All the President's Men (35 page)

“From the comments Howard made, it was apparent that Mitchell was getting typed reports of the wiretaps.”

Okay, Woodward thought, that made sense.

“After the Watergate arrests, when Howard was out of town hiding
and needed a lawyer, Howard was looking for John Dean, and said, Let
him
get me a lawyer.”

Woodward’s hand jerked through the neat rows of paper clips, destroying the symmetry. “John Dean?” he asked.

“That’s exactly how Silbert sounded when I told him,” the witness said. “He said, That’s the first time
his
tracks have appeared in this.’ ”

Woodward took one of his giant paper clips, bent it into a large L and began twirling it in his hand as he read over his notes. At that moment, Bradlee walked by his desk and asked what was up. Maybe a whole lot and maybe nothing, Woodward said, but there was at least one witness who could do some damage to Mitchell, Colson, Ehrlichman and John Dean. Bradlee’s eyes brightened. He did a little dance, holding an imaginary towel to his ass and wiggling it back and forth before walking off.

Woodward thought fleetingly of getting in touch with Judge Sirica or one of his law clerks and somehow letting it be known that this witness could answer a few interesting questions. He rejected the notion.

The witness was never asked those questions, but in a later conversation with Woodward he explained why Hunt was staying silent about high-level involvement. “In his lexicon of values,” the witness said, “Howard is performing a heroic act. He’s like a medieval monk who goes to meditate in a high place in the hope it will get him into Heaven. . . . Howard wants to become the Alger Hiss of the Right.”

•   •   •

The trial dragged on. During recesses, Liddy and McCord were accessible and would chat frequently in the corridors with reporters. Liddy delighted in telling little anecdotes like the one about a military plane that accidentally dropped a bomb in the red-light district of a Mexican border town. “So the town officials paid a visit to the military base,” he told a dozen reporters one morning, “and they told the base commander that if he would stop bombing the cat houses, they would close them down.” Liddy roared at his own story, laughing so convulsively that his face turned bright red.

At one point, after Liddy’s lawyer, Peter Maroulis, had another one of his frequent objections overruled by Sirica, Liddy took Woodward aside in the corridor. “Do you know how to play chess?” Liddy asked conspiratorially. Woodward did and told Liddy so. “Well, Peter just
took their queen,” Liddy said. What do you mean? Woodward asked. “Listen, that’s all I can tell you, he got their queen.” Woodward asked if that meant that the Judge had committed an error on which the higher courts would be forced to reverse any convictions. “You’re a good chess player,” Liddy said, beaming and bouncing up and down slightly with his hands in his pockets.

On January 23, the only witnesses from the Nixon committee were scheduled to testify: Jeb Magruder, Bart Porter, Rob Odle and Hugh Sloan. Woodward went to listen, and spotted Magruder pacing the corridors. The tall, 38-year-old former merchandiser of cosmetics, facial tissues and women’s hosiery had an American flag in the lapel of his conservative suit. Magruder looked at his watch and approached Silbert. “Earl,” he said, “how much longer do I have to wait?” Silbert smiled deferentially and said something about courts not being run to meet the schedules of witnesses. Magruder was exasperated. At that point, Gordon Liddy walked past him and saluted, a big grin on his face. Reporters in the hallway laughed. Magruder became angrier and turned and walked back down the hall.

Woodward decided that it was time to meet Magruder. He went up and introduced himself. Magruder was friendlier than he had expected. “I only have one objection to what you and that fellow Bernstein did. That is these visits you paid some of my people at night, banging on their doors late and not identifying yourselves.” Woodward said that he and Bernstein had always identified themselves and were always courteous. “Dirty reporting,” Magruder said. “Now, it may not have been you, but Bernstein did. I know.”

Always the politician, Woodward thought: Magruder was not willing to confront him, but passed it off on Bernstein, who wasn’t there. Woodward said that visiting people after working hours was not dirty at all and was necessitated by the unwillingness of Magruder and dozens of other people to answer questions about Watergate. Magruder turned to walk away and then looked back to Woodward. “It’s none of your business,” he said, summarizing CRP’s point of view.

