any high-brow society news

"The truth is that McCord has never done security work of any kind for the convention," the party official told Bernstein.  ------ [book excerpt] ------ "What he has been doing, I assume, is taking care of security for the Committee to Re-elect.  All they care about at CRP is Richard M. Nixon.  They couldn't care less about the Republican Party.  Given the chance, they would wreck it."

Did the party official believe the denials of involvement by John Mitchell and CRP?

The man laughed. 

"Bob Dole and I were talking on the day of the arrests and agreed it must be one of these twenty-five-cent generals hanging around the committee

or the White House who was responsible.  Chotiner or Colson.  Those were the names thrown out."

Bernstein had not expected anyone closely tied to the Nixon administration to speak with such scorn and derision of the men around the President.  He walked across the room to tell Sussman about it.  The city editor thought the information was interesting. 

Then, uncomfortably, he told Bernstein he was taking him off the Watergate assignment because the Virginia desk could no longer spare one of its two political reporters in an election season.

Bernstein returned to his desk feigning unconcern but in a foul mood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well I had just got out from the county prison
Doin' ninety days for non-support
Tried to find me an executive position
but no matter how smooth I talked

They wouldn't listen to the fact
that I was a genius
The man say, we got all that we can use.
Now I got them
steadily depressin'
low-down, mind-messin'
Workin' at the car wash blues.

Well I should be sittin'
in an air-conditioned
office in a swivel chair
Talkin' some trash
to the secretaries,
Sayin' here now mama,
come on over here.

Instead I'm stuck here
rubbin' these fenders with a rag

And walkin' home
in soggy old shoes --

With them steadily depressin'
Low down mind-messin'
Working at the car-wash blues.

You know a man of my ability
He should be smokin' on a big cigar
But 'til I get myself straight
I guess I'll just have to wait
In my rubber suit a-rubbin' these cars.

Well, all I can do is t'shake my head
You might not believe that it's true.
For workin' at this end of
Niagara Falls
Is an undiscovered Howard Hughes.

So baby, don't expect to see me
With no double martini
in any high-brow society news

'Cause I got them
steadily depressin'
low down mind messin'
Workin' at the car wash blues.

So baby don't 'spect to see me
with no double martini
in any high-brow society news
'cause I got them
steadily depressin'
low down mind messin'
Workin' at the car wash blues --

Yeah I got them
steadily depressin'
low down mind messin'
Workin' at the car wash blues

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Post owed him almost four months of vacation.  Until the break-in, he had planned to use it that summer on a cross-country bicycle trip.  He decided to make a last attempt to stay on the Watergate story.  He wrote a five-page memo...and sent copies to Sussman, Woodward and Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor.

...The next day, Rosenfeld told Bernstein to pursue the...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.

=======================
{book excerpt:  All The President's Men.  Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward.  Copyright 1974.  Simon & Schuster--New York.}
{song:  "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues" -- written / recorded by Jim Croce.  #32 on Billboard Hot 100, July 1974.  Included on albums -- I Got a Name and Photographs and Memories - His Greatest Hits.}

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