All the President's Men

Concluding a two-part article

Synopsis: Before June 17, 1972, the two young Washington Post reporters had never worked on a story together. In the months that followed, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward scooped the Washington press corps with a series of articles linking the Committee for the Re-election of the President and the White House itself to the Watergate break-in--and to other illegal campaign practices as well. By exhaustive detective work, the reporters established that a secret fund of cash in the office of Maurice Stans, former Secretary of Commerce and chief fund raiser for CRP, was the source for payments to the Watergate burglars. Payments from this fund could be authorized by Stans himself; John Mitchell, Nixon's former Attorney General and the head of CRP; Jeb Magruder, Mitchell's deputy; Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer; and a fifth man, who, the reporters were led to believe, worked in the White House. Bernstein and Woodward also revealed a systematic campaign of sabotage against the Democrats, carried out by dirty-trickster Donald Segretti, who reported to Presidential appointments secretary Dwight Chapin.

Most of Bernstein's and Woodward's breaks were a result of persevering on leads that the FBI and other reporters had overlooked; but a few crucial leads were provided by former CRP treasurer Hugh Sloan and several still-unidentified sources in the Justice Department, the White House and CRP. Perhaps the most interesting, and enigmatic, of these was a highly placed Administration official known to the reporters as Deep Throat. His position was so sensitive that Woodward could contact him only by such prearranged signals as moving a flowerpot on his balcony and later meeting with him in an underground garage. Deep Throat was talkative but never gave directly incriminating details--he only confirmed stories. And he had never given Woodward false information.

From the beginning, the White House, through press secretary Ronald Ziegler, flatly denied everything and attempted to discredit the Post. But the reporters were supported at every step by the Post's executive editor, Benjamin Bradlee, managing editor Howard Simons, metropolitan editor Harry Rosenfeld and city editor Barry Sussman.

It was shortly before the November election that Bernstein and Woodward wrote their most significant--and troublesome--story. The account stated that in addition to Stans, Mitchell, Magruder and Kalmbach--four of five officials who had authorized disbursements from the secret fund in Stans's office--the fifth, as apparently confirmed by Sloan, Deep Throat and an FBI agent, was Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. The response was immediate. Ziegler accused the Post of "shabby journalism" and claimed that Haldeman's name had not been mentioned in grand-jury testimony, as the story claimed. Then Sloan appeared to back off, telling the reporters they had misinterpreted him. The reporters had made a bad mistake and at one point considered resigning. Finally, Deep Throat confirmed Haldeman's involvement but said the reporters had been wrong about the grand-jury testimony. "You've put the investigation back months," Deep Throat told Woodward.

The fall elections passed and there were no new breaks, no more big stories and the Post's reputation suffered. According to Bradlee, the long dry spell was "pure anguish." He pressed the reporters to come up with something fresh on Watergate, to salvage the newspaper's credibility. Bernstein and Woodward became desperate for new information and new sources as the date for the trial of the Watergate burglars approached.

One Late-November Saturday night, a Post editor asked for a word with Woodward in a deserted section of the newsroom. One of his neighbors had told him that his aunt was on a grand jury. His neighbor thought it was the jury on Watergate; she'd made some remark about knowing all about it. "She's a Republican, but she says she really hates Nixon now. My neighbor thinks she wants to talk."

A few days later, the editor handed Woodward a slip of paper with the woman's name and address. Bernstein and Woodward went to Rosenfeld, who seemed to like the idea of a visit but suspended final judgment until he had checked with Bradlee for a policy decision. Bradlee asked the Post's lawyers.

Bernstein and Woodward consulted the Post's library copy of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Grand jurors took an oath to keep secret both their deliberations and the testimony before them; but the burden of secrecy, it appeared, was on the juror. There seemed to be nothing in the law that forbade anyone to ask questions. The lawyers agreed but urged extreme caution in making any approaches. They recommended that the reporters simply ask the woman if she wanted to talk.

Bradlee was nervous. "No beating anyone over the head, no pressure, none of that cajoling," he instructed Woodward and Bernstein. He got up from behind his desk and pointed his finger. "I'm serious about that. Particularly you, Bernstein, be subtle for once in your life."

The next morning, the reporters drove across town, knocked at the woman's door and identified themselves. She invited them inside. They did not mention the grand jury and said simply that they had heard she knew something about Watergate.

"It's a mess, I know that," the woman said. "But how would I know anything about it except for what I read in the papers?" It took ten minutes to figure out that the woman was, indeed, on a grand jury at the courthouse, but not the Watergate one. They thanked her and left.

The episode had whetted their interest. They knew the outlines of the information they needed, but they lacked the details a cooperative grand juror could probably supply. That afternoon, Bernstein called the chief prosecutor. Earl Silbert, and asked for a list of the 23 grand jurors. Silbert flatly refused, rejecting Bernstein's contention that the membership of the jury was a matter of public record.

Woodward asked a friend in the clerk's office if it was possible to get a roster of the Watergate grand jury. "No way whatsoever," he was told. "The records are secret."

Next morning, Woodward took a cab to the courthouse.

The clerk's office employed about 90 people. Woodward started at one end of the large complex of file rooms and after half an hour had found someone willing to direct him to a remote corner of the main file area where lists of trial and grand juries were kept. He identified himself to another clerk as a Post reporter and said he wanted to look through the file. The clerk looked at Woodward suspiciously.

"OK," he said, "but you aren't allowed to copy anything. You can't take names. No notes. I'll be watching."

Woodward started going through the file drawers and finally found the master list of 1972 grand juries. Two grand juries had been sworn in at the beginning of June. He remembered that the foreman of the Watergate grand jury had an eastern European name and worked for the Government as an economist or something like that. He found the right name on grand jury number one, sworn in on June 5, 1972.

Each of the jurors had filled out a small orange card listing name, age, occupation, address, home and work telephones. Woodward began sifting through the cards, then glanced over his shoulder. The clerk was sitting at his desk, about 15 feet away, staring at him. Woodward took the first four cards, set them face up in the bottom of the file drawer and began studying the names, ages, addresses, phone numbers and occupations. It took about ten minutes to memorize the information. He asked the clerk where the men's room was.

Inside the washroom, Woodward went into a stall, took a notebook from his jacket pocket and wrote out what he had memorized. Priscilla L. Woodruff, age 28, unemployed. Trying to visualize what each of the grand jurors looked like helped him keep track of the information. Naomi H. Williams, 56, retired teacher and elevator operator. Julie L. White, 37, janitor at George Washington University. Woodward drew a mental picture of a coat of arms and the name Haldemau etched beneath a pair of crossed daggers guarding a throne: George W. Stockton, he wrote in his notebook, Institute of Heraldry, Department of the Army, technician, age 53. He hitched up his trousers. Four down, 19 to go.

He memorized the next five cards. Straining not to look guilty, he asked the clerk where the chief judge's chambers were.

The man frowned. "You're sure spending a lot of time with those files. I'm not sure that you're allowed to even look in there."

Woodward said he would be back--as soon as he had checked something with the chief judge. Upstairs, in a third-floor washroom, he wrote down the five names and the other information. That left 14. At the rate he was going, the job would take all morning.

On the third try, he was able to memorize six cards. Returning from the lavatory to the file room, he asked the clerk when he went to lunch. "I don't go out to lunch," the man said curtly. The perfect clerk, Woodward thought ruefully: even eats at his desk. He needed to get the rest this time, because the clerk was getting impatient. It look nearly 45 minutes to memorize the last eight names and accompanying details.

Back at the office, he typed a list of the jury members and the accompanying data. In Bradlee's office, the editors and Bernstein and Woodward eliminated nearly half the members of the grand jury as too risky. Low-grade civil servants--especially older ones, for instance--were accustomed to doing things by the bureaucratic book, checking with their superiors, rarely relying on their own judgment. Military officers the same. They were looking for the few least likely to inform the prosecutors of a visit. The candidates would have to be bright enough to suspect that the grand-jury system had broken down in the Watergate case and also be in command of the nuances of the evidence. Ideally, the jurors would be capable of outrage at the White House or the prosecutors or both; persons accustomed to bending rules, who valued practicality more than procedure. The exercise continued with Bernstein, Woodward and their bosses trying to psych out strangers on the basis of name, address, age, occupation, ethnic background, religion, income level. The final choices were left to the reporters.