Silbert put Magruder through 33 minutes of tame, respectful questioning. Magruder testified that, as John Mitchell’s first assistant, he was so busy supervising 25 campaign division heads and 250 full-time employees and spending between $30 and $35 million that he just couldn’t be overly concerned with Gordon Liddy. Magruder said he
didn’t even get along with Liddy. Liddy had a different management style. Magruder said it as if a disagreement over management styles was the most serious thing that could ever come between two people, though Liddy had once threatened to kill him. Liddy sat rocking back and forth in his chair while Magruder spoke.

Hugh Sloan, former Nixon campaign treasurer, walked nervously into the courtroom and took the stand. He looked even thinner—“He’s down to skin and bones,” his mother told a reporter from the
New York Times.
Silbert’s perfunctory questioning was cold and distant. Sloan said that he had paid out about $199,000 in cash to Liddy. Silbert did not ask who had ordered Sloan to hand out the money.

After Silbert finished his interrogation, Sirica sent the jury from the courtroom and asked Sloan 41 questions of his own. To one, Sloan replied that he had been worried about the large disbursements to Liddy. So he had checked with Maurice Stans, who in turn had verified the expenditures with John Mitchell, who in turn had said that Liddy should be given the cash.

“You verified it with whom?” Sirica asked.

Sloan repeated his answer.

Before completing his questioning, Sirica made it clear he didn’t believe Sloan’s testimony that he had given out so much money without asking the purpose of the expenditures. Amazed at Sloan’s apparent naïveté, Sirica asked, “You’re a college graduate, aren’t you?”
*

During Silbert’s closing argument, Liddy sat in his chair rocking slowly, a smile on his face, as the prosecutor pictured him as the “Mr. Big” of Watergate. Liddy—the ex-FBI agent, the former prosecutor who had made a career of cops-and-robbers. This time the cop had turned robber. Silbert paused, obviously pleased with the sound of his words. Liddy gave a quick, animated wave to the jury, exactly like the one he had given the first day of the trial.

It took the jury less than 90 minutes to find Liddy and McCord guilty of all counts against them. Liddy stood impassive with his arms folded defiantly as the court clerk read the jury’s verdict, repeating the “guilty” six times. McCord stood stoically as the word was pronounced
eight times, once for each count. Sirica ordered both jailed without bond. Before he was escorted out of the courtroom, Liddy embraced his attorney Peter Maroulis, patted him on the back affectionately, and gave one last wave to the spectators and the press before he was taken away.

Bernstein and Woodward wrote a lengthy news analysis summarizing the trial. Under the headline “Still Secret: Who Hired Spies and Why,” they noted that the 16-day trial was marked by questions that were not asked, answers that were not given, witnesses who were not called to testify, and some lapses of memory by those who were.

The reporters were convinced that the prosecutors had not thrown the case. More likely, they had been lied to, they had fallen victim to the subtle pressures exerted through the White House and Justice Department. Most of all, they had failed to understand the workings of CRP and the White House and the style of the President’s men.

Three days after the verdict, Judge Sirica held a hearing in his courtroom and set bond for Liddy and McCord at $100,000 each. He sternly criticized Silbert. “I have not been satisfied, and I am still not satisfied that all the pertinent facts that might be available—I say
might
be available—have been produced before an American jury.”

Defending his own conduct, he said: “I don’t think we should sit up here like nincompoops. I’ll put it this way—I have great doubts that Mr. Sloan has told us the entire truth in this case. I will say it now and I indicated that during the trial.

“I felt that neither of you—government or defense—asked Mr. Sloan any questions. I had a right to question him to see that all the facts were brought out.

“Everyone knows that there’s going to be a congressional investigation in this case. I would frankly hope, not only as a judge but as a citizen of a great country and one of millions of Americans who are looking for certain answers, I would hope that the Senate committee is granted the power by Congress by a broad enough resolution to try to get to the bottom of what happened in this case. I hope so. That is all I have to say.”

