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But what about
Hunt and Liddy's superiors Jeb Stuart Magruder and John
Mitchell? The prosecutors were unable to develop a case
against them, since as part of a cover-up, coordinated by
the White House counsel John Dean, Magruder swore that he
had given Liddy the contributions for a different purpose-to
set up a system of informants-and this perjury was corroborated
by Mitchell, by Herbert L. Porter, Magruder's assistant,
and by Sally Harmony, one of Liddy's secretaries. But neither
did Woodward and Bernstein nor any other reporters reveal
the existence of the cover-up. The offers of executive clemency,
the participation of Dean in the cover-up, the hush money,
and the perjury did not emerge in the press in any serious
form until after the trial of the Watergate burglars. In
the end, it was not because of the reporting of Woodward
and Bernstein, but because of the pressures put on the conspirators
by Judge John Sirica, the grand jury, and Congressional
committees that the cover-up was unraveled. After the Watergate
conspirators were convicted, Judge Sirica made it abundantly
clear that they could expect long prison sentences unless
they cooperated with the investigation of the Senate Select
Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Ervin
committee). One of the convicted burglars, James McCord,
clearly not content with accepting such a prison sentence,
wrote Sirica that perjury had been committed at the trial
and the defendants had been induced by "higher-ups" to remain
silent. Subsequently, McCord suggested that Magruder, Mitchell,
and Dean all were involved in the planning of the burglary
and cover-up.
While McCord's assertion turned out
to be only hearsay evidence, obtained from Liddy, the grand
jury was reconvened, the prosecutors subpoenaed Dean, and
the Ervin committee began focusing on the roles of Dean
and Magruder. To intensify the pressure on Dean, the prosecutors
held long secret sessions with Liddy, and though Liddy steadfastly
refused to discuss the case in these well- publicized sessions,
the prosecutors intentionally promoted the story that Liddy
was talking and implicating Dean and Magruder. As President
Nixon's transcripts confirm, the ruse succeeded: Dean believed
that Liddy, who had attended meetings with him and Mitchell
which eventually led to Watergate, was plea bargaining with
the prosecutors. Moreover, Dean believed that Magruder,
who could also implicate him in both the planning of the
burglary and the cover-up, was about to bargain with the
prosecutors. And FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, in confirmation
hearings before the Senate judiciary Committee, was publicly
suggesting that Dean had interfered in the investigation
and lied to the FBI.
Dean realized that he could not testify
before the Ervin committee or the grand jury without fatally
perjuring himself. Since President Nixon was not able to
offer him any safe way out of his predicament, and he feared
that the President's assistants would eventually sacrifice
him, Dean began negotiating with the prosecutors on March
31 for immunity, and bit by bit, they forced him to disclose
the entire cover-up including the payments of hush money,
blackmail threats, offers of executive clemency, the suborning
of perjury, etc. In April the prosecutors finally elicited
evidence from Dean of the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office and the other "horror stories." Four
days after he heard Dean was bargaining with the prosecutors,
Magruder also decided to plea-bargain, and corroborated
Dean's story.
A final coherent picture of the planning
and execution of Watergate, of the cover-up, and of the
other "horror stories" was developed by the Ervin committee
on television. The American public thus found out about
Watergate in hundreds of hours of testimony elicited in
plea bargaining and negotiations for immunity by the prosecutors
and then presented and tested in cross-examination by members
of the Ervin committee.
What was the role of the press in all
this? At best, during the unraveling of the cover-up, the
press was able to leak the scheduled testimony a few days
in advance of its appearance on television. IF Bernstein
and Woodward did not in fact expose the Watergate conspiracy
or the cover-up, what did they expose? The answer is that
in late September they were diverted to the trail of Donald
H. Segretti, a young lawyer who had been playing "dirty
tricks" on various Democrats in the primaries. The quest
for Segretti dominates both the largest section of their
book (almost one-third) and most of their "exclusive" reports
in the Post until the cover-up collapsed later that March.
Unidentified sources within the government gave Bernstein
and Woodward FBI "302" reports (which contain "raw"-i.e.,
unevaluated-interviews), phone-call records, and credit
card records, all of which elaborated Segretti's trail.