Everyone in the room had private doubts about such a seedy venture. Bradlee, desperate for a story, and reassured by the lawyers, overcame his own. Simons doubted out loud the rightness of the exercise and worried about the paper. Rosenfeld was concerned most about keeping the enterprise secret. Sussman was afraid that one of them, probably Bernstein, would push too hard and find a way to violate the law. Woodward wondered whether there was ever justification for a reporter to entice someone across the line of legality while standing safely on the right side himself. Bernstein, who vaguely approved of selective civil disobedience, was not concerned about breaking the law in the abstract. It was a question of which law, and he believed that grand-jury proceedings should be inviolate. The misgivings, however, went unstated, for the most part. The reporters' procedure would be to identify themselves, tell the juror that they had learned from an anonymous mutual acquaintance that he or she knew something about Watergate and ask if he or she was willing to discuss the matter. They would leave unless the juror, without prodding, volunteered something. Nothing would be said about the grand jury unless the juror mentioned it.

Bradlee, addressing them in a final briefing before bivouac, repeated the marching orders: "No strong-arm tactics, fellas. Right?"

Working separately over the weekend of December second and third, Woodward and Bernstein attempted the clumsy charade with about half-a-dozen members of the grand jury. They returned with no information and a clear impression that the prosecutors had warned the jurors to beware of jokers bearing press cards. Only one person volunteered that he was on the grand jury, and he explained to Woodward that he had taken two oaths of secrecy in his life, the Elks' and the grand jurors', and that both were sacred trusts. The others said they didn't know anything about Watergate except what they had learned from the media. One told Bernstein: "Watergate? Oh, yeah, that fancy apartment down in Foggy Bottom.... I heard about it on the television, all that break-in business and stuff; there's no place safe in this city." Until he heard about the Elk, Bernstein had feared that his partner with the fantastic memory had wasted it on the wrong list.

On Monday, Bradlee called the reporters into his office for an urgent meeting. He shut the door, a gesture often reserved for such delicate matters of state as firings. "The balloon is up," he said. At least one of the grand jurors had told the prosecutors he'd been visited by a Washington Post reporter. One of the prosecutors had called Edward Bennett Williams, the Post's principal attorney. The prosecutors had gone to Judge John Sirica with the juror's complaint and Williams had advised Bradlee to have his reporters sit tight.

They asked Bradlee how much trouble Williams thought they were in.

"You're not going to get an award." said Bradlee. "Williams said that it's up (continued on page 186)All the President's Men(continued from page 140) to the judge." But Bradlee was worried. Sirica, the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, was known as Maximum John because of the stiff punishments he imposed.

Late in the afternoon, Bradlee told the reporters to be in Williams' office at nine the next morning. "Things look a little better," he said. "Williams talked to Sirica and to the prosecutors; he thinks he can keep you out of the slam."

The next morning, Williams was pacing around his handsome office. "John Sirica is some kind of pissed at you fellas," he said. "We had to do a lot of convincing to keep your asses out of jail." Williams had pledged there would be no more Post contact with grand-jury members. The prosecutors, too, had interceded in the reporters' behalf, recommending to Sirica that no action be taken because none of the grand jurors had imparted any information. But Sirica was still fuming, Williams said, and would probably lecture them, at a minimum. "Stay in touch and keep your noses clean," he warned. The judge could be very unpredictable.

Judge Sirica wanted Bernstein and Woodward in his courtroom at ten A.M. on December 19. The reporters dressed neatly for their day in court. Woodward got his hair trimmed. The courtroom was packed, mostly with media people. Bernstein and Woodward took seats in the second row.

Sirica, they learned at precisely ten 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 weekend of December second and third in an attempt to get information; but the investigation apparently 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 that 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 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, call on them to throw themselves on the mercy of the court.

First, however, Sirica wanted 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.

As Bernstein and Woodward joined the rush into the crowded hallway, some of their colleagues approached them and asked if they knew who the culprits might have been. The reporters declined to speculate. Daniel Schorr of CBS was the first to suggest that Bernstein and Woodward were the offenders.

"Hearsay, innuendo and character assassination." Bernstein protested.

Schorr responded with a knowing smile. The reporters had reluctantly agreed on their way out of the courtroom that they would deny the allegation outright only as a last resort; if pressed, 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 their 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,'" one newsman said. "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.

They were trying to avoid a colleague who was interviewing reporters in the hallway about the session in Sirica's courtroom, but 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."

"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 this kind of exercise.

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 dodged, evaded, misrepresented, suggested and intimidated even if they had not lied outright. They had chosen expediency over principle and, caught in the act, their role had been covered up.

• • •

Two weeks before their near escape in Judge Sirica's courtroom, the reporters had decided to return to more conventional sources. On December fifth, Bernstein signed a Post car out of the office garage and drove to an apartment several miles away. It was about eight o'clock when he knocked on the door. The woman he was looking for answered, but when he told her his name, she did not open the door. She slipped a piece of paper underneath it with her unlisted telephone number written on it. "Call me later this evening," she said, adding, "Your articles have been excellent."

The woman was in a position to have considerable knowledge of the secret activities of the White House and CRP. Bernstein had attempted to contact her before, but she had rejected every approach. He drove back to the office and dialed the number. Her voice was unsteady, nervous. "At this point, I don't trust a soul," she said. "But I respect your position." She asked if Bernstein was calling from a safe phone. He was at the desk of a reporter on the Maryland staff; he thought so.

"I'm forced to agree 100 percent with Ben Bradlee; the truth hasn't been told," she said.

Bernstein printed the letter Z on the top sheet of a blue memo pad; X had been retired with the bookkeeper [another early source of information]. "My boss calls it a whitewash," said Z. "Two years ago, I never would have believed any of this, but the facts are overwhelming." She advised Bernstein to reread carefully the reporters' own stories. "There is more truth in there than you must have realized--many clues. You're doing very well, but you could do a lot better. It's a question of putting on more pressure."

She refused to be interrogated and laid down the ground rules: She would point the reporters in the right direction to help them fill in some of the right names in the right places--certain hints, key avenues to pursue. She would answer questions only in the most general way, if at all. Much of what she called her "message" might seem vague, partly because even she didn't understand things completely, and because the information would be difficult to sort out.

"Your perseverance has been admirable," she said. "Apply it to what I say."

Bernstein, who had no idea what to expect, thought she sounded like some kind of mystic.

She began with Haldeman: "Someone had to pull the strings. You have a lot of company in thinking it's Haldeman.... John Dean is very interesting. It would be really interesting to know what Dean's investigation really was. His involvement went way beyond that.... Magruder and Mitchell are very definitely involved.... Mitchell requires more perseverance."

Bernstein had already interrupted her several times, but she would not be more specific. Involved in what? Dirty tricks? Wire tapping?

She advised him to consider Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and Robert Mardian as a group. "Disclosure is the common thread," she said.... "Yes, of wire-tap information."

Meaning they had received information from the Watergate tap?

"Disclosure," she repeated, "is the common thread. When people have jobs to lose in high places, they will go to any extent to protect them. The general theme is 'Don't blow the lid, even now.' They are better organized now than before June 17. They are good organizers but, to a certain extent, very sloppy. Financing is the most important way to learn who is involved. Pursue other Segrettis. [Herbert] Kalmbach was the paymaster [as Nixon's lawyer, he had been implicated in stories about the disbursement of funds to the Watergate defendants]. A lot of activities grew out of Plumbing. It goes back a lot farther than the Pentagon papers. The Plumbers are quite relevant; two of them were indicted. I'd like to know how many more Plumbers there were."

Bernstein tried to learn more.

Z said there could be no further messages; he was forbidden to call her.

• • •

The next night, Woodward and Bernstein drove the familiar route to Hugh Sloan's house. Perhaps he could help decipher Z's message. Knowing that Sloan was always less than anxious to see them, they did not telephone ahead. As usual, he was too polite to close the door in their faces. He looked pale and defeated. He had lost weight. He invited them into the front hallway. The job hunting was going badly, he said--the taint of Watergate. Equally awful, there was no end in sight to the trials and civil suits and depositions that were making him a professional witness at about $20 a day. They did not know how to respond; visiting Sloan always made them feel like vultures.

The reporters outlined what they had learned from Z, but Sloan said he could make no more sense of it than they. Then, changing the subject, he was apologetic about the Haldeman debacle, and it became painfully clear at last what had happened that night in the rain. Sloan had misunderstood Woodward's questions, thinking that Woodward had inquired if Sloan would have named Haldeman before the grand jury had he been asked.

Now he was more enlightening than before about Haldeman's relationship to the fund and to CRP: "Bob ran the committee through Magruder until Mitchell and Secretary Stans came over in the first part of 1972. Jeb authorized the first payments to Liddy. I think Liddy was still working at the White House at the time, in the summer of 1971. Actually, Haldeman stood behind all four who got bulk payments from the fund: Kalmbach, Liddy, Magruder and Porter [Herbert Porter, scheduling director for CRP and a former White House advance man]."

