The Arrogance of Power (103 page)

19.
See pp. 66 and 504 n. 15 for references to Russell's role with Nixon on the Hiss case and later on the Onassis operation. The Washington investigator and lobbyist for whom he worked in the late sixties and early seventies was James Juliana, whose links with Caulfield, Colson, Chotiner, and Mitchell are acknowledged in Juliana's interview with staff of the Senate Watergate Committee. Juliana had been in charge of ballot security and thus in touch with Chotiner and Mitchell. He said he knew Nixon “quite well,” and the president appointed him to his Committee on Retardation. Juliana had helped in a White House effort to get information on the medical condition of ailing AFL-CIO leader George Meany. The information on Russell's request to see Nixon, and his meeting with Rose Woods, comes from Anatoli Granovsky, who arranged the visit, and from Woods's testimony. The Washington stockbroker whom Russell met not long after the White House visit was William Birely. Birely told the author in 1998 that he had known Nixon since 1947, and Rose Woods about as long. Russell's role in the White House probe of Chappaquiddick was mentioned by his daughter, Jean, his doctor, George Weems, and Clifton DeMotte, a Howard Hunt contact Russell had visited. Russell's daughter, Jean Hooper and his friend Ruth Thorne, have been useful sources. (Juliana: Paul Summit to Terry Lenzner, re: conversation with James Juliana, Nov. 5, 1973, Hughes-Rebozo file 804, WSPF, NA, and deposition of James McCord, Dec. 17, 1981, summary, in files of Henry Rothblatt, courtesy of Rothblatt family,
Washington Evening Star & Daily News,
Oct. 12, 1972; Meany:
WP,
June 28, 1974; report on Russell: director, FBI to attorney general, Apr. 14, 1971, FBI 67-37816; Woods, Russell: D. E. Moore to C. D. Brennan, subject Anatoli Granovsky, Aug. 17, 1970, FBI 100-356092, and Woods testimony, E, Bk. 22, p. 10250, and see Rose Woods to Lou Russell, Jan. 9, 1971, Lou Russell papers supplied to author by Jean Hooper; Birely: ints. William Birely,
Washington Evening Star & Daily News,
Oct. 12, 1972; Chappaquiddick: note of DeMotte int. by Jim Hougan, cited in Hougan to Philip Manuel, transcript of int. Dr. George Weems, and Hougan notes of int. Jean Russell Hooper, all in Hougan Collection and
Washington Evening Star & Daily News,
Oct. 12, 1972; Russell daughter. int. Jean Hooper.)

20.
In his book
Secret Agenda,
which challenged the conventional account of Watergate, Jim Hougan raised multiple questions about the bugging evidence. He pointed out that, on checking after the Watergate arrests, neither FBI agents nor Watergate technicians found any bugging devices in any DNC phone.

A bug did turn up in Spencer Oliver's office phone months later, in September, following a report of a malfunction by an Oliver secretary. The bug was defective, however, and a reading of FBI technical reports suggests it could never have made the transmissions logged by Baldwin. The consensus, Hougan wrote, was that it was a “throwaway,” a device planted in the phone with the intention that it be found. Some, including Nixon and Robert Finch, suspected this bug was “one they [the Democrats] planted themselves” to keep the story alive.

The burglar responsible for planting the bugs, James McCord, claimed to the contrary that the bug removed in September was one of the two he claimed to have installed. The second, McCord claimed in his book and in grand jury testimony, remained in place—“on an extension off a telephone call director carrying Larry O'Brien's lines”—until early April 1973. An FBI report, however, says an April 9, 1973, check of all DNC phones found no second device.

How to explain the muddle? Acting U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert thought the FBI “goofed” in its initial check of the DNC phones and missed finding the bugs. Internal FBI correspondence denied any such lapse but declared the anomalies “insoluble.” So must this author. He agrees with author Hougan that the discrepancies are serious and were never sufficiently aired
or investigated. (Hougan,
Agenda,
op. cit., pp. 218–, 243; O. T. Jacobson to Director, July 5, 1974, FBI 139-4089-2790; R. E. Gebhardt to Mr. Felt, Apr. 6, 1973; re: DNC search following McCord grand jury testimony: FBI 139-4089-1975, W. W. Bradley to Mr. Conrad, Apr. 9, 1973; re: negative result of DNC search: FBI 139-4089-1988, and McCord, op. cit., p. 24–. Nixon's discussion of a DNC “plant” is in WHT, Sept. 15, 16, 1972;
AOP,
pp. 147, 152.)

