All the President's Men (36 page)

The interruption had unnerved Deep Throat. “Colson and Mitchell were behind the Watergate operation,” he said quickly. “Everyone in the FBI is convinced, including Gray [L. Patrick Gray, acting director of the FBI]. Colson’s role was active. Mitchell’s position was more ‘amoral’ and less active—giving the nod but not conceiving the scheme.

“There isn’t anything that would be considered as more than the weakest circumstantial evidence. But there’s no doubt either. ‘Insulation’ is the key word to understand why the evidence can’t be developed.”

He outlined four factors that might lead to the “inescapable conclusion” that Mitchell and Colson were conspirators: “One, the personalities and past performance of both. This way of life wasn’t new to them. Two, there are meetings and phone calls at crucial times—all of which Colson and Mitchell claim involved other matters. Three, there’s the tight control of the money, especially by Mitchell, who was getting details almost to the point of how much was spent on pencils and erasers. Four, there is the indisputable fact that the seven defendants believe they are going to be taken care of. That could only
be done convincingly by someone high up, and somehow it has been done convincingly.”

How sweeping was the belief that Colson and Mitchell were involved?

“No disagreement anywhere,” Deep Throat said. “The White House knows it, the FBI brass knows it.” He rubbed his neck and moved the palm of his hand upward across the stiff bristle on his chin. “Involved up to here.” The hand went up higher. “But it’s still un-proven. If the FBI couldn’t prove it, I don’t think the
Washington Post
can.

“What obviously makes this a Mitchell-Colson operation is the hiring of Liddy and Hunt. That’s the key. Mitchell and Colson were their sponsors. And if you check you’ll find that Liddy and Hunt had reputations that are the lowest. The absolute lowest. Hiring these two was immoral. They got exactly what they wanted. Liddy wanted to tap the
New York Times
and everybody knew it.
*
And not everybody was laughing about it. Mitchell, among others, liked the idea.”

Deep Throat became contemplative. “Liddy and McCord should realize that no one can help them because it will be too obvious. Any congressional investigation is going to have a big problem unless they get someone from the inside to crack. Without that, you come up with lots of money and plans for dirty tricks but no firsthand account or detailing of what happened at the top.” The White House, he said, was developing plans to make sure no congressional investigation could succeed. Part of the strategy would involve a broad claim of executive privilege to prevent investigators from subpoenaing White House and Justice Department records.

What about manipulation of the original Watergate investigation?

“The attempts to separate the Watergate and the espionage-sabotage operation are a lot of bullshit,” Deep Throat said. “They amount to the same thing. If the other stuff like [Segretti] had been pursued, they would have found plenty that was illegal.”

Woodward asked if Deep Throat thought the reporters had enough for a story on Mitchell and Colson.

“That’s for the paper to decide, not me,” he said. “But if you do it, it should be done quickly. The longer you wait, the more confident they get that they can attack safely.”

This meeting with Deep Throat produced the most serious disagreement between Bernstein and Woodward since they had begun working together seven months earlier. The question was whether a convincing and well-documented account of Mitchell’s and Colson’s roles could be written. Woodward drafted a story based on the following lead:

Federal investigators concluded that former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Charles W. Colson, special counsel to the President, both had direct knowledge of the overall political espionage operation conducted by the men indicted in the Watergate case, according to reliable sources.

Bernstein reworked the story three times, detailing virtually everything they had learned in seven months about Mitchell, Colson and the nature of the federal investigation. Its thrust was that a former Attorney General and a special counsel to the President had escaped prosecution as conspirators because they had insulated themselves well and because the investigation had been tailored to define the conspiracy in the narrowest terms.

Each time Bernstein completed a version, Woodward said he didn’t think it should run until they had better proof. Bernstein argued that the story was legitimate, that the newspaper didn’t have to offer definitive evidence but, in this instance, could report the conclusions of investigators who reached as high as L. Patrick Gray.

