Letters To A Lost Nation: A Watergate Chronicle

LETTERS TO A LOST NATION

A Watergate Chronicle

By

Jerry Gallagher

Copyright 2011

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"This Administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and re-establishing the confidence and faith of the people in the morality and honesty of their government employees. The investigations which have been conducted to date have only scratched the surface. For every case which is exposed, there are ten which are successfully covered up and even then this Administration will go down in history as the scandal a day Administration

A new class of royalty has been created in the United States and its princes of privileges and pay offs include the racketeers who get concessions on their income tax cases, the insiders who get favorite treatment on government contracts, the influence peddlers with keys to the White House, the government employee who uses his position to feather his nest.

The great tragedy, however, is not that corruption exists but that it is defended and condoned by the President and other high Administration officials. We have had corruption defended in those high places.

If they won’t recognize or admit that corruption exists, how can we expect them to clean it up?"

November 13th, 1951

SENATOR RICHARD NIXON IN HIS DENUNCIATION OF THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION AT THE HOTEL STATLER IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSSETTS

I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it’ll save it, save this plan. That’s the whole point. We’re going to protect our people if we can

RICHARD NIXON SPEAKING TO H.R. BOB HALDEMAN ON A TAPE ORDERED RELEASED BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT FOR THE TRIAL OF H.R. HALDEMAN, JOHN EHRLICHMAN AND JOHN MITCHELL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WATERGATE

A CAST OF WATERGATE CHARACTERS

November 8th, 1972

July 9th, 1973

July 30th, 1973

August 1st, 1973

August 4th, 1973

August 7th, 1973

August 12th, 1973

August 16th, 1973

August 22nd, 1973

August 24th, 1973

August 31st, 1973

September 30th, 1973

October 3rd, 1973

October 6th, 1973

Page 168 – October 10th, 1973

TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued)

October 15th, 1973

October 21st, 1973

October 22nd, 1973

October 26th, 1973

November 4th, 1973

November 11th, 1973

December 1st, 1973

December 15th, 1973

January 1st, 1974

August 9th, 1974

September 8th, 1974

April 26th, 1994

June 4th, 2005

December 27th, 2006

EPILOG – WATERGATE THEN AND NOW

SOME OF THE MYSTERIES CONTINUE

INTRODUCTION

I once read an excellent piece by Albert Camus’ in which he used the format that I have used in this book, namely, a man communicating with his country as if his country was a person. I was extremely impressed by Camus’ use of this technique and when I found myself pressed by my conscience to find some way to speak out regarding the Watergate Hearings and Watergate Happenings in which I found myself engrossed, I found the format to be an extremely useful tool. I am and will forever be indebted to Albert Camus.

I realize that there is far more which could have been said in this book. I apologize to those who are disappointed, but I do not pretend that this book is or will be the definitive book on Watergate. It was not meant to be such. It is simply a gathering of on the spot reactions of one American as he stood on the sidelines of power watching one of the most incredible political spectacles of the 20th Century taking place.

The Watergate Hearings and Richard Nixon will not soon be forgotten, at least I hope not. I know that I shall never forget either. I sincerely hope that America will never forget what happened to it and will learn from its history.

Although Watergate has been a revolting abuse of power, perhaps we needed it. Regardless of whether or not this is true, we got it anyway. Now we must learn from Watergate what not to do in the future.

My one sincere hope is that we do not as a nation simply lose faith in all politicians as a result of Watergate. We do have politicians of high principles. Certainly Senator Lowell Weiker, a Republican, put his love of America before his party loyalty. He is the kind of politician that makes me proud of our American system of government.

Senator Hubert Humphrey, A Democrat, has made his mistakes but has consistently been ahead of his time in fighting for the basic rights and human needs of all Americans.

We must keep in mind that men of this quality exist in politics because Americans vote for them. Perhaps Watergate will teach Americans how precious and important each individual’s vote really is.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WATERGATE

On the morning of June 17th, 1972, Frank Wills, a Security Guard at the upscale Washington D.C. Apartment, Hotel and Office Complex called the Watergate, was performing his normal duties, including making sure that the building’s doors were locked, when he found something wrong. Wills noticed tape covering the latch on a number of doors in the complex, which, of course, left the doors unlocked. Mr. Wills did not think much of it. He simply took the tape off the doors and went about his rounds.

