a day without you in it

1


June 17, 1972.  Nine o'clock Saturday morning.  Early for the telephone.  Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake.  The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line.  Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear.  Could he come in?


Woodward had worked for the Post for only nine months and was always looking for a good Saturday assignment, but this didn't sound like one. 


A burglary at the local Democratic headquarters was too much like most of what he had been doing -- investigative pieces on unsanitary restaurants and small-time police corruption.  Woodward had hoped he had broken out of that; he had just finished a series of stories on the attempted assassination of Alabama Governor George Wallace.  Now, it seemed, he was back in the same old slot.


Woodward left his one-room apartment in downtown Washington and walked the six blocks to the Post.  The newspaper's mammoth newsroom -- over 150 feet square with rows of brightly colored desks set on an acre of sound-absorbing carpet -- is usually quiet on Saturday morning.  Saturday is a day for long lunches, catching up on work, reading the Sunday supplements. 


As Woodward stopped to pick up his mail and telephone messages at the front of the newsroom, he noticed unusual activity around the city desk.  He checked in with the city editor and learned with surprise that the burglars had not broken into the small local Democratic Party office but the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex....




...The first details of the story had been phoned from inside the Watergate by Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran of 35 years of police reporting for the Post. 


Lewis was something of a legend in Washington journalism -- half cop, half reporter, a man who often dressed in a blue regulation Metropolitan Police sweater buttoned at the bottom over a brass Star-of-David buckle. 


In 35 years, Lewis had never really "written" a story; he phoned the details in to a rewrite man, and for years the Washington Post did not even have a typewriter at police headquarters.


The five men arrested at 2:30 A.M. had been dressed in business suits and all had worn Playtex rubber surgical gloves.  Police had seized a walkie-talkie, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35-millimeter cameras, lock picks, pen-size tear-gas guns, and bugging devices that apparently were capable of picking up both telephone and room conversations.







"One of the men had $814, one $800, one $215, one $234, one $230," Lewis had dictated.  "Most of it was in $100 bills, in sequence.  ...  They seemed to know their way around; at least one of them must have been familiar with the layout.  They had rooms on the second and third floors of the hotel.  The men ate lobster in the restaurant there, all at the same table that night.  One wore a suit bought in Raleigh's.  Somebody got a look at the breast pocket."


Woodward learned from Lewis that the suspects were going to appear in court that afternoon for a preliminary hearing.  He decided to go.





You came when I was happy in your sunshine
I grew to love you more each passing day
Before too long I built my world around you
And I prayed you'd love enough of me to stay


If you love me let me know
If you don't then let me go
I can't take another minute
Of a day without you in it
If you love me let it be
If you don't then set me free
Take the chains away
That keep me loving you


The arms that open wide to hold me closer
The hands that run their fingers through my hair
The smile that says "hello, it's good to see you"
Any time I turn around to find you there


It's this and so much more that makes me love you
What else can I do to make you see
You know you have whatever's mine to give you
But a love affair for one can never be


If you love me let me know
If you don't then let me go
I can't take another minute
Of a day without you in it
If you love me let it be
If you don't then set me free
Take the chains away
That keep me loving you


Take the chains away
That keep me loving you --


(Loving you)


-----------------------------


{All The President's Men.


"If You Love Me Let Me Know" - Olivia Newton-John}


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