The argument became so heated that they would occasionally retreat to the vending-machine room off the newsroom floor and shout at each other. Bernstein accused Woodward of playing into the hands of the White House by holding back on the story. Woodward accused Bernstein of the same by trying to push a story into the paper that could lead to a damaging attack by the White House. But the old rule applied: If either objected to a story, it did not go into the paper.

•   •   •

Shortly after his meeting with Deep Throat, Woodward got a call from the office of Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina, a 76-year old
constitutional scholar and a formidable power on Capitol Hill. Ervin wanted to talk about Watergate, an aide said.

On January 11, Ervin had acceded to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield’s request that he preside over a thorough investigation of Watergate and the 1972 presidential campaign. The agreement seemed to indicate that some investigative machinery would be established on Capitol Hill beyond the preliminary inquiry that Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure had been conducting since October 1972.

Unless a congressional subcommittee quickly exercised power of subpoena to obtain records and documents in areas that the federal investigators seemed to be ignoring, Kennedy had told Bernstein in an interview just after the Segretti stories had appeared, the opportunity for a truly comprehensive investigation would probably go down the chute and into the shredder. Kennedy had decided to undertake an investigation. The Senator had professed to know little, if anything, more than what he had read in the papers. “But I know the people around Nixon,” he said, “and that’s enough. They’re thugs.”

The White House was circulating the line that Kennedy was out to settle old grudges and launch a 1976 candidacy. Kennedy, face tanned and his hair doing a little back-flip over his collar, tossed it back. His inquiry would be a “holding action.” The preliminary investigation would be conducted by both the majority and the minority staffs behind closed doors. It would avoid any suggestion of a witch hunt or a Kennedy crusade. There was no percentage in it for him, Kennedy maintained; the White House would go with everything it had to smear him. Chappaquiddick would be brought up endlessly. He was sure the President’s men had a ready store of other information on him, “nickel-and-dime stuff,” he said uncomfortably. “They haven’t come up with anything really new.”

When Kennedy’s subcommittee formally began its investigation, the reporters tried to stay in close touch with the Senators and their staff. But Kennedy’s ship did not leak. They learned nothing.

Woodward hoped to do better with Senator Ervin, but the Senator was more interested in finding out what Woodward and Bernstein knew.

On the way into Ervin’s inner office, Woodward noticed on a
secretary’s desk a typed sheet of paper listing the Senator’s appointments for the day. Sy Hersh of the
New York Times
had been there several hours earlier. Woodward wondered how Hersh had handled the situation. When was a reporter justified in turning over information to an investigating committee? Or giving advice to a Senator? If the reporter was convinced that he could not make use of a valuable piece of information, was it all right to make a trade?

Bernstein and he seemed to be running out of steam. Could their information help others in the search?

Senator Ervin was sitting behind a heavy wooden desk in the center of his office, a rumpled, hulking figure with a huge ham of a face. He looked as if he would be more comfortable in a front-porch rocker than in the standard-issue beige swivel chair he overfilled. Great heaps of paper were strewn chaotically across the desk. He leaned back and began speaking, head jerking, jowls jiggling, bushy eyebrows twittering—like some great bird of prey trying to lift off without losing his kill.

The moment of truth arrived after a few minutes of gracious comments. “Any leads or sources of information you might be willing to share with us, it certainly would be appreciated and held in the strictest of confidence. I give you my word on that. We’d be mighty grateful for your help,” Ervin said.

Information from Deep Throat and Z and some other bits and pieces might help the investigation, conceivably could even send it on its way, Woodward thought. But he couldn’t give it. The best he could do would be to suggest possible lines of inquiry.