Haldeman was insulated from the fund. Magruder, Kalmbach, Stans and even Mitchell had effectively acted on his behalf, Sloan explained. Haldeman had never personally ordered Sloan to hand out any payments. But spending money was the province of the White House chief of staff. "Maury [Stans] frequently complained that too much money was being given out [from the fund]," he said.

Woodward asked more about the structure of Haldeman's office. Sloan summarized: Chapin was the Presidential appointments secretary; Strachan, the political lieutenant; Lawrence Higby, the office manager and major-domo; and Alexander Butterfield supervised "internal security and the paper flow to the President." Typing his notes that night, Woodward underlined the words "internal security"

• • •

On the morning of January eighth, the opening day of the trial of the Watergate defendants, a gray and gaunt Howard Hunt arrived at the courthouse wearing a black topcoat with a small, aristocratic, though slightly frayed fur collar. He puffed on his pipe and paced the corridors, whispering frequently to his partner, Gordon Liddy. The two walked down the hall talking. Hunt, whose wife had died in a plane crash a few weeks before, held his arm high on Liddy's neck, as if seeking support.

Liddy had arrived smoking a large cigar, smiling, waving and strutting confidently. Later in the day, when he was introduced to the prospective jurors, he bounded to his feet and waved his right hand triumphantly, like a politician greeting a crowd. The four Miami men, looking tense, appeared with their attorney, Henry B. Rothblatt, who wore a toupee and had a small mustache that appeared to be accented with eyebrow pencil. McCord, looking serious, came in a few minutes later. He warded off reporters' questions with a "No comment."

The members of the prosecution team--Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald E. Campbell--were spruce and well groomed. Each carried a foot-thick stack of files. As they got off the elevator, reporters swarmed around them. "All your questions will be answered." Glanzer said. "Just wait."

And high on the bench, his wavy black hair making him look much younger than his 68 years, sat Chief Judge Sirica, who had assigned the case to himself. At a pretrial hearing in December, he had expressed his intentions: "This jury is going to want to know, What did those men go into that headquarters for? Was their sole purpose political espionage? Were they paid? Was there financial gain? Who hired them? Who started them?"

Silbert presented a two-hour opening statement. The chief prosecutor seemed rather exasperated when he said that he would be able to account for only $50,000 of the $235,000 in Presidential campaign funds that had been handed to Liddy in $100 bills. Basing his theory primarily on the statements of Magruder and Porter, Silbert was convinced that Liddy had been given the funds to conduct legitimate intelligence-gathering activities. Liddy, Silbert said, had gone off on his own and planned and executed the illegal Watergate operation. It was the CRP "cover story" that had been described to the reporters, months earlier, in their evening visits.

Silbert had told Bernstein and Woodward that he expected to please no one with his Watergate investigation. He was going to succeed, that seemed clear. He had repeatedly stressed that there was no evidence to indict any more than the seven men who had been caught. "There is an unwritten rule in the Justice Department--the higher up you go, the more you have to have them by the balls. And I think it's a good rule."

After the opening statement, Hunt changed his plea to guilty. He told reporters outside the courtroom that no higher-ups were involved in the conspiracy "to my personal knowledge."

Bernstein had been told the day before by a member of the Miami contingent that the four Florida men might also plead guilty if Hunt did. The rumors persisted. On Friday afternoon, after the session ended, Bernstein and Woodward were standing outside the courthouse with Post columnist Nicholas von Hoffman and Post editorial writer Roger Wilkins. Rothblalt was standing on a corner with his clients, trying to hail a taxi.

We'll lose them, Bernstein said, unless one of us goes. Woodward agreed. Bernstein said that he wanted to go. Woodward handed him $20. Rothblatt and his clients had found a cab as Bernstein raced toward them. Rothblatt, Frank Sturgis, the stockiest of the burglars, and the three other men filled the cab, but Bernstein, uninvited, got in anyway, piling in on top of them as the door slammed. Von Hoffman and Wilkins nearly fell off the curb laughing. Woodward wrote a note to himself that Bernstein owed him $20.

Bernstein arrived back in the office late Saturday, mole-eyed and wrinkled. He had gone to the airport with Rothblatt and his clients, bought a ticket on a flight one of them was taking and, engaging in friendly banter, offered to carry a suitcase and slipped into the adjoining seat. Bernstein did not really have to press the man too hard to turn the conversation around to the trial. The story came out in an easy How of conversation as the jet engines surged peacefully in the background. The interview was costing the Post more than a dollar a minute, Bernstein thought.

According to the man on the plane Hunt had been visiting the four Miami men for a week, urging them to change their pleas to guilty: their families would be cared for financially and they could count on Executive clemency after a few months in jail. In the enduring CIA fraternity. Hunt, the seasoned case officer, was again passing out orders to his lower-level operatives. For more than a decade, the men had had unquestioned trust in Hunt, even after he had supervised their participation in the Bay of Pigs operation. He was their leader, the tie between their own projects and the cause of American patriotism. Rothblatt, Bernstein learned, was furious, and had instructed his clients "to stay away from that son of a bitch Hunt."

On Monday, the story on Hunt's maneuvers ran in the Post. In court that morning, the four Miami men fired Rothblatt and were assigned a new attorney, who immediately entered guilty pleas.

Sirica was seething. Alter accepting the new pleas, he called the four men from Miami before him. They walked up and stood before the bench. Defendant Barker bounced up and down on his toes, wringing his hands behind his back. Apparently torn by the anxiety of the moment, he went into a deep knee bend. As he answered the judge's questions, his head wagged up and down and sideways in short jerks, as if his neck had turned to rubber.

Judge Sirica asked about "these hundred-dollar bills that were floating around like coupons."

Barker replied that he didn't know where they had come from. The others nodded. "I got the money in the mail in a blank envelope," he said.

"Well. I'm sorry," replied Sirica, "I don't believe you."

Sirica questioned the men for about an hour. The heads of all four defendants seemed to be attached to the same strings; they bobbed up and down in unison. Yes, they said, the decisions to plead guilty were made free from any pressure. No, your Honor, they said, when asked if anyone had mentioned Executive clemency.

The judge's frown deepened. Had any of the men ever worked for the CIA?

"Not that I know of," answered defendant Martinez, who had been on a CIA retainer of $100 a month until the day after his Watergate arrest. Among those who laughed out loud was Liddy, who had finished a brief nap at the defense table when Sirica began questioning the men.

As Sirica interrogated the defendants, chief prosecutor Silbert shook his head in disgust and stared at the yellow legal pad in front of him. Glanzer leaned back in his chair and rubbed one side of his face. The prosecutors' assurances that everything would come out in the trial were lading into nothingness as the defendants clucked into the haze of their guilty pleas.

Sirica asked Barker about $114,000 in Nixon campaign checks that had been deposited in his Miami bank account. Barker said he just didn't know where the money had come from.

"Now, isn't that strange?" Sirica asked.

"I don't think it is strange, your Honor," replied Barker. "I have previously been involved in other operations which took the strangeness out of that, as far as I was concerned."

The Miami four were led off to jail.

• • •

That noon, Woodward took a cab back to the Post for a lunch with Katharine Graham and Howard Simons. "Katharine wants to go over some of the stories and ask about the sources," Simons said.

Mrs. Graham, the publisher, is the daughter of Eugene Meyer, who bought the paper in 1933. When her husband, Philip Graham, who was publisher of the Post, committed suicide in 1963, she assumed control.

Woodward was glad that Mrs. Graham had waited until after the intense period of major investigative stories and the attack by the White House in the fall before asking for a meeting. He took the elevator to the eighth floor and walked through the double glass doors onto the thick white carpet that led to her office. Simons was already there, a drink in hand, and the three of them sat down in a small office in one corner.

"What's happening in the trial today?" Mrs. Graham asked.

Woodward told her about the guilty pleas by the four Miami men and Sirica's interrogation. The trial was getting increasingly ridiculous, Woodward said, and he described the scene of the four men talking and nodding as if on cue.

Mrs. Graham asked several questions about what it all might mean and what would happen. "Is it all going to come out?" she asked, somewhat anxiously. "I mean, are we ever going to know about all of this?"

Woodward thought it was the nicest way possible of asking, What have you boys been doing with my newspaper? He said that he and Bernstein weren't sure it ever would come out. "Never?" she asked apprehensively. "Don't tell me never." She laughed, throwing her head back with a bright smile. "Well, let's eat," she said, rising and leading them to the dining room directly behind her office.

A woman in a traditional maid's uniform of black and white served eggs Benedict. Simons outlined the purpose of the lunch, a confidential discussion of the sources for the Watergate stories. Woodward had finished two bites of his eggs Benedict and now, he realized, he was going to have to give a monolog. He told her about several Justice Department attorneys, an FBI agent, a White House aide, the bookkeeper and Sloan. Mrs. Graham said she was less interested in the names than in the positions they held.

