All the President's Men (48 page)

“Hunt said Colson wanted him to fly to Milwaukee immediately and break into Arthur Bremer’s apartment,” the attorney said, “and bring back anything that might help in connecting Bremer to left-wing political causes.”

Wallace had been shot by Bremer in a Maryland shopping center on May 15, 1972, at about 4:00
P.M
. By 6:30, a
Post
editor had learned the name of the would-be assassin from White House official Ken Clawson. Clawson had said that it was clear from literature found in Bremer’s dingy Milwaukee apartment that the assassin was connected to leftist causes, possibly the campaign of Senator George S. McGovern. Woodward had been working on the story, and he had rejected the idea. There had, in fact, been both left-wing and right-wing propaganda in the apartment. But several reporters from Milwaukee had told him they had been permitted to enter Bremer’s apartment during a 90-minute period right after the shooting in Maryland. Many reporters had carried off papers and other effects. Two reporters for Milwaukee papers had told Woodward that they had gone into Bremer’s apartment after FBI agents had been there once and left. An hour and a half later, the agents had come back and sealed off the apartment. The FBI had never offered any explanation as to why they had permitted Bremer’s belongings to be looted.

Back in late 1972, before the first Watergate trial, Howard Simons had summoned some of the editors and Bernstein and Woodward into his office. “You know, there’s one thing we’ve got to think about,” he had said. “The ultimate dirty trick.”

Bernstein and Woodward had mentioned it to each other more than once. Woodward had had an anonymous call saying that one of the Watergate suspects had gone to Milwaukee to meet with Arthur Bremer. And it had been rumored that Bremer was carrying $100 bills while he was stalking Wallace. Simons wanted the rumors checked.

Woodward and Bernstein had been skeptical and Simons had agreed. But, as he pointed out, many once-unthinkable things had occurred.

The reporters never found any evidence to substantiate a connection between Bremer and the suspects. Months later, a
Post
reporter went to Milwaukee, but he too turned up nothing.

Now Woodward was being told that Colson had ordered Hunt to break into Bremer’s apartment. The next morning, he called Hunt’s attorney, William O. Bittman. “There is no question that there was testimony about that,” Bittman said. “Colson asked him [Hunt] to go to Milwaukee and go into Bremer’s apartment. . . . I don’t have a clear recollection of the reason why he was to go out there. I don’t recall whether the word ‘break-in’ was involved.”

About four that afternoon, June 19, 1973, Woodward went to Colson’s law office to see David Shapiro, Colson’s law partner and his chief legal adviser for Watergate matters. The new law firm of Colson & Shapiro had offices in a modern building a few blocks from the White House. Shapiro greeted Woodward heartily, offering him a thick, chubby hand and an overstuffed, light brown leather chair. It was ridiculous, Shapiro said, even to think that Colson would do such a crazy thing. A bespectacled young attorney in the firm named Judah Best
*
was brought in by Shapiro to meet Woodward. He told him it would be unfair to write a story even mentioning such a flimsy allegation. Working his hands heavily, Best frowned and grimaced as he maintained that Howard Hunt was under pressure and clearly unstable. Shapiro and Best worked on Woodward for about 45 minutes, trying to plant the seeds of doubt. Shapiro then went to his desk, called his secretary and instructed her to tell “him” to come in. Moments later, the door opened and in came Colson, wearing blue pin-striped pants, dark blue shirt and blue polka-dot tie. He had a gigantic pot belly. He looked wounded and tired as he shook hands with Woodward. He didn’t say much, but just stared at Woodward.

“You can’t do this to this man,” Shapiro said, standing behind his desk. Colson said nothing. He looked like he was about to weep. There was none of his usual overbearing manner. “You’re out to destroy him,” Shapiro said.

Woodward said he was not out to destroy anyone.

“Come on, you can admit it,” Shapiro said.

The lawyers argued that it would have been illogical for Colson to
order Hunt to burglarize Bremer’s apartment because Colson was in close contact with the FBI that night. They said Colson had urged the Bureau to make a speedy, thorough investigation.