When Mr. Wills returned a short time later and found the same door latches retaped, this time Mr. Wills called the police who responded quickly and arrested five men inside the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee at approximately 2:30 in the morning. The five men arrested were Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis and James W. McCord Jr. They were all charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications.

Unfortunately for President Richard Nixon one of the Washington Post Reporters who showed up at the D.C. Courthouse on Saturday afternoon for the preliminary hearing for the Watergate Burglars was a relatively inexperienced Reporter named Bob Woodward. Although Woodward had not been on the job with the Post for very long, he had served in the Navy, where one of his assignments at the Pentagon had put him in a position to meet some higher ups, not only at the Pentagon, but also at the White House, as well.

At first Woodward thought that this burglary at the Watergate complex might not turn out to be much of a story. That impression changed quickly, however, when one of the Watergate Burglars when asked by the judge where he was employed answered that he was presently working as a Security Consultant and had recently retired from the CIA.

Woodward’s continuing Washington Post reporting efforts, along with the more experienced Post Reporter, Carl Bernstein and the continued support of their editors and their publisher, Katherine Graham, put into motion an Investigative Journalism project that has become the gold standard in newspaper publishing.

Woodward and Bernstein’s efforts were thwarted by the Nixon White House and the Nixon Campaign in every way possible. The Post Reporter’s hard to believe, almost bizarre, stories about White House involvement in Burglaries at the Watergate, Campaign financing irregularities such as the maintenance of slush funds by the Committee to Re Elect the President (CREEP) and Campaign dirty tricks were denied at every turn by Nixon Representatives. The Washington Post was, for the most part of 1972, except for a couple of stories on the CBS News with Walter Cronkite, the only news organization in the country that was covering these Watergate related stories.

How and why they were publishing these stories became a real matter of speculation.

There were two main reasons that Woodward and Bernstein continued to write their stories. One was the incredibly hard investigative work that they and their colleagues put in on digging through the information available to them. Woodward and Bernstein had a habit of conducting unscheduled interviews at night at the homes of some of the principals in their Watergate stories or cold calling individuals and interviewing them over the phone for comments on their stories.

There was another very important reason that the Woodward and Bernstein stories were as accurate as they were. That reason was Deep Throat.

Deep Throat was the name Woodward gave to a source of his during Watergate, whose real name was not revealed until June of 2005, when Mark Felt and his daughter and grandson revealed his identity prior to his death due to Alzheimers Disease.

During the Watergate period Mark Felt was the Deputy Director of the FBI. He had been so under J. Edgar Hoover and was also Deputy Director under Nixon appointee, L. Patrick Gray. Although many FBI insiders had expected Mark Felt to become FBI Director after Hoover’s passing, that did not happen. Could Mark Felt have been so angry at being passed over for promotion that he had it in for Nixon? That question will probably never be answered.

What is certain, though, is that Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate Investigation might have been shut down had it not been for Mark Felt guiding them through the Watergate Maze. Felt was one of those people who Woodward met during his Pentagon/White House days in the Navy. Woodward and Felt became friends and when Woodward almost accidentally stumbled onto Watergate, Felt refused to give him actual information but he did agree to guide Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation in the right direction by confirming or failing to confirm information they had gathered from other sources. Felt did at times tell Woodward who to talk to next about their stories. Naturally enough, Felt was a man who in his number 2 spot at the FBI knew what was happening at all times during the Watergate investigations by the Justice Department and the FBI. Felt’s guidance to Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate Investigation was invaluable.

Following the arrest of the 5 Watergate burglars a grand jury indicted them along with two other individuals who had been identified as supervisors of the Watergate burglary operation. On September 15th, 1972, they were all indicted for conspiracy, burglary and violation of federal wiretapping laws.

One of those indicted with the 5 burglars was G. Gordon Liddy, a former Prosecutor and FBI Supervisor who was assigned to the White House Plumbers Intelligence Gathering Unit and was liaison from the White House to the Committee to Re Elect the President’s Security Operation. An investigation of the Watergate burglary had uncovered the fact that Liddy had supervised the burglary from a hotel across the street from the Watergate and watched as the five burglars were arrested and hauled off.