Through ~ the FBI reports and phone records, they located
a number of persons whom Segretti had tried to recruit for
his "dirty-tricks" campaign. The reporters assumed that
this was all an integral part of Watergate, and wrote that
11 the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive
campaign of political spying and sabotage.... The activities,
according to information in FBI and Department of justice
files, were aimed at all the major Democratic Presidential
contenders." They further postulated that there were fifty
other Segretti-type agents, all receiving information from
Watergate-type bugging operations.
As it turned out, this was a detour, if not a false trail.
Segretti (who served a brief prison sentence for such "dirty
tricks" as sending two hundred copies of a defamatory letter
to Democrats) has not in fact been connected to the Water,
gate conspiracy at all. Almost all his work took place in
the primaries before any of the Watergate break-ins in June
1972; he was hired by Dwight Chapin in the White House and
paid by Herbert Kalmbach, a lawyer for President Nixon,
whereas the Watergate group was working for the Committee
for the Re-election of the President and received its funds
from the finance committee. No evidence has been offered
by anyone, including Woodward and Bernstein, that Segretti
received any information from the Watergate group, and the
putative fifty other Donald Segrettis have never been found,
let alone linked to Watergate. In short, neither the prosecutors,
the grand jury, nor the Watergate Committee has found any
evidence to support the BernsteinWoodward thesis that Watergate
was part of the Segretti operation. The behavior of the
officials who steered Bernstein and Woodward onto this circuitous
course makes in itself a revealing case study. Bernstein
and Woodward identify their main source only under the titillating
code-name of "Deep Throat," and indicate that "Deep Throat"
confirmed their suspicion that Segretti-and political spying-were
at the root of the Watergate conspiracy. But who was "Deep
Throat" and what was his motivation for disclosing information
to Woodward and Bernstein? The prosecutors at the Department
of Justice now believe that the mysterious source was probably
Mark W. Felt, Jr., who was then a deputy associate director
of the FBI, because one statement the reporters attribute
to “Deep Throat” could only have been made by
Felt. (I personally suspect that in the best traditions
of the New Journalism, “Deep Throat” is a composite
character.) Whether or not the prosecutors are correct,
, it is clear that the arduous and time-consuming investigation
by Woodward and Bernstein of Segretti was heavily based
on FBI "302" reports, which must uItirnately have been made
available by someone in the FBI. The prosecutors suggest
that there was a veritable revolt against the directorship
of L. Patrick Gray, because he was "too liberal." Specifically,
he was allowing agents to wear colored shirts, grow their
hair long, and was even recruiting women. More important,
he had publicly reprimanded an FBI executive. According
to this theory, certain FBI executives released the "302"
files, not to expose the Watergate conspiracy or drive President
Nixon from office, but simply to demonstrate to the President
that Gray could not control the FBI, and therefore would
prove a severe embarrassment to his administration. In other
words, the intention was to get rid of Gray.
Such a theory would be perfectly consistent with the information-disclosing
activities of the source that led Bernstein and Woodward
astray. Ironically, even on the wrong trail, the stalwart
Bernstein and Woodward generated enough damaging publicity
about "Watergate" to cause the White House to vilify them
and the Washington Post, and thus elevate them to the status
of journalistic martyr-heroes. If instead of chastising
the press, President Nixon and his staff had correctly identified
the "signals" from the FBI, and had replaced Gray with an
FBI executive, things might have turned out differently.
(But Gray, as it happened, had acquired damaging files from
Hunt's safe, and could engage in his own information-releasing
game, if threatened.)
Perhaps the most perplexing mystery
in Bernstein and Woodward's book is why they fail to understand
the role of the institutions and investigators who were
supplying them and other reporters with leaks. This blind
spot, endemic to journalists, proceeds from an unwillingness
to see the complexity of bureaucratic in-fighting and of
politics within the government itself. If the government
is considered monolithic, journalists can report its activities,
in simply comprehended and coherent terms, as an adversary
out of touch with popular sentiments. On the other hand,
if governmental activity is viewed as the product of diverse
and competing agencies, all with different bases of power
and interests, journalism becomes a much more difficult
affair.
In any event. the fact remains that it was not the press,
which exposed Watergate; it was agencies of government itself.
So long as journalists maintain their blind spot toward
the inner conflicts and workings of the institution, of
government, they will no doubt continue to peak of Watergate
in terms of the David and Goliath myth, with Bernstein and
Woodward as David and the government as Goliath.
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