Woodward said that he had told no one the name of Deep Throat.

Mrs. Graham paused. "Tell me," she said.

Woodward froze. He said he would tell her if she wanted but was praying she wouldn't press it. Mrs. Graham laughed, touched his arm and said she was only kidding, she didn't really want to carry that burden around with her. Woodward took a bite of his eggs, which were cold.

"Now, about the Haldeman business," Mrs. Graham said, looking as if she were not sure she wanted to hear it.

Woodward put down his fork and told the story of the mistake he and Bernstein had made about Sloan's grand-jury testimony.

"But are you absolutely sure we're right?" The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. "I remember talking with Henry Kissinger," she continued, "and he came up and said, 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about its being terribly, terribly unfair."

If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.

• • •

The trial lasted another two weeks. Woodward and Bernstein continued to attend, sifting through exhibits and papers filed with the court. Woodward copied the phone numbers from the defendants' address books, which were entered into evidence, and one evening he called some of the numbers.

"The FBI?" one man asked. "They never, never contacted me. I never talked to them." Woodward slammed down the phone. In the biggest, most wide-ranging investigation since the assassination of President Kennedy, the FBI didn't even call the numbers in the address books.

While going through the list of witnesses, Woodward found one who knew Hunt quite well. He called the witness at his office and asked what he was going to testify about. The witness said: "I'll tell you what I could testify to, but Silbert won't ask. If the judge or any of the attorneys do, I'll say it."

Woodward sat up straight in the large blue chair at his desk and asked what that testimony might include.

"Howard always used 'they' or 'the White House' when he was talking about his activities. But one day I remember he was complaining about Ehrlichman and saying what an amateur Ehrlichman was, because Ehrlichman put a hold on a lot of things doing, various secret, intelligence-type things. The operation was delayed for two to three weeks because Ehrlichman was holding up the budget."

Ehrlichman. Woodward snapped a pencil in half between his fingers.

"And Howard was saying that was why he liked Colson, because Colson understood that such things are necessary. Colson is an operator and gave immediate approval. He pushed the budget through."

Colson. That made sense; but Ehrlichman? Woodward lined up several neat rows of paper clips on his desk as the witness went on.

"From the comments Howard made, it was apparent that Mitchell was getting typed reports of the wire taps."

OK, Woodward thought, that made sense.

"After the Watergate arrests, when Howard was out of town hiding and needed a lawyer, he 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 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.

• • •

On February 26, Bernstein stepped into the elevator in the Post lobby and suddenly felt his arm grabbed and then his body being pulled back into the lobby. He started to struggle, then heard a female voice.

"Boy, am I glad to see you!" It was Laura Kiernan, a young news aide who had recently been promoted to reporter on the local staff. "There's a guy upstairs in the newsroom with a subpoena for you and your notes. Bradlee doesn't want you up there to get it. He wants you out of here, fast."

Bernstein dashed to a stair well at the end of the lobby, then up seven flights of steps to the accounting department. Closing the door of an office, he dialed Bradlee's extension. Woodward was off for a few days in the Caribbean, but they had long before agreed on what to do if they were subpoenaed. Turning over notes or naming sources in either a grand-jury proceeding or a judicial hearing was obviously out of the question. There would be plenty of time to fight that in court. The first thing to do was move their files to a safe place. Bernstein told Bradlee where the files were. They would be moved immediately, he said.

CRP had issued subpoenas for five people at the Post: Bernstein, Woodward, Jim Mann (who had worked on some of the initial Watergate stories), Simons and Mrs. Graham. Also reporters from the Washington Star-News, The New York Times and Time magazine. Simons and Mrs. Graham, the only non-reporters on CRP's list, had already been served. The subpoenas demanded that those served testify by deposition in one of the civil suits arising from the break-in and bring with them all notes, tapes and story drafts in their possession regarding Watergate. Bradlee told Bernstein he couldn't find the Post's lawyers and he didn't want him served until he'd heard their advice. "Get out of the building," he said. "Go to a movie and call me at five o'clock."

Bernstein went to see Deep Throat--the movie version.

When he called Bradlee at five, the editor told him to return to the office and explained the strategy. Bernstein would accept the subpoena. Custody of at least some of the reporter's notes would pass to Mrs. Graham.

"Of course, we're going to fight this one all the way up, and if the judge wants to send anyone to jail, he's going to have to send Mrs. Graham. And, my God, the lady says she'll go! Then the judge can have that on his conscience. Can't you see the pictures of her limousine pulling up to the Women's Detention Center and out gets our gal, going to jail to uphold the First Amendment? That's a picture that would run in every newspaper in the world. There might be a revolution."

That night, Bernstein was at his desk typing when he saw the CRP page hurrying down the middle aisle, arm outstretched. Bernstein continued to type.

"Carl Bernstein."

Head down, Bernstein raised one arm and picked off the subpoena. But the page stood there silently. Finally, Bernstein glanced up from the typewriter. The page looked about 21, tousled blond hair, wearing a V-neck sweater, very collegiate.

"Hey, I really feel bad about doing this," he said. "They picked me because they thought somebody who looked like a student could get upstairs easier." He was a law student who worked part time at the firm headed by Kenneth Wells Parkinson, the chief CRP attorney. He promised to keep alert for any information that might be useful to the Post and gave Bernstein his home phone number.

• • •

No Presidential decision affecting Watergate seemed so ill advised or left the reporters more perplexed than the White House announcement in February that L. Patrick Gray's name would be submitted to the Senate for confirmation as J. Edgar Hoover's permanent successor. Gray was already the acting FBI director; his confirmation hearings would almost certainly become a Congressional inquiry into the FBI's conduct of the Watergate investigation; why risk the possible consequences of a Senatorial fishing expedition to make his tenure permanent? The Administration officials to whom the reporters posed the riddle seemed no less baffled. Several insiders professed to know only that there had been a mammoth struggle in the innermost Nixon circle. Ehrlichman, it was said, had vehemently opposed the nomination, but the President had ultimately rejected his counsel. No one suggested that Gray had been nominated because of ability or because the White House regarded the hearings as an opportunity to set the Watergate record straight.

Shortly before the hearings were to begin, the reporters decided it was time for Woodward to move the flowerpot on his balcony. That night he traveled by foot and cab to the garage. Deep Throat was not there. He had told Woodward that he would leave a message on a certain ledge when he couldn't make an appointment. Woodward, 5' 10", couldn't reach that high. He found a section of old conduit pipe and fished around.

Moments later, he found a piece of paper on which Deep Throat had typed instructions to meet the next night at a remote bar Woodward had never heard of. A bar? Had Deep Throat gone crazy? Something must be wrong. When he got home, he looked up the bar in the phone book. There was no such listing. From a pay phone in his apartment building, he dialed information. An operator gave him the listing--an address on the outskirts of the city.

At nine the next night, Woodward walked a few blocks before taking a cab to a section of the city in the opposite direction from the bar. He walked another 15 minutes and took a cab to within a few blocks of the bar. It was really a tavern, an old wooden house that had been converted into a saloon for truckers and construction workers. Woodward, who was dressed casually, walked in. No one seemed to pay any attention to him. He spotted Deep Throat sitting alone at a side table and nervously sat down across from him.

Why here? he asked.

"A change," Deep Throat said. "None of my friends, none of your friends would come here. Just a sleepy, dark bar." A waiter came over; they both ordered Scotch.

There has to be more to this new meeting place, Woodward said.

"A little bit classier surroundings," Deep Throat answered. "No chance you were followed? Two cabs and all?"

Woodward nodded.

"How'd the Post like its subpoenas?"

Just great, said Woodward.

"That's only the first step. Our President has gone on a rampage about news leaks on Watergate. He's told the appropriate people, 'Go to any length' to stop them. When he says that, he really means business. Internal investigations, plus he wants to use the courts. There was a discussion about whether to go the criminal route or the civil-suit route first. At a meeting, Nixon said that the money left over from the campaign, about $5,000,000 or so, might as well be used to take The Washington Post down a notch. Thus your subpoenas and the others. Part of the discussion was about (continued on page 196)All the President's Men(continued from page 192) starling a grand-jury investigation, but that's for later.

"Nixon was wild, shouting and hollering that 'We can't have it and we're going to stop it, I don't care how much it costs.' His theory is that the news media have gone way too far and the trend has to be stopped--almost like he was talking about Federal spending. He's fixed on the subject and doesn't care how much time it takes; he wants it done. To him, the question is no less than the very integrity of Government and basic loyalty. He thinks the press is out to get him and therefore is disloyal; people who talk to the press are even worse--the enemies within, or something like that."

