never engaged in this kind of thing

[excerpt]------------- "Essentially, the proposal was that there was to be a crew of people whose job it would be to disrupt the Democratic campaign during the primaries. This guy told Shipley there was virtually unlimited money available."

The caller didn't know the name of the man who had approached Shipley. "This guy was a lawyer. The idea was to travel around, there would be some going to towns and waiting for things to happen. For instance, some guy would be waiting to see if the Democratic candidates were renting a hall to have a rally. Then his job would be to call up the owner of the hall and say the event had been rescheduled, to fuck up the logistics."
...

The next day, Bernstein showed Howard Simons his notes and said he was convinced the information -- admittedly very sketchy -- was important. By itself, the Watergate bugging made little sense, particularly since it had occurred when the Nixon campaign was at its strongest. But if it had been part of something much broader, it might make some sense, Bernstein said. And there was evidence of a broader scheme, though the information was disparate. Among the things they were aware of had been the attempt to bug McGovern headquarters; Hunt's investigation of Teddy Kennedy; an investigation by McCord of Jack Anderson; the effort by Baldwin to infiltrate the Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Hunt's investigations of leaks to the news media; and McCord's rental of an office next to Muskie's campaign headquarters. Perhaps the White House had been in the political intelligence business in a much bigger way and for much longer than most people figured. Watergate could have been scheduled before the President's re-election chances looked so good and perhaps someone had neglected to pull the plug.
----------[end excerpt]
{All The President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob
Woodward. Copyright, 1974. Simon & Schuster
Paperbacks, New York, New York.}