas while stationed at the Navy base in San Diego.) That night, they stayed in a $9-a-night tourist home in Marina del Rey; all the hotels in Donald Segretti’s swinging harbor village were filled. And Segretti was not home.

The next day, they drove to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel—a Beverly Hills elephant of marble and red-velvet plush where Hunt and Liddy had stayed in September 1971. The reporters talked to the security chief there, an elderly former police captain who had no idea where the hotel’s telephone records were kept. The hotel’s chief accountant, who might have received his CPA and green eyeshades from Central Casting on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard, was only slightly more helpful. Surrounded by stacks of bills and financial statements in his disheveled backroom office, he resolutely informed the reporters that he had given the FBI his word never to discuss Hunt’s and Liddy’s visit. In a corridor, Bernstein asked the accountant’s secretary if she would care for a drink in the bar, then or later. “You’re kidding,” she said, and walked off slowly.

Bernstein said he wasn’t kidding.

“You should be,” she said.

Woodward later reached one of Segretti’s alleged contacts on the telephone and proposed a visit. “I’ll shoot you if you come out here,” he replied.

Woodward drove south to Kalmbach’s law offices at Newport Beach. The President’s personal lawyer was out of town. The secretary to whom Woodward had spoken on the phone gave him a cup of coffee and offered her opinion: “Mr. Kalmbach is one of the finest men I know. He is an honest man, and when all of this is over, you will understand that.” She would say no more.

At Kalmbach’s home, a woman came to the door and said, “Absolutely not,” when he asked for a moment of her time. She escorted Woodward out the inner courtyard gate and slammed it behind him.

They ate lunch with Larry Young, Segretti’s ex-friend who had been so helpful in October; he knew nothing new. After four days, they finally reached Segretti by phone, and he agreed to meet them in a nearby Howard Johnson’s. Over milkshakes and banana splits, they talked for about an hour. Segretti was unyielding about talking for the record in the foreseeable future.

The reporters returned to Washington on the night of December 11. At the White House press briefing the next noonday, Ron Ziegler, pressed again on the matter of Howard Hunt’s secret telephone and the Plumbers, gave the first White House acknowledgment that the Plumbers had been in the business of investigating leaks to the news media. But he seemed to deny that either Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy had been a Plumber. “To the best of my knowledge,” said Ziegler, Liddy was never assigned to the team. Hunt? “I don’t believe so, no.”

Neither Bernstein nor Woodward had attended Ziegler’s briefing. Convinced that they could learn more elsewhere, and concerned that their presence might further personalize Ziegler’s responses, they customarily avoided the White House press room.
*

Around this time, the White House began excluding the
Post
from covering social events at the Executive Mansion—first, a large Republican dinner; then, a dinner for past, present and newly designated Cabinet officers; then, a Sunday worship service; finally, a Christmas party for the children of foreign diplomats. The immediate target was
Post
reporter Dorothy McCardle, a gentle, 68-year-old grandmotherly fixture of the
Washington
press corps, who had covered White House social events for five administrations.

On the same day Mrs. McCardle was barred from the prayer meeting at the White House, Bernstein had dinner with friends, among them a reporter from the
Washington Star.

The
Star
reporter told him an interesting story about a conversation he’d had with Colson a few days before November 7:

“As soon as the election is behind us, we’re going to really shove
it to the
Post,”
he quoted Colson as saying. “All the details haven’t been worked out yet, but the basic decisions have been made—at a meeting with the President.” Colson advised the
Star
reporter to “start coming around with a breadbasket” because “we’re going to fill it up with news” that would make reading the
Star
indispensable, while freezing out the
Post.
“And that’s only the beginning. After that, we’re really going to get rough. They’re going to wish on L Street [location of the
Post]
that they’d never heard of Watergate.”

Soon, challenges against the
Post’s
ownership of two television stations in Florida were filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The price of
Post
stock on the American Exchange dropped by almost 50 percent. Among the challengers—forming the organizations of “citizens” who proposed to become the new FCC licensees—were several persons long associated with the President.

11

J
UDGE SIRICA
wanted Bernstein and Woodward in his courtroom at 10:00
A.M.
on December 19. A hearing before the Judge on another matter involving the press—a defense motion to force the
Los Angeles Times
to turn over tapes and notes of its interview with Alfred C. Baldwin—was already scheduled for that hour.