Woodward took a breath. Deep Throat sipped his Scotch gingerly, then wiped his mouth inelegantly with the back of his hand.

How worried was he?

"Worried?" Deep Throat leaned back and threw his arm over his chair. "It can't work. They'll never get anyone. They never have. They're hiding things that will come out and even discredit their war against leaks. The flood is coming, I'm telling you. So the White House wants to eat The Washington Post, so what? It will be wearing on you, but the end is in sight. It's building and they see it and they know that they can't stop the real story from coming out. That's why they're so desperate. Just be careful, yourselves and the paper, and wait them out, don't jump too fast. Be careful and don't be too anxious."

Woodward was anything but reassured by his friend's assessment. He said he needed more details if he was going to tell the others at the Post that they were on the menu but weren't going to be eaten. Deep Throat shook his head, indicating that he could not say much more.

What about Cray's nomination? asked Woodward; that didn't make any sense.

Deep Throat said it made all the sense in the world, though it was a big risk. "In early February, Gray went to the White House and said, in effect, 'I'm taking the rap on Watergate.' He got very angry and said he had done his job and contained the investigation judiciously, that it wasn't fair that he was being singled out to take the heat. He implied that all hell could break loose if he wasn't able to stay in the job permanently and keep the lid on. Nixon could have thought this was a threat, though Gray is not that sort of guy. Whatever the reason, the President agreed in a hurry and sent Gray's name up to the Senate right away. Some of the top people in the White House were dead set against it, but they couldn't talk him out of it."

So good Pat Gray had blackmailed the President.

"I never said that," Deep Throat laughed. He lifted his eyes, the picture of innocence.*

What about the Time magazine story that claimed that the Administration had wire-tapped the phones of reporters and White House aides? Had Gray been aware of the taps?

"Affirmative," said Deep Throat, and he cautioned that even he did not know all there was to know about the subject. "There was an out-of-channels vigilante squad of wire tappers and burglars that did it. Including taps on Hedrick Smith and Neil Sheehan of The New York Times, after the Pentagon papers' publication. But it started before that. All the records have supposedly been destroyed." He explained that the wire tapping had been done by ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents who were hired outside of normal channels. Robert Mardian had run the Justice Department end of the operation for the White House. Watergate was nothing new to the Administration, Deep Throat continued.

There had been an election strategy session at which Haldeman pushed Mitchell to set up a wire-tapping operation for the campaign. Mitchell had been reluctant, but Haldeman was insistent. Mitchell was instructed by the White House chief of staff to transfer part of the vigilante operation from the White House to the campaign. That meant Hunt and Liddy.

"In 1969, the first targets of aggressive wire tapping were the reporters and those in the Administration who were suspected of disloyalty," Deep Throat said. "Then the emphasis was shifted to the radical political opposition during the antiwar protests. When it got near election time, it was only natural to tap the Democrats. The arrests in the Watergate sent everybody off the edge because the break-in could uncover the whole program."

Deep Throat and Woodward each had another Scotch, luxuriating in the unfamiliar comfort of their meeting place. Woodward wondered if his friend was intentionally flirting with the danger of being discovered. Did Deep Throat want to get caught so he would be free to speak publicly? Woodward started to ask, then faltered. It was enough to know that Deep Throat would never deal with him falsely. Someday it would be explained.

The drinks were cheap. Woodward put a five-dollar bill on the table and left first.

• • •

For the next several weeks, the reporters watched the confirmation hearings in amazement as. day after day, Gray attested to the ineptitude--if not the criminal negligence--of his supervision of the FBI's investigation. Deep Throat's implicit suggestion that Nixon had been frightened into nominating Gray became increasingly plausible as the nominee demonstrated a dangerous candor.

On March 22, Gray testified that Dean had "probably" lied when he told the FBI on June 22 that he did not know if Hunt had an office in the White House. The White House issued a statement "unequivocally" denying Gray's charge and Dean demanded a "correction."

The day before, the CRP subpoenas of reporters and the Post's news executives had been thrown out of court.

On the morning of March 23, Woodward was walking down a corridor near the editorial-page office when Herblock, the Post cartoonist, stopped him. "Hey, did you hear about McCord's letter to the judge? I heard it on the radio."

The last time somebody brought him news of Watergate from the radio, Woodward thought, the Haldeman story had blown up. No, he hadn't heard, he said, and waited.

"Yeah, McCord's saying there was perjury and pressure to keep quiet, and others are in on it."

As Woodward bounded into the newsroom, Simons, standing near the national desk, was waving a piece of wire copy and shouting.

It was the text of a letter from McCord to Sirica:

"Several members of my family have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter...." McCord was coming forward to tell what he knew. Woodward studied the letter's charges: Political pressure had been applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. Perjury had occurred during the trial. Others involved in Watergate had not been identified in testimony.

McCord was requesting a meeting with Sirica after sentencing, "since I cannot feel confident in talking with an FBI agent, in testifying before a grand jury whose U. S. attorneys work for the Department of Justice, or in talking with other Government representatives."

Woodward wondered whether McCord could prove his charges. An image of Mitchell being led off by marshals flashed through his mind.

Simons, jubilant, told Woodward, "Find out what the hell he's talking about--who committed perjury, who else was involved, who applied pressure."

Bradlee was more subdued. The letter might be a giant step, but it was vague.

"Names, fellas, we want names," he said.

• • •

Bernstein began unenthusiastically to see if he could find a source on the Senate Watergate committee who would tell him what McCord had said in a private interrogation. He had made half-a-dozen unsuccessful calls when an item moved over the Los Angeles Times wire: McCord had told Samuel Dash, the committee's chief counsel, that Magruder and Dean had had advance knowledge of the Watergate bugging operation and were involved in its planning. The story was by Ron Ostrow and Robert Jackson. Bernstein knew they wouldn't take a flier unless their source was absolutely reliable.

The information about Magruder was no surprise, but there had been no real hint from anyone that Dean had had anything to do with planning the bugging. If the man named by the President to investigate the bugging had been one of its planners, the consequences seemed incalculable. Already, the White House had issued a statement denying categorically the charges against Dean. The statement did not mention Magruder; the President's men had cut him loose.

By Sunday evening, Bernstein had called more than 40 people--Senators, members of the Watergate-committee staffs, lawyers, CRP and White House sources, Justice Department officials, friends of McCord--even McCord's minister. Nothing. He and Simons decided he would write a story quoting the Los Angeles Times and noting that the Post had been unable to confirm the details. Then Simons got a call from a lawyer who said he represented Dean. He was threatening to file a libel suit if the Post ran the allegations about Dean. Simons told Bernstein to quote the threat and name the lawyer.

Simons sensed Bernstein's frustrations at the day's events. He told him to get accustomed to being beaten by other papers, that the days when the Post had dominated the Watergate story were over.

The next morning, Bernstein and Woodward searched frantically for confirmation of the Times account and came up, finally, with three people on Capitol Hill who said it was correct. One, a Republican politician, said McCord's allegations were "convincing, disturbing and supported by some documentation."

At the White House, Ziegler announced that the President had personally telephoned Dean and expressed "absolute and total confidence" in him.

• • •

It was Seymour Hersh of The New York Times who reported on April 9, 1973, that McCord had secretly testified that the cash payoffs to the Watergate conspirators had come directly from CRP. The connection was one of the keys they had all been waiting for. Since January, everyone had assumed that CRP had bought the conspirators' silence, but now someone was finally saying so from the inside.

Months earlier, Hugh Sloan had told the reporters that the celebrated secret fund had never ceased to exist--even after the Watergate arrests. Bernstein and Woodward had been astonished. Sloan had told them that the money had been transferred from Stans's safe to Frederick LaRue. They had not written about it, because they couldn't confirm it and didn't know how the money had been spent. Sloan had refused to say how much money was involved. Now it seemed possible that it had bought the defendants' silence. LaRue had been Mitchell's deputy and, according to an earlier story by Bernstein and Woodward, had directed the destruction of records at CRP in the wake of the Watergate break-in. He and Mardian were the two CRP officials who had supervised Kenneth Parkinson and the other committee lawyers. McCord's testimony had identified Parkinson and the late Dorothy Hunt as conduits for the payments to the conspirators.

Woodward called a CRP official who had been friendly but unwilling to talk specifics. The man exploded on the phone about the awful state of affairs in the wake of the McCord disclosures:

"John Mitchell still sits there smoking on his pipe, not saying much.... I used to take that for wisdom--you know, keeping your mouth shut. Now I realize that it's ignorance.... God, I never thought I'd be telling you guys that I didn't hate what you did. It's the way the White House has handled this mess that's undermined the Presidency.... I've got friends who look at me now and say, 'How can you have any self-respect and still work for CRP?' I'm sick."