21.
Mitchell testified that he did not see Liddy between early February and June 15 and that his records showed Magruder had never shown him the logs. Magruder's assistant Robert Reisner, however, recalled his boss handing him GEMSTONE material at the relevant time in preparation for a meeting with Mitchell. Liddy, for his part, has denied Magruder's claim that Mitchell called him into such a meeting and chastised him over the useless product from the bugging. By one account, Liddy suggested Magruder confused Mitchell with Strachan, who, Liddy acknowledged, summoned him to the White House to tell him that the take from the phone intercepts was useless. Anthony Lukas, author of
Nightmare,
reported that most contemporary investigators seemed to believe Magruder's version rather than Mitchell's denial. (Mitchell testimony: E, Bk. 4, p. 1620; Reisner: E, Bk. 2, p. 494; Liddy denied: Liddy, op. cit., p. 497; Magruder confused: Hougan,
Agenda,
op. cit., p. 166; contemporary investigators:
NM,
p. 203.)

22.
See p. 229–.

1.
It was also suggested, Hunt said, that funds were reaching the Democrats from North Vietnam. (Int. Howard Hunt in Wise,
Police State,
op. cit., p. 159.)

2.
Sturgis may have been referring to the burglary of May 15 at the offices in the Watergate complex of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman, which housed several leading Democrats. See Chapter 29, Note 18.

3.
The author knew the late Frank Sturgis and spoke extensively with Andrew St. George, who conducted the Sturgis interview cited here. Although Sturgis was a swashbuckling, controversial character, there is no reason to doubt the essential points of his account.

4.
See p. 176–.

5.
See p. 191.

6.
The Castro plots, discussed in chapters 16 and 17, continued during the Kennedy administration.

7.
See pp. 157 and 279–.

8.
See p. 198.

9.
Charles Colson, who was also at the Hofstra conference, dismissed this Magruder account of the motive for the break-in as “a convenient answer to a question he's never been able to answer before.” (Colson Oral History Interview, June 15, 1988, NP, NA.)

10.
The transmissions from the functioning DNC bug were supposedly first noted by Baldwin in longhand, then typed up for transmission to Liddy. Liddy then edited them before showing them to colleagues, and apparently shredded them following the Watergate arrests. Magruder burned the copies in his possession. The tape and transcript of an interview Baldwin did with the
Los Angeles Times
were sealed by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in early 1973. Although most of the transcript was unsealed in 1980, passages relating to the contents of the intercepted conversations remain censored. Baldwin declined to tell the Senate Watergate Committee about the content of the conversations he overheard, citing a federal statue prohibiting the divulging of intercepted communications. According to Baldwin and McCord, none of the intercepted conversations was recorded even though there were two tape recorders in Baldwin's room at the Howard Johnson's. McCord said he had been unable to hook them up to the receiving units, a claim that defies belief. If tapes were in fact made, what became of them? (Baldwin note process: Alfred Baldwin testimony, E, Bk. 1, pp. 401–, 410; McCord, op. cit., p. 26; Liddy edited: Liddy, op. cit., p. 323; destroyed: ibid., pp. 340, 347–; Magruder burned: Magruder,
American Life,
op. cit., p. 226;
LAT
tape, transcript sealed: Charles Morgan, Jr.,
One Man, One Voice,
New York: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston, 1979, p. 217–;
LAT
transcript unsealed: transcript of int. Alfred Baldwin by Jack Nelson and Ronald Ostrow, released with redactions, Oct. 3, 1980,
U.S. v. G. Gordon Liddy, et al.,
Case 1827- 72, U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C.; Baldwin declined: Alfred Baldwin testimony, E, Bk. 1, p. 400; not recorded:
LAT
transcript,
supra.,
p. 62–; summary of Baldwin's Watergate trial testimony, Jan. 17, 1973, FBI 139-4089-2144; Liddy, op. cit., p. 322; Emery, op. cit., p. 123–; Hougan,
Agenda,
op. cit., p. 162.)

11.
The author obtained the tape of an April 1973 conversation in the White House between John Ehrlichman and Jeb Magruder, in which Magruder said the Baldwin logs he saw included the conversations of a “young Democrat politician” who “was calling girls in Mississippi saying, ‘Honey, I'll be down there for the weekend,' and discussing the bipartisan group Young American Political Leaders. Stuff like that.” Mitchell's assistant Fred LaRue, with whom Magruder
also talked, recalled Magruder's saying that “one of the conversations involved Spencer Oliver talking to someone down in Mississippi about a date.” (Transcript of Ehrlichman meeting with Magruder and attorneys, Apr. 14, 1973, Ref. SR 7304141, NP, NA, and see John Ehrlichman testimony, E, Bk. 7, p. 2764; LaRue: int. Fred LaRue, and see Emery, op. cit., p. 124.)

