touch football and candlelit backyards

[book excerpt]------------Bernstein and Woodward sent feelers out through the Post newsroom, looking for anyone who had more than superficial contact with members of the White House staff.  Their expectations weren't very high, given the relationship between the Nixon administration and the Washington Post.  That heady era of good feeling, in which reporters had rubbed elbows and shoulders with President Kennedy's men in touch football and candlelit backyards in Georgetown and Cleveland Park, was a thing of the past.

But Karlyn Barker, a former UPI reporter who had joined the city staff on the same day as Woodward, said a friend of hers had gone to USC with the White House boys and had stayed in close touch with them.  Within a few hours, Barker had given Bernstein a memo headed "Notes on USC Crowd."

Her friend had known Segretti, Chapin and Tim Elbourne since college.  He referred to the "USC Mafia" in the White House and said Segretti and Elbourne had been called by their schoolmates Dwight Chapin and Ron Ziegler to help in the Nixon election business.

All belonged to a campus political party called Trojans for Representative Government.  The Trojans called their brand of electioneering "ratfucking."  Ballot boxes were stuffed, spies were planted in the opposition camp, and bogus campaign literature abounded.  Ziegler and Chapin had hooked onto Richard Nixon's 1962 campaign for governor of California -- managed by Bob Haldeman.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now they say
You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off
the ol' Lone Ranger
and you don't mess around with Jim.

-------------[book excerpt]----------...Bernstein groped through the paper effluvia on his desk and retrieved a manila file marked "Phones."  In June he had begun jotting down phone numbers of persons contacted on the story, logging them on a sheet of copy paper.  He started going through the pages, looking for people who might know about Donald Segretti, ratfucking, Dwight Chapin, the USC Mafia, the Canuck Letter.

Bernstein had been reading the clippings on the primaries for any examples of malicious dirty tricks.

Finally he hit with one call.

"Ratfucking?"  The word struck a raw nerve with a Justice Department attorney.  "You can go right to the top on that one.  I was shocked when I learned about it.  I couldn't believe it.  These are public servants?  God.  It's nauseating.  You're talking about fellows who come from the best schools in the country.  Men who run the government!"

Bernstein wondered what "right to the top" meant.  But he wasn't given time to ask.  The attorney had worked himself into a rage.~~~~~~~~~~~~Now they say
You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask
off the ol' Lone Ranger, and
you don't mess around with Slim....[mumble mumble]--hustlin' people strange to you...Even if you do got a two-piece, custom-made pool cue...

==================

{book excerpt:  All The President's Men -- Bernstein; Woodward, Copyright 1974.  Simon & Schuster, New York}
{song excerpt:  "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" -- a 1972 single by Jim Croce from the You Don't Mess Around With Jim album; the song is also included on Photographs & Memories - His Greatest Hits}

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