Seeing an unusual opportunity, Woodward said he and Bernstein knew that LaRue was involved in the payoffs to the conspirators. Woodward had only seen pictures of LaRue. He was a balding little man with round spectacles, a former Las Vegas casino owner and oil millionaire--the perfect bagman, Woodward had decided.

"I can't answer any questions, but I'll tell you one thing you might have trouble believing," the man from CRP said. "Fred LaRue won't lie under oath. If they ask him, he's going to say he helped pay the men off."

Woodward called Sloan. LaRue paid off the boys, Woodward announced, then realized how silly he sounded. Sloan was not surprised to hear it. He had always suspected the worst, whatever it was.

How much money was transferred from the fund? Woodward was looking for a ball-park figure.

Sloan wouldn't say.

They played their old game, like two sparring partners who hadn't been in the ring for a while. More than $100,000? More than $50,000? Between $50,000 and $100,000? Which side of $75,000?

"Within $5000 of that," Sloan said.

That was good enough; it was probably $80,000, but they would use $70,000.

How could CRP continue the secret fund after the Watergate arrests and get away with it?

"The transfer was done in July," Sloan said. "Nothing had come out about the money yet and Secretary Stans approved it. It was a way of doing business, having cash around." Sloan presumed that somebody had told Stans to do it, but he didn't know who.

Do the prosecutors know about this? Woodward asked.

"I don't think so," Sloan said. "I was never asked." Sloan did say, however, that he had been asked the relevant questions about secret cash when he had testified, a few weeks previously, before a Federal grand jury in New York that was investigating the cash contribution to CRP by Robert L. Vesco, an international financier and accused swindler. Vesco's gift of $200,000 in $100 bills was delivered to the committee in a black attaché case. It had been added to the cash fund in Stans's safe and had helped finance the Watergate operation and other undercover activities.

Woodward called a Justice Department official. Were the prosecutors trying to determine if the conspirators were paid off with the $70,000 LaRue got out of Stans's safe after Watergate?

"The prosecutors are looking at every penny of committee money to see if it went for payoffs, every penny they can find."

Including the money that was in Stans's safe?

"Right."

That tied the knot.

The secret fund had brought the reporters full circle--first the bugging, and now the cover-up.

• • •

That Sunday afternoon at dusk, Woodward and a friend were sitting on a grassy ridge in Montrose Park in Georgetown. A short distance away, Woodward saw a couple in intense conversation strolling toward them.

"It's Haldeman," Woodward's friend said. It was indeed Haldeman, wearing light-colored sneakers, casual slacks and a tan windbreaker. He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets. His wife, also casually dressed, was speaking to him with obvious emotion and conviction. Haldeman was silent, occasionally turning his head to her. The sun was setting.

Woodward saw a chance to get past the wall. Here, in a public park, with no guards or police or White House limousines waiting. Haldeman looked subdued. Woodward started to rise, wondering if Haldeman would slug him if he introduced himself.

"Leave him alone," Woodward's friend said quietly. The couple walked by, engrossed in private conversation. Woodward didn't move.

• • •

On the evening of April 16, the Post's night city editor called Woodward at home. The Los Angeles Times was predicting on its front page that the White House would make a dramatic Watergate admission in a few days: One or more high-level officials not identified in the story would be named as directing or condoning political espionage and sabotage activities without approval from the President.

Woodward made an emergency call to Deep Throat. The procedure involved making a call from a predesignated phone booth, saying nothing and then hanging up after ten seconds. Woodward had to wait for almost an hour by the phone booth belore the call was returned.

No meeting was possible that night, Deep Throat said. "You don't have to tell me why you called."

The whole town is going crazy, what's going on? Woodward asked.

"You'd better hang on for this," said Deep Throat. "Dean and Haldeman are out--for sure."

Out? Woodward repeated, dum-founded.

"Out. They'll resign. There's no way the President can avoid it."

Could the Post publish that?

"Yes. It's solid," Deep Throat said.

What should we do? Woodward asked.

"Someone's talking. Several are talking--go find out. I've got to go. I mean it--find out." Deep Throat hung up.

When Woodward arrived in the newsroom at about 11 A.M. next morning. April 17, Bernstein, Sussman, Rosenfeld, Simons and Bradlee were in Bradlee's office trying to figure out what to do next. Bernstein had just talked to a White House official who said the place was chaotic but that nobody seemed to know what was going to happen or when.

Woodward rushed into Bradlee's office, blurting out Deep Throat's message. The others were stunned. It was solid, Woodward said. Deep Throat had been sure. They all realized that the house of cards was tumbling.

"Can we go with it?" Bradlee asked, staring out the window.

Yes, said Woodward. But he was concerned that a story might delay the resignations. Bernstein worried that a story in the Post might even kick the decisions the other way. Rosenfeld suggested politely that perhaps the reporters and the Post as well were overrating their importance. If Dean and Haldeman had to go, the President had more to worry about than whether the Post got the satisfaction of reporting it first.

Bradlee recalled that he had been badly burned on a resignation story once and the experience had left him with a healthy fear of the whole genre.

"I wrote a cover story for Newsweek on J. Edgar Hoover, saying the search was finally under way for his successor at the FBI," he said. "Moyers [Bill Moyers, Lyndon Johnson's press secretary] said, 'We've finally got the bastard. Lyndon told me to find his replacement.' So that was the lead, without Moyers' name: 'The search is finally under way for J. Edgar Hoover's successor.' Johnson--the next day. I think--held a press conference at which he appointed Hoover director of the FBI for life. And as he went before the television cameras, he said to Moyers. 'You call up Ben Bradlee and tell him, "Fuck you."' Well, for years, people would come up to me and say, 'You did it, Bradlee. You did it, you got him appointed for life!'"

Bradlee said he didn't know what to do with this story about Haldeman and Dean. He wanted to go, but he was afraid of it.

A decision became unnecessary for the moment. A news aide brought a piece of wire copy into the room. The President had scheduled an announcement for that afternoon in the White House press room.

The reporters decided Bernstein should go in case the President agreed to answer questions from the floor. He called Ziegler's office--Bernstein didn't have a White House press pass.

The room was already jammed when Bernstein arrived. He was surprised at what he judged to be a very different attitude among the White House press corps, old and young. There were a lot of angry people in the room. Gallows humor was the order of the day. The President was running late.

"He's out getting a cocker spaniel and a cloth coat for Pat," said one senior reporter.

"Nixon's going to waive Executive privilege for Manolo and finally throw him to the wolves," said another. (Manolo Sanchez was the President's valet.) Somebody theorized that they were about to hear the Administration's prison-reform message.

"Yeah," replied another, "they're going to move the White House to Leavenworth."

A few members of the press corps, including Helen Thomas of U.P.I., thought the President was going to announce Haldeman's resignation. An hour passed and the television lights were turned off. Gerry Warren appeared and said the President would be out as soon as possible. Warren looked grim.

Helen Thomas thought the President had become so emotionally wrought at what he was going to have to announce that he couldn't pull himself together to go through with it. That would explain the delay, she said. Warren appeared again and said it wouldn't be too much longer. The lights went back on.

At 4:40 P.M., Ziegler, looking grimmer than Warren, emerged from the hallway in the West Wing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

There was some discussion as to whether Ziegler was finished and was going to be replaced. If the President admitted any White House involvement in Watergate, Ziegler deserved to be finished, someone said. He deserved to be finished no matter what, someone else added, and there was a good deal of laughter.

The President was very tanned, but he looked older than his pictures. His hands were shaking. Bernstein noticed.

"... I can report today that there have been major developments in the case concerning which it would be improper to be more specific now, except to say that real progress has been made in finding the truth," the President said. "Serious charges" had recently been brought to his attention and, as a result, he "personally [had begun] intensive new inquiries into this whole matter" on March 21.

There were to be no resignations that day. Instead, the President announced that he would suspend "any person in the Executive branch or in Government" who was indicted in the case. The President had become the investigator who would see justice done where others had failed. These were the much reported "major developments."

Nixon had met on Sunday with Attorney General Kleindienst and Assistant Attorney General Henry E. Petersen "to review the facts which had come to me in my investigation and also to review the progress of the Department of Justice investigation."

Nixon was now the prosecutor and had expressed "to the appropriate authorities my view that no individual holding, in the past or at present, a position of major importance in the Administration should be given immunity from prosecution."

The President's announcement lasted about three minutes. His hands did not stop shaking. Most of the time, he looked past the reporters in front of him, his eyes fixed on the television cameras on a platform at the rear of the room or on the paper from which he was reading.