12

Now,
WOODWARD NEEDED
to signal Deep Throat for a meeting. Shortly after the election, he had moved from his cramped efficiency apartment to a two-bedroom flat in a restored building two blocks from the
Post.
He had told Deep Throat at their last meeting that the new apartment had no balcony for the flower pot and flag. Worse, the neighbors said that people were forever having their newspapers taken from in front of their doors. Woodward had taken the apartment only after he had thoroughly inspected the building’s less obvious assets: back stairways, fire exits and window sills. A new signal system was adopted at the end of the unhappy meeting on Haldeman. It would be a one-way communication, initiated by Woodward, who would place his yellow kitchen wastepaper basket upside down on the fire escape.

But the system hadn’t even been tested before serious problems developed. Woodward’s upstairs neighbors liked to dance—often between one and four
A.M.
He banged on the thin ceiling with a broom handle and begged his new neighbors to consider at least a sock hop, but that only rallied the nocturnal dancers. He was not superstitious, but he did believe that in a person’s life there were bad cycles which had to be forcefully arrested. His tailspin had begun with the Haldeman story; the frustrations had built during November and December. Better to move than tempt fate further. So, the only time he had turned the trashbasket upside down was in late December
and only to tell Deep Throat that he was moving again. Deep Throat was uncommunicative at their brief meeting, advising him to sit tight and see how the Watergate trial developed.

Woodward found a new apartment on the top floor of a high-rise temple of formica-and-parquet luxury in Southwest Washington, near the Potomac; he got himself a new flower pot and was back in business.

Service was inaugurated on January 24, after Woodward had spent several delicious nights reveling in the silence of his new quarters. He went through a basement exit into a rear courtyard and over a wall onto a side street—mindful of Mrs. Graham’s warning about surveillance and Deep Throat’s increasing apprehension. It took him a half-hour to find a cab, and when he got out about half a mile from the garage, the driver didn’t have change for a $10 bill. Angrily, he told the hack to keep the $10.

Deep Throat was waiting. He looked worn, but was smiling. “What’s up?” he asked mock-offhandedly, and took a deep drag on his cigarette. Just once, Woodward wished, Deep Throat would really tell him what was up—everything, no questions asked, no tug of wills, a full status report. The reporters had speculated on the reason for Deep Throat’s piecemeal approach; they had several theories. If he told everything he knew all at once, a good Plumber might be able to find the leak. By making the reporters go elsewhere to fill out his information, he minimized his risk. Perhaps. But it was equally possible that he felt that the effect of one or two big stories, no matter how devastating, could be blunted by the White House. Or, by raising the stakes gradually, was he simply making the game more interesting for himself? The reporters tended to doubt that someone in his position would be so cavalier toward matters affecting Richard Nixon or the Presidency itself. More likely, they thought, Deep Throat was trying to protect the office, to effect a change in its conduct before all was lost. Each time Woodward had raised the question, Deep Throat had gravely insisted, “I have to do this my way.”

That night, it was the familiar pattern. He would respond only to new information; he would not be towed on a fishing expedition about the Plumbers, the guilty pleas in the trial or the riddles of Z.

Afraid he would leave the garage empty-handed, Woodward turned
to a subject he and Bernstein were about to write on—Mitchell and Colson. He quickly reviewed the strains of circumstantial detail that seemed to bring the two men close to the conspiracy.

Deep Throat seemed impressed by the groundwork they had done. Suddenly he walked to the front of one of the cars in the garage and, standing erect, placed his gloved hands authoritatively on the hood as if it were a rostrum. “From this podium, I’m prepared to denounce such questions about gentle Colson and noble Mitchell as innuendo, character assassination, hearsay and shoddy journalism. The questions themselves are fabrication and fiction and a pack of absurdities and cometh from the fountain of misinformation.”

Woodward, who was very tired, started laughing and couldn’t stop. Deep Throat “Ziegler” continued the denunciation: “ . . . that small Georgetown coterie of self-appointed guardians of public mistrust who seek the destruction of the people’s will—”

The levity was interrupted by a noise. Deep Throat ducked behind a car. Woodward walked up the ramp guardedly. A very convincing old drunk was leaning against the wall, shivering. Woodward made sure he was real, then gave him a $10 bill and told him to find a hotel room. It was brutally cold. Woodward returned to the lower level.