The reporters dressed neatly for their day in court. Woodward got his hair trimmed. The courtroom was packed, mostly with media people who were there for the confrontation over the tapes. Bernstein and Woodward took seats in the second row.

Sirica, they learned at precisely 10 o’clock, was capable of expressing his displeasure with a frown so deep as to leave no doubt about his reputation for toughness. He had decided to make the reporters the first order of business. The grand jurors had entered the courtroom. The audience obeyed the command of “All rise.” The Judge’s frown deepened. “Oh boy,” Woodward whispered to Bernstein, bouncing on his toes and sucking in his breath so the words sounded as if he were ordering a horse to stop. Bernstein was contemplating which fate he preferred—the ignominy of being stripped naked in front of his colleagues for his half-assed conduct, or the mitigating honor of being dispatched by “Maximum John.”

“It has recently come to my attention  . . .” Sirica began recounting the unfortunate facts: grand jurors had been approached over the first weekend of December in an attempt to get information; but, judging from a transcript of the prosecutors’ subsequent discussion of
the matter with the grand jury, no information had been disclosed; thus, the investigation had not been compromised. The jurors were to be commended for their silence. Their resolve could only be strengthened if once more they were reminded of the oath which had bound their deliberations “sacred and secret.”

The Judge peered out into the audience. “Now I want it understood by the person who approached members of this grand jury that the court regards the matter as extremely serious.”

The reporters were hanging on the Judge’s every word now, less confident than before that Ed Williams and the prosecutors had been convincing in their arguments.

Sirica was scowling. He noted thoughtfully that the person who had attempted to subvert the sanctity of the grand-jury proceedings was neither defendant nor counsel but  . . . “a news media representative.” A buzz in the assembled press corps. Who among them? Bernstein and Woodward waited for the Judge to unmask them and, maybe, to ask if they wished to throw themselves on the mercy of the court.

First, however, Sirica desired to point out the legal ramifications and to remind the assembly that attempting to gain information from a grand juror is, “at least potentially,” a contemptuous offense. Then he excused the grand jury and strode from the court. The clerk declared a recess.

It took the reporters several moments to understand what had happened, that that was the end of it. They had gone free.

Bernstein and Woodward tried to look nonchalant as their colleagues asked who they thought was guilty. They declined to speculate. Dan Schorr of CBS, who knew a sham when he spotted one, was the first to suggest, privately, that Bernstein and Woodward were the offenders. Hearsay, innuendo and character assassination, protested Bernstein. Schorr responded with a knowing smile. The reporters had reluctantly agreed during a rush to the halls that only as a last resort would they deny the allegation outright; maybe they could get by with indignation and artful footwork.

The confused scene in the hallway did not lend itself to careful thought. Two dozen of their colleagues were shouting private theories or polling one another in search of the guilty party. Accused again, Woodward said the first thing that came into his head: the grand-jury
contact had taken place over the first weekend in December. That was six weeks after he and Bernstein had written a major story. Somehow, the compelling illogic of the syllogism got by. Bernstein, feeling grubby, listened raptly to another newsman explain why the offender was probably a radio or television reporter, not someone from a newspaper. “Sirica specifically used the phrase ‘news media representative.’ That’s the term he always uses when he’s talking about radio and television reporters. When he means newspaper reporters, he says ‘the press.’” Yeah, said Bernstein, he thought he had noticed that, too.

Woodward and Bernstein were trying to avoid a colleague who was interviewing reporters in the hallway about the session in Sirica’s courtroom. He caught up with Woodward near the elevator and asked point-blank if the Judge had been referring to him or Bernstein.

Come off it, what do you think? Woodward answered angrily.

The man persisted. Well, was it one of them or wasn’t it? Yes or no.

Listen, Woodward snapped. Do you want a quote? Are we talking for the record? I mean, are you serious? Because if you are, I’ll give you something, all right.

The reporter seemed stunned. “Sorry, Bob, I didn’t think you’d take me seriously,” he told Woodward.

The danger passed. The nightmare vision that had haunted them all day—Ron Ziegler at the podium demanding that they be the object of a full federal investigation, or some such thing—disappeared. They tried to imagine what choice phrases he might use (“jury tampering”?), and they realized that they didn’t have the stomach for it. They felt lousy. They had not broken the law when they visited the grand jurors, that much seemed certain. But they had sailed around it and exposed others to danger. They had chosen expediency over principle and, caught in the act, their role had been covered up. They had dodged, evaded, misrepresented, suggested and intimidated, even if they had not lied outright.