Identifying sources, he told the Senator, was out of the question. There was one person—not necessarily a source—who had told them he would cooperate with any legitimate investigation: Hugh Sloan. A staff member wrote it down. The reporters stories, Woodward continued, contained many names and incidents that needed more checking. The key was the secret campaign cash, and it should all be traced; every indication pointed toward a massive Haldeman undercover operation, of which the Watergate break-in and the dirty tricks of the ‘72 primaries were only parts; unless one of the seven convicted conspirators decided to cooperate, nothing resembling the whole story would come out; the reporters’ own stories had only scratched the
surface; they did not completely comprehend what had happened, and was still happening, but the enormity of what the President’s men had done seemed staggering.

“I’ll be content if we discover Mr. Magruder’s role,” Ervin said wearily. The Senator is an expert on the government’s vandalism of people’s rights, especially the right of privacy.

Ervin began talking about the separation of powers, his belief that a certain article and certain section of the Constitution meant exactly what it said about the power of Congress. That, he said, was how he intended to investigate Watergate—by getting a resolution passed that would grant a special select committee the broadest possible subpoena power. Then the committee would subpoena whatever documents and people were necessary—in the Executive Branch and elsewhere.

Like whom? Woodward asked.

“Now, I believe that everyone who has been mentioned in your and Mr. Bernstein’s accounts should be given an opportunity to come down and exonerate himself,” Ervin said. “And if they decline, we’ll subpoena them to ensure they have a chance to clear their names.” He smiled, barely able to contain himself as his eyebrows danced.

Even the CIA?

Elbows resting on the arms of his chair, Ervin gave a big, affirmative nod.

And the White House? Haldeman? That would be one for the books, the White House chief of staff hauled before the Congress he so despised.

“Mr. Haldeman or Mr. Whomever.” Ervin said. “Anybody but the President.”

He was serious. Woodward was sure the White House would be equally serious. The first question was whether a resolution granting such power could be passed. Ervin thought it could. Woodward asked if he could write that the Senator planned to subpoena some of the President’s top aides.

“If you don’t mention names and only say you know my thinking, I don’t have any objection,” Ervin said. “Just don’t quote me directly.”
*

Woodward wrote a story outlining Ervin’s intention to summon the President’s aides and to challenge the claim of executive privilege. The battle lines were being drawn.

•   •   •

On February 5, Senator Ervin introduced a resolution to allocate $500,000 for a Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate break-in and related allegations. The powerful Senate Democratic Policy Committee had given the resolution its unqualified support, and the only impediment now would be a last-minute White House-Republican maneuver. The day of the vote, February 7, Woodward arrived on the Hill about 8:30
A.M.
to see if one was developing. In the Senate cafeteria, he was chatting with the administrative assistant to a Republican Senator.

What’s the White House strategy? Woodward asked.

“What makes you think there is one?” the aide asked. “Don’t know who thought up the idea,” he added, “but there will be an amendment to broaden the investigation so that it covers the ‘64 and ‘68 campaigns.”

That figured. “Politics as usual,” not for the first time, would be the White House’s response.

“They’re trying awfully hard,” said another Republican aide. “Word came down to make a big push.”

Woodward called the White House from a phone booth in the press gallery. “Of course we’re doing it,” a source there told him. “You’d think those dolts on the Hill would have the sense to do it themselves, but they can’t find their way to the john without help. Haldeman’s got half the staff here revved up on it. It’s the order of the day. We’re all supposed to make calls to people we know in the Senate.”

Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, the minority leader, rose to declare that Ervin had introduced the “broadest resolution I’ve ever seen.” He called its charter of authority “wild, unbelievable,” and said the resolution could lead to “blackmail” by members of the Senate Watergate committee staff. “There was wholesale evidence of wiretapping against the Republicans” in the 1968 campaign, Scott charged, without citing it. John Tower of Texas and Barry Goldwater of Arizona joined in, but no one offered a concrete example or made a specific charge.

The Democrats voted down every amendment to Ervin’s resolution proposed by the minority. When the final vote was called, the Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues and the resolution passed unanimously, 77-0. Veteran Senate reporters told Woodward that the unanimity was merely a Republican recognition of the power of the Democratic majority. Woodward was not so sure. The men on the floor were sharp interpreters of the political winds.