“Would it have been logical for me to push in the FBI and simultaneously order Hunt to Milwaukee?” Colson asked.

Woodward figured the tape recorder was going and he chose every word. He remarked that the Watergate case was already crowded with illogic.

“The charge is absolutely untrue and I’ll swear it is untrue under oath,” Colson said.

Colson seemed hurt by Woodward’s unwillingness to accept his statement as definitive proof.

Woodward recorded Colson’s denial in his notebook.

Shapiro then produced copies of a report about a lie-detector test Colson had voluntarily taken that vindicated him of complicity in the Watergate bugging. Woodward was also handed a “Memorandum for the File,” dated June 20, 1972, the day the
Post
had first identified Howard Hunt as a suspect. Memoranda for the file are often called “cover-your-ass memos.” The one handed to Woodward, with the subject heading “Howard Hunt,” said in part: “I talked to him [Hunt] on the telephone the night Governor Wallace was shot simply to ask him for his reactions on what he thought might have been the cause of the attempted assassination. Hunt was known as something of an expert on psychological warfare and motivations when in the CIA.” In a covering memo, Colson had noted, however, “I cannot be sure that my memory is all that precise.”

Shapiro gave Woodward two more memos unrelated to the Colson-Hunt-Bremer story. One was dated October 11, 1972, the day after Bernstein’s and Woodward’s major espionage-sabotage story. The memo was written by Ken Clawson and addressed to Colson. Referring to the mention of his name in connection with the Muskie Canuck Letter, Clawson had written that he would spend the second Nixon administration “paying back the
Washington Post.”
The other memo indicated that Haldeman had tried to blame Colson, not Clawson, for authorship of the letter.

Woodward asked for copies of the two memos on the Canuck Letter.

There was a long silence.

Woodward repeated his request.

Another silence. Then one of the lawyers said something about being able to work out something and Woodward would be able to get copies in the near future.

Were they offering a deal? It was not explicitly stated, but the suggestion of a trade was in the air. What would happen if Woodward said there would be no story on the Bremer allegation? Would one of the attorneys say it would then be possible to let him have copies of the memos? Maybe Woodward was listening for it because he was pretty certain that this was the way Colson did business. Woodward wanted to turn off any such suggestion. He said it sounded like something was being offered, but that he
knew
it wasn’t.

All three spoke at once. Of course, they wouldn’t think of that. They would never do that, it would be an insult to think so or imagine so.

Woodward saw how they operated. If he hadn’t been listening for it, he wouldn’t have realized that a trade had been offered. That is the way bribes must work, Woodward thought, so that only someone listening for it would hear it. He couldn’t test the situation. If he were to step close to a deal, they could destroy him.

Shapiro and Colson started grinding on Woodward again. That was the price he had to pay, Woodward guessed. He had to listen; maybe there was a reason, maybe he would be convinced. He got in a question occasionally. Why were you in touch with the FBI so much? he asked Colson.

“The President was agitated and wanted the political background on Bremer,” Colson said. Informed of the shooting, the President became deeply upset and voiced immediate concern that the assassin might have ties to the Republican Party or, even worse, the President’s re-election committee. If that were the case, Colson noted, it could have cost the President the election.

The meeting with Shapiro and Colson had taken almost two hours, and there wasn’t time to get the story into the paper that day. Just before deadline the following evening, Woodward called Shapiro and told him that the story was going. Woodward had promised to let him know.

Later that night, Colson called Bernstein to protest. The allegation
was “an utterly preposterous one,” he insisted, and added that he did “not believe that it could be an accurate report of any testimony that the Senate committee has received.”

Bernstein told him it was accurate.

Even if it accurately reflected Hunt’s testimony, Colson said, it would be irresponsible to print it because Hunt had been under “great duress” when he met with the Senate committee.

Bernstein said he would include Colson’s observations in the story.

Colson played heavily on what he described as Bernstein’s civil-libertarian instincts, pleading with him to keep the story out of the paper. When Bernstein said no, Colson called him a “vicious hypocrite.”

