politicians in my eyes

[excerpt, Bernstein - Woodward]

------------- Bernstein returned to his desk feigning unconcern but in a foul mood. ...He decided to make a last attempt to stay on the Watergate story.  He wrote a five-page memo outlining what he called the "Chotiner Theory" and sent copies to Sussman, Woodward and Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor.

     "It is a long shot, to be sure," the memo began, "but . . . Colson is Chotiner's successor at the White House. . . . Colson might well be tied up in some aspects of 'ballot security' with Chotiner.  That could mean evaluating whatever information Chotiner is coming up with."

     The next day, Rosenfeld told Bernstein to pursue the Chotiner Theory and see what else he could learn.

      At a press conference that same afternoon, June 22, President Nixon made his first public comment on the break-in.  "The White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident," he said.

     Bernstein and Woodward lingered over the phrase "this particular incident."  There were already too many coincidences which couldn't be dismissed so offhandedly:  An attorney in Washington had said he could positively identify Frank Sturgis as one of the several men who had attacked Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg 

outside a memorial service for the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in May.  One suspect's address book contained a rough sketch of hotel rooms that were to be used as headquarters by Senator McGovern

at the Democratic convention.  An architect in Miami had said that Bernard Barker had tried to get the blueprints of the convention hall and its air-conditioning system.  Hunt's boss at the Mullen firm, Robert Bennett, had been the organizer of about 100 dummy campaign committees used to funnel millions of dollars in secret contributions to the President's reelection campaign.  

McCord had been carrying an application for college press credentials for the Democratic convention when he was arrested.  

He had recently traveled to Miami Beach.  

Some of the accused burglars from Miami had been in Washington three weeks before their arrest, when the offices of some prominent Democratic lawyers in the Watergate office building were burglarized.



     Within an hour of the President's statement, reporters were told by Devan L. Shumway, the public relations director of CRP, that John Mitchell had ordered an in-house investigation of the break-in at Democratic headquarters.

     On July 1, nine days after the President's statement, Mitchell resigned as manager of the Nixon campaign, explaining that his wife had insisted he quit.

E. Howard Hunt


     Woodward asked several members of the Post's national staff, which was handling the story, if they believed the resignation was unconnected to Watergate.  They did.

     The next day, metropolitan editor Harry Rosenfeld frowned and told Woodward:  "A man like John Mitchell doesn't give up all that power for his wife."

~   ~   ~

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All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodard.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

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Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby

Can't buy a thrill

Well, I've been up all night, baby

Leanin' on the windowsill

Well, if I die

On top of the hill --

And if I don't make it,

You know my baby will

Don't the moon look good, mama

Shinin' through the trees?

Don't the brakeman look good, mama

Flaggin' down the "Double E?"

Don't the sun look good

Goin' down over the sea? -- --

Don't my gal look fine

When she's -- comin' after me?

Now the wintertime is coming

The windows are filled with frost

I went to tell everybody

But I could not -- get across

Well, I wanna be your lover, baby

I don't wanna be your boss -- --

Don't say I never warned you 

When your train gets lost

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Lyrics / "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry"

-- the third song on Highway 61 Revisited album / Bob Dylan

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