In February 1992, as the 20th anniversary of the
Watergate break-in approached, I went to the
fortress-like J. Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters
building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
An imposing cement structure with large dark
windows, the Hoover building sits appropriately
about midway between the White House and the
Capitol. It is as if Hoover, the founding
director and the embodiment of the FBI from 1924
to 1972, is still present in Washington, D.C.,
playing off presidents against the Congress. I
navigated the labyrinth of security and finally
made my way to the documents room. I had come to
examine some of the FBI’s investigative
Watergate files that had been opened to the
public. Private cubicles are available in the
classy, law-firm atmosphere, well lit, all done
in high-quality wood paneling well above the
standard government issue. The room is quiet. I
was offered blue-lined paper to take notes.
The Watergate files contain hundreds of internal
FBI memos, requests for action, investigative
summaries, and