The other individual indicted along with Liddy and the 5 Watergate burglars was E. Howard Hunt. Hunt was a spy novelist and former CIA operative with an office in the White House who, it was later alleged, had not only planned the Watergate burglary but also, along with Liddy and the Plumbers group, also planned and executed a break in at the office of Pentagon Papers distributor, Daniel Ellsberg’s Psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding in Los Angeles, California.

During the latter half of 1972 Woodward and Bernstein continued their Watergate related stories in the Washington Post. While Nixon Administration officials outwardly seemed to either deny or ignore the Post’s Watergate coverage or else outright disrespect the Post stories and label them lies, inside the White House and especially in the Oval Office panic had set in and Watergate Hysteria was beginning to become rampant in the Nixon White House.

Despite the continuing publication of Washington Post stories on Watergate and other White House Horrors the result of the Presidential Election in November of 1972 was the Re Election of Richard Nixon in a landslide of epic proportions in his defeat of Democratic Presidential hopeful George McGovern.

Although Nixon and his White House confidantes might have thought that the magnitude of the election triumph could have ended their problems with Watergate, this was not to be the case. Their problems with Watergate were just beginning.

The five Watergate burglars were either tried and convicted or pleaded guilty in January of 1973. Following a thorough investigation all five men had been tied either directly or indirectly to the Committee to Re Elect the President. The Watergate Burglar’s Judge, John J. Sirica, suspected that a conspiracy that involved government official higher ups existed. Judge Sirica suspected that the higher ups involved in the conspiracy went as far as the White House and even farther up than Liddy or Hunt.

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had gone on trial on January 10th, 1973 along with the five Watergate burglars in Judge Sirica’s court on multiple counts of burglary, conspiracy and interceptions of wire and oral communications. On January 15th Hunt and the four Cuban burglars pled guilty to all counts in the indictment. James McCord and Gordon Liddy, nevertheless, continued their trials and were both found guilty on all counts in their indictments on January 30th, 1973.

Almost immediately after the Watergate break in and the arrest of the Watergate burglars, United States Congressman from Texas, Wright Patman, began an investigation of funds that had been traced to both the Watergate Burglars and Nixon’s Campaign funds. Patman, a Texas Democrat with a very independent streak was the Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee. Through some very questionable moves on the part of White House Aides and both Republican and also some Democratic Congressmen, the Patman Committee Investigation was virtually shut down by White House influence, to the relief of President Nixon and his Aides.

Although the Nixon White House powerbrokers seemed to feel that they had destroyed a Congressional oversight nightmare, the Patman Committee was not the only Congressional Committee that would put the Nixon Administration and Watergate in its sights.

At the same time that the Watergate Burglary Trials were coming to a close Senate Leader, Mike Mansfield, was already in the process of developing support in the Senate for his proposed resolution to create a Senate Committee which would investigate illegal and unethical conduct in the 1972 Presidential Campaign. Mansfield assigned North Carolina Democratic Senator, Sam Ervin, to manage the floor debate on the resolution and when the resolution was passed Senator Sam would be assigned the high profile honor of serving as the Chairman of what would come to be known nationwide as the Senate Watergate Committee.

In many ways the Senate Watergate Committee was the vehicle which, along with the investigations by the Justice Department and particularly the FBI, finally thrust Watergate in all its dark glory onto the public scene in a way that was almost impossible for any American to ignore.

Not only did the Senate Watergate Hearings produce a great amount of print media stories, but also for the first time a Congressional hearing completely dominated the media of Television. When the hearings began on May 17th, 1973, every National Network, including CBS, NBC and ABC covered the hearings with gavel to gavel coverage daily showing the hearings taking place inside the Senate Hearing Room live. Later on, when the networks began to realize that they were getting great ratings but were losing advertising revenues the networks agreed to rotate their coverage between networks so that one network would broadcast the hearings daily while the others were able to return to making money from their soap operas. PBS replayed the hearings at night for those who were not able to watch them