12.
The key was seized by arresting officers from one of the burglars, Rolando Martinez, on the night of June 16–17, 1972. When Martinez reached for his pocket, having been told to raise his hands above his head, Officer Carl Shoffler thought he might be going for a gun. Instead Shoffler found a notebook, with a key taped to it, in Martinez's pocket. The FBI discovered that the key, a Vanguard model HL-311, fitted the desk of Maxie Wells, and according to a veteran locksmith, the chances it would have fitted any other DNC desk were “slim to zero.” Wells has said that both she and her colleague Barbara Kennedy, who had been given a copy during Wells's recent vacation, still had their keys after the break-in. She had no idea why her desk should have been of special interest to the burglars, and said that the only reason she kept it locked was to prevent colleagues from taking her office supplies. Burglar Martinez claimed total ignorance of the key when interviewed in 1981 but in 1990 vaguely recalled having been given the key by either Liddy or Hunt before the break-in. The latter have both denied it. Martinez said he was also given a chart of the DNC office, marked with crosses to denote burglary targets. Targets so marked included Spencer Oliver's desk and others nearby. If Martinez had the key to Wells's desk, how to explain the fact that the only two known keys were still in the possession of the two secretaries at the time of the break-in? Since Kennedy was not given her key until early June, one could speculate that it was in the desk at the time of the May 28 break-in, and the burglars took an impression of it then. But why was there any special interest in Maxie Wells's desk? It is an important issue, one that was apparently never properly investigated. (Key seized: police lists of seized items, Exhibits in
Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy,
Case JFM-97-946, U.S. Dist. Ct. for Dist. of MD, N. Div., provided to author; ints. former officers Paul Leeper, Carl Shoffler, and John Barrett; Barrett testimony in
U.S. v. G. Gordon Liddy, et al.,
Case 1827-72, U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., p. 670; key fitted: FBI agent Michael King report, June 26, 1972, FBI WFO 139-166-356; Wells, Kennedy: reports of ints. Maxie Wells by FBI agent Michael King, June 27, 1972, and Barbara Kennedy, also June 27, both FBI WFO 139-166-359; Wells no idea: Wells int. by Jim Hougan, 1983, Hougan Collection; Martinez ignorance: int. Martinez by Jim Hougan, 1981, Hougan Collection; Martinez vaguely recalled: Benton Becker to files, March 13, 1990, on meeting with Martinez, supplied to author; Liddy denied: ibid.; Hunt denied: John Garrick to Joan Hoff, March 3, 1998, www.watergate.com.)

13.
Spencer Oliver's secretary Maxie Wells has repeatedly denied having had any knowledge of or involvement in a phone's having been used for such a purpose. Alfred Baldwin, who monitored the bugged calls that apparently emanated from the Oliver phone, has said that he “can categorically state, from the conversations that were obtained, that no such [call girl ring] operation was being conducted, at least from the conversations I was monitoring.” More recently he testified that had ordinary members of the public heard the conversations, many might have thought they were prostitution-related. Fred LaRue, who heard Magruder describe the logs, said he mentioned nothing that touched on prostitution. Former DNC treasurer Robert Strauss testified recently that “among many wild rumors” he had heard was one that “some of the state chairmen would . . . use the phone to make dates for that night.” Maxie Wells's former colleague Barbara Kennedy testified that there was “a rumor at the time” that a “call girl operation” was being run from the DNC. Kennedy said, “No one paid any attention to it.” Former staffer Margaret Shannon reportedly spoke privately even before Watergate of women at the DNC being “assigned” for sex. She no longer maintained that when interviewed by the author in 1998. (Wells denied: Maxie Wells int. by Jim Hougan, 1981, Hougan Collection, and Ida Maxwell Wells deposition, Sept. 19, 1997,
Wells v. Liddy,
Case CR 67231.0, p. 369; Baldwin “no such operation”: Baldwin int. transcript, “Watergate: The Secret Story,” CBS News, June 17, 1992, p. 5; more recently: Baldwin deposition, July 28, 1997,
Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy,
Case JFM-97-946, p. 155; LaRue: int. Fred LaRue; Strauss: Robert Strauss deposition, June 24, 1996,
Maureen and John Dean v. St. Martin's Press et al.,
Case 92-1807 (HHG), at www.watergate.com/strauss/.htm; Kennedy: Barbara Kennedy Rhoden deposition, July 17, 1996,
Deans v. St. Martin's Press et al.,
supra., pp. 23–68; Shannon: conv. Michael Ewing, former congressional investigator and staffer for Senator Harold Hughes and ints. Margaret Shannon.)