Then he forced a smile--more like a grimace--and hurried from the room. Bernstein asked some of the regulars if his hands always shook like that. Only recently, they said.

The mood in the press room turned ugly after the President left. The reporters were going to beat and flail Ziegler into submission.

At first Ziegler's resistance was agile. There were no contradictions between the President's latest statement and what had been said before, Ziegler insisted. The previous statements from the White House had been based on "investigations prior to the President's action" and on "the previous investigation" and on "information available at the time." Now "new information" had led to the latest "standing statement of position."

But the reporters wanted more. On the 18th blow, Ziegler yielded.

"This is the operative statement," he said. "The others are inoperative."

• • •

The reporters began to search for the exact reasons behind the President's abrupt turnabout. The next morning, April 18, Woodward visited the man from CRP and asked him who was talking to the prosecutors.

"Magruder is your next McCord," he said. "He went to the prosecutors last Saturday and tucked it to Dean and Mitchell."

Woodward was surprised. He had regarded Magruder as a superloyalist. Things must have been very bad, he said.

"Bad, shit," the man said. "The walls were coming in on him--walls, ceiling, floor, everything." He threw his arms in front of his face for emphasis.

Woodward asked what Magruder had pinned on Dean and Mitchell.

"The whole mess," the man said, "the bugging plans and the payoff scheme ... those meetings, or at least one meeting, in Mitchell's office, when everything was discussed with Liddy before the bugging."

Woodward took a cab back to the office and called a White House official.

We know Magruder is talking, Woodward said.

"You've got pretty good information, then," the official answered.

How extensive was what Magruder told the prosecutors?

"The works--all the plans for the bugging, the charts, the payoffs. ... It will put Dean and Mitchell in jail. This is no hearsay like McCord."

• • •

Woodward called Magruder's lawyer, James J. Bierbower, and told him that the Post was aware that his client had gone to the prosecutors.

"Now wait, now wait," Bierbower said. "I'm not even confirming that he is my client."

Woodward said the Post was going to report that Magruder had accused Dean and Mitchell on both the bugging and the cover-up.

"I'll call you back in fifteen minutes," Bierbower said.

Half an hour later, he told Woodward, "I will confirm that he will testily before the grand jury when he is called."

Woodward called a Justice Department official and told him what he had.

"That's not all." The official sounded positively cocky. "Other people will testify that Mitchell and Dean were in on the arrangements for the payoff's."

Bernstein reached a White House source who confirmed Deep Throat's information that Haldeman and Dean were finished there. Dean's resignation had already been typed out and Haldeman's was in the works.

Woodward was finishing the first page of the story when Bradlee arrived at his desk. He had brought a sheet of his two-ply paper with him and sat down at the typewriter behind Woodward. Their backs were to each other. Woodward heard Bradlee say something about "the story I've been waiting for." Then Woodward heard the sound of the typewriter. Bradlee's first paragraph was out in about a minute flat and he asked Woodward to turn around and look.

Woodward protested mildly that Bradlee had failed to attribute the story to any sources. It read as if Magruder's allegations had come from nowhere and landed in the Post's lap.

Bradlee was undeterred. "You can do that later," he said, and started typing again. By the end of the third paragraph, he had more or less solved the attribution problem and filled the two-ply.

Except for titles, middle names and initials, the three-paragraph lead was Bradlee's.

Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House Counsel John W. Dean III approved and helped plan the Watergate bugging operation, according to President Nixon's former special assistant, Jeb Stuart Magruder.

Mitchell and Dean later arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted Watergate conspirators, Magruder has also said.

Magruder, the deputy campaign manager for the President, made these statements to Federal prosecutors Saturday, according to three sources in the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

The entire story filled half of the front page.

The next morning, Bernstein called Dean's office. Dean's secretary was crying. She didn't know where her boss was or if he worked at the White House anymore. She gave Bernstein the names of several friends and associates of Dean's who might be helpful. All were unreachable.

In the late morning, when Dean's secretary had regained her composure, she called back and read Bernstein a statement that had been issued in Dean's name: "...Some may hope or think that I will become a scapegoat in the Watergate case. Anyone who believes this does not know me, know the true facts, nor understand our system of justice."

Bernstein reached one of the associates suggested by Dean's secretary. The man sounded cordial when Bernstein introduced himself.

He said that Dean respected the Post's Watergate coverage. Just what they needed, Bernstein thought, an endorsement from John Dean.

"Dean doesn't think you've been unfair to him. There's no reason for him to take it personally. Hell, he didn't take a step without somebody telling him what to do in this thing. He didn't make the decision to try and beat you. He was against it. He'd like nothing better than to sit down with you and tell you the whole story. But that's not what he needs now. If he ever testifies, he has to be able to say under oath that he did not talk to the press first. That doesn't mean that you and I can't do a little visiting with each other...."

Not knowing what to expect, Bernstein asked where he should begin.

"You might start with the P's statement," the associate said. (It look Bernstein a moment to realize that "the P" was the President.) "Find out what happened on March 21--who it was that brought all those 'serious charges' to the P's attention."

John Dean?

"Well, I'm not saying who it was, but your thinking is on the right track. Check it out. It sure wasn't John Ehrlichman who walked into the Oval Office that day and said, in effect, 'There has been a cover-up and it's worse than you think it is. Mr. President.' That would be a pretty good reason to make somebody a scapegoat if you were, say, H, wouldn't you think?"

Haldeman?

"And others. From June seventeenth on, John Dean didn't do anything unless Haldeman or somebody else told him to do it--including the arrangements for hush money."

Why didn't Dean go public right away, if he was so interested in the truth?

"One, because nobody would believe him if he walked out today and said everything he knows. This didn't start with Watergate. It was a way of life at the White House. He's got to establish gradually that he's reliable, that he won't lie. Because he knows things that nobody else is ever going to talk about willingly. Almost everything can be checked out. But before he goes public, he's got to convince everybody--the prosecutors, the press and Senator Sam's people on the Hill--that he's telling the truth. Otherwise, the White House will cut his balls off before he has a chance."

• • •

In the late afternoon of April 27, Bernstein and Woodward were called over by one of the editors to look at a story that had just come across the Associated Press wire as a bulletin.

It was another Watergate. In Los Angeles, at the trial of Daniel Ellsberg, Judge William Matthew Byrne had announced that he had learned from the Watergate prosecutors that Hunt and Liddy had supervised the burglary of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in September 1971.

Bernstein reached Dean's associate.

"Carl, how do you think they learned about that little bag job on the Coast?" the associate asked.

Dean again?

"You ask the prosecutors who told them about that.... John's got some stories to tell. Ask them about his credibility. Everything he's told them has checked out...and there is still a lot more he hasn't told them yet that they want to know about. Don't forget: John Dean was over there at the White House a long time, and there were lots of projects. John has knowledge of illegal activities that go way back."

How far back?

"Way back ... to the beginning."

More wire tapping?

"I wouldn't challenge that assumption."

Burglaries?

"Would you keep a squad of burglars around the house for years if you only wanted them for one or two jobs?...H and E are upset about what has come out so far. There are documents...."

About burglaries?

"About a lot of things. There is only one way this whole story will ever come out.... You didn't see E run down to the prosecutors and tell how he broke the law. Has H been down there? I don't expect the P to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the courthouse. That leaves one person. John Dean again.... We are laying a foundation to protect ourselves.

"Haldeman and Ehrlichman have been trying to get John to take a dive and convince the P that he should save their skins and blame it all on John. The P has agreed."

Is Dean going to implicate the P?

"There were lots of meetings.... The P was there. The cover-up was being discussed."

• • •

The next evening, Woodward went to the White House. He had asked a senior Presidential aide for an interview to talk about John Dean. Woodward sat in one of the colorfully decorated offices in the old Executive Office Building and drank coffee out of a cup bearing the Presidential Seal.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman were finished, the man said.

And, yes, it was coming. Dean was going to implicate the President in the cover-up. The aide had a pained expression on his face.

What did Dean have?

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure it is evidence.... The President's former lawyer is going to say that the President is...well, a felon." The man's face trembled. He asked Woodward to leave.

• • •

James McCartney, a national correspondent for Knight Newspapers, happened to be in the Post office on April 30, researching an article for the Columbia Journalism Review. His piece, which appeared in the July--August 1973 issue, recorded Bradlee's reaction to the events of that day:

It was 11:55 a.m. on April 30, and Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, 52, executive editor of The Washington Post, chatted with a visitor, feet on the desk, idly attempting to toss a plastic toy basketball through a hoop mounted on an office window 12 feet away. The inevitable subject of conversation: Watergate. Howard Simons, the Post's managing editor, slipped into the room to interrupt: "Nixon has accepted the resignations of Ehrlichman and Haldeman and Dean," he said. "Kleindienst is out and Richardson is the new Attorney General."