•   •   •

Since June 17, 1972, the reporters had saved their notes and memos, reviewing them periodically to make lists of unexplored leads. Many items on the lists were the names of CRP and White House people who the reporters thought might have useful information. By May 17, 1973, when the Senate hearings opened, Bernstein and Woodward had gotten lazy. Their nighttime visits were scarcer, and, increasingly, they had begun to rely on a relatively easy access to the Senate committee’s staff investigators and attorneys. There was, however, one unchecked entry on both lists—presidential aide Alexander P. Butterfield. Both Deep Throat and Hugh Sloan had mentioned him, and Sloan had said, almost in passing, that he was in charge of “internal security.” In January, Woodward had gone by Butterfield’s house in a Virginia suburb. No one had come to the door.

In May, Woodward asked a committee staff member if Butterfield had been interviewed.

“No, we’re too busy.”

Some weeks later, he had asked another staffer if the committee knew why Butterfield’s duties in Haldeman’s office were defined as “internal security.”

The staff member said the committee didn’t know, and maybe it would be a good idea to interview Butterfield. He would ask Sam Dash, the committee’s chief counsel. Dash put the matter off. The staff member told Woodward he would push Dash again. Dash finally okayed an interview with Butterfield for Friday, July 13, 1973.

On Saturday the 14th, Woodward received a phone call at home
from a senior member of the committee’s investigative staff. “Congratulations,” he said. “We interviewed Butterfield. He told the whole story.”

What whole story?

“Nixon bugged himself.”

He told Woodward that only junior staff members had been present at the interview, and that someone had read an excerpt from John Dean’s testimony about his April 15 meeting with the President.

“The most interesting thing that happened during the conversation was very near the end,” Dean had said. “He [Nixon] got up out of his chair, went behind his chair to the corner of the Executive Office Building office and in a barely audible tone said to me he was probably foolish to have discussed Hunt’s clemency with Colson.” Dean had thought to himself that the room might be bugged.

Butterfield was a reluctant witness. He said that he knew it was probably the one thing that the President would not want revealed. The interrogators pressed—and out floated a story which would disturb the presidential universe as none other would.

The existence of a tape system which monitored the President’s conversations had been known only to the President himself, Haldeman, Larry Higby, Alexander Haig, Butterfield and the several Secret Service agents who maintained it. For the moment, the information was strictly off the record.

The reporters were again concerned about a White House set-up. A taping system could be disclosed, they reasoned, and then the President could serve up doctored or manufactured tapes to exculpate himself and his men. Or, having known the tapes were rolling, the President might have induced Dean—or anyone else—to say incriminating things and then feign ignorance himself. They decided not to pursue the story for the moment.

All Saturday night, the subject gnawed at Woodward. Butterfield had said that even Kissinger and Ehrlichman were unaware of the taping system. The Senate committee and the special prosecutor would certainly try to obtain the tapes, maybe even subpoena them.

Kissinger doesn’t know, Woodward reflected. And he thought, Kissinger probably knows
almost
everything, and he wouldn’t like the idea of secret taping systems plucking his sober words and advice out of the air—whether for posterity or some grand jury. How will foreign
leaders feel when they learn of hidden microphones? Woodward thought about knowing something that Kissinger didn’t know. Ziegler was also in the dark, apparently.

Woodward called Bradlee. It was about 9:30
P.M
. and Bradlee sounded as if he might have been sleeping. Woodward outlined Butterfield’s disclosures. As he read, his voice tripped several times. Maybe he was overreacting. Bradlee was silent.

“I just wanted you to know,” Woodward said, “because it seems important. We’ll go to work on it if you want.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Bradlee said with slight irritation.

“How would you rate the story?” Woodward asked.

“B-plus,” Bradlee said quickly.

B-plus, Woodward thought. Well, that isn’t much.

“See what more you can find out, but I wouldn’t bust one on it,” Bradlee said.

Woodward apologized for calling on a Saturday night.

“No problem,” Bradlee said cheerfully. “Always glad to hear what’s up.”

They hung up. Woodward concluded that he’d been too anxious.

•   •   •

The Senate committee moved quickly. On Monday, on national television, Butterfield reluctantly laid out the whole story of the tapes before the Senate committee, and the country.