For a second, Ben Bradlee's mouth dropped open with an expression of sheer delight. Then he put one cheek on the desk, eyes closed, and banged the desk repeatedly with his right fist. In a moment he recovered. "How do you like them apples?" he said to the grinning Simons. "Not a bad start."

Bradlee couldn't restrain himself. He strode into the Post's vast fifth-floor newsroom and shouted across rows of desks to...Woodward.... "Not bad, Bob! Not half bad!" Howard Simons interjected a note of caution: "Don't gloat," he murmured, as Post staff members began to gather around. "We can't afford to gloat."

• • •

That night at nine, the President addressed the nation on network television. Bernstein and Woodward went into Howard Simons' office to watch the speech with him and Mrs. Graham.

"The President of the United States," the announcer said solemnly. Nixon sat at his desk, a picture of his family on one side, a bust of Abraham Lincoln on the other.

"Oh, my God," Mrs. Graham said. "This is too much."

The President began to speak: "I want to talk to you tonight from my heart.... There had been an effort to conceal the facts both from the public, from you, and from me.... I wanted to be fair.... Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates...Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman--two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.... The easiest course would be for me to blame those to whom I delegated the responsibility to run the campaign. But that would be a cowardly thing to do.... In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here in this office. I accept it.... It was the system that has brought the facts to light...a system that in this case has included a determined grand jury, honest prosecutors, a courageous judge, John Sirica, and a vigorous free press.... I must now turn my full attention--and I shall do so--once again to the larger duties of this office. I owe it to this great office that I hold, and I owe it to you--to our country....

"There can be no whitewash at the White House.... Two wrongs do not make a right.... I love America.... God bless America and God bless each and every one of you."

• • •

The day after the President's April 30 speech. Bernstein was at his desk reading The New York Times and the Washington Star-News. A copy aide dropped the following U.P.I. wire copy on his desk:

White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler publicly apologized today to The Washington Post and two of its reporters for his earlier criticism of their investigative reporting of the Watergate conspiracy.

At the White House briefing, a reporter asked Ziegler if the White House didn't owe the Post an apology.

"In thinking of it all at this point in time, yes," Ziegler said, "I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein.... We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place.... When we are wrong, we are wrong, as we were in that case."

As Ziegler finished, he started to say, "But--" He was cut off by a reporter who said: "Now, don't take it back, Ron."

Bernstein took the copy and laid it on Woodward's desk. Later Woodward called Ziegler at the White House to thank him.

"We all have our jobs," Ziegler replied.

• • •

The first week of June, Bernstein was talking to a source he hadn't called for several weeks. He asked if there had been any other burglaries.

"There was one proposed. .. but I don't think it ever came off. The Brookings Institution [a center for the study of public-policy questions]. John Dean turned it off."

Bernstein called Dean's associate. "I'm not sure you have the right word, friend," he said. "Somebody must have misspoken himself. Chuck Colson wanted to rub two sticks together."

Maybe Bernstein's mind was jumping too fast. Colson wanted to start a fire?

"You might say that."

It couldn't have been serious, Bernstein said.

"Serious enough for John Caulfield [an aide to Ehrlichman] to run out of Colson's office in a panic. He came straight to Dean, saying he didn't ever want to talk to that man Colson again, because he was crazy. And that Dean better do something to stop him before it was too late. Dean caught the first courier flight out to San Clemente to see Ehrlichman. That's how serious it was."

Why Ehrlichman?

"Because he was the only one with enough influence to stop it at that point. And he was not happy to see John Dean. Dean wasn't supposed to know about it. But once he flew out there to make a big deal about it, E didn't have any choice but to shut it down. John stayed in the room and listened while E called Colson. The whole time he was on the phone, E just glared at him like he was a traitor."

Dean's associate explained the purpose of the operation to Bernstein: Morton Halperin, Daniel Ellsberg's friend, was believed to have kept some classified documents when he left Kissinger's staff to become a fellow at the Brookings Institution. The White House wanted those documents back, and since security at Brookings was too tight to risk a simple burglary, it was conjectured that a fire could cover a break-in at Halperin's office.

Bernstein located someone who had heard the whole story from Caulfield. "Not just a fire, a fire bombing," the man said. "That was what Colson thought would do the trick. Caulfield said. "This has gone too far,' and [that] he didn't ever want anything to do with Colson again in his life." Both Dean and Caulfield had told the whole story to investigators, he said.

Woodward was afraid it might be a setup.

Bernstein checked his sources again, and the investigators. Absolutely solid, he told Woodward. A fire bombing.

Woodward then called Colson.

"There's no question about that," Colson told him. "There is one mistake.... It was not the Brookings but The Washington Post. I told them to hire a wrecking crane and go over and knock down the building and Newsweek also."

Woodward said that he was serious, the allegation was deadly serious and not a joke.

"It was The Washington Post, I'm telling you. He had an explicit assignment to destroy The Washington Post," responded Colson, his tone perfectly straight. "I wanted The Washington Post destroyed."

Woodward didn't doubt it, but he said the allegation was going into the paper.

"Explicitly," Colson replied, "it is bullshit. I absolutely made no such statement or suggestion. It is ludicrous. The story you have told me is a flight of fantasy, the outer limits--this one has gone too far."

He called Woodward back several hours later. "Are you serious about this story?"

Woodward said that he was.

Colson's tone was altered. "I was asked about this by the Federal prosecutors. I was aware that there was a discussion about how to get highly classified documents back.... There is always a possibility that I might have said it.... It is characteristic of me.... But I never made it and certainly never meant it."

The story ran on June ninth.

• • •

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 their lists--Presidential aide Alexander P. Butterfield. Both Deep Throat and 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. It had seemed to be closed up.

Woodward had asked a committee staff member in late May 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. Dash put the matter off. The staff member told Woodward he would push Dash again. Dash finally OKed an interview with Butterfield for Friday, July 13.

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."

• • •

For the moment, the information was strictly off the record. The reporters were again concerned about a White House setup. 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 until Monday.

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 for some grand jury. How will foreign leaders feel when they learn of hidden microphones? Woodward relished the idea of knowing something that Kissinger didn't know. Ziegler was also in the dark, apparently.

Woodward called Bradlee. It was about 9:80 P.M. and Bradlee sounded as if he might have been sleeping. Woodward outlined the details of Butterfield's disclosures. As he spoke, his voice tripped several times. Maybe he was overreacting, making too much of a taping system. Bradlee was silent.

I just wanted you lo 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.

"OK," Bradlee said the next morning. "It's more than a B-plus."

From the Simon & Schuster book "all the president's men." Copyright © 1974 by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

* Stephen Sachs, Gray's attorney, told Woodward in early 1974 that the suggestion that Gray had pressured or blackmailed the President was "outrageously false." "[Gray] went to the White House expecting not to get the job," Sachs said. "Nixon told him that he should be as ruthless as Hoover in stopping leaks and be aggressive in the use of polygraphs." Sachs said that pressuring the White House was "not the way Gray handled himself with those guys. It was plain fear most of the time.... Now, it makes perfect sense that some of those guys down there would think he might be pressuring, because that's the way they operate, but not Gray."

The news about the White House tapes may have been a turning point in the Watergate story, but it was by no means the conclusion of Woodward and Bernstein's investigation. In the months that followed, the reporters continued to break major news stories and, as this issue went to press, they had written about the following developments:

• In the first week of November, after President Nixon had fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox and later bowed to public opinion by handing over seven of the nine subpoenaed tapes, Woodward met once again with Deep Throat in the underground garage. Deep Throat's message was short and simple: One or more of the tapes contained, deliberate erasures. The Post ran a story to that effect, which was denied by Ziegler at the White House. Two weeks later, the President's lawyers admitted in Judge Sirica's courtroom that one of the tapes contained an 18-and-a-half-minute gap.

• In early February, Woodward and Bernstein quoted sources "close to the prosecution" to the effect that at least one of the tape experts assigned by Judge Sirica to verify the integrity of the tapes believed that some of the remaining tapes were suspected of being rerecordings. The day the story appeared, Nixon's new chief of staff, Alexander Haig, called Bradlee and said that the article was "blasphemous." The next day, the White House confirmed that such suspicions existed.

• Finally, on March second, the day after the first Watergate grand jury indicted seven of the President's men, Woodward and Bernstein reported that a sealed envelope and briefcase handed to Judge Sirica contained evidence showing that the President was himself involved in the cover-up. This time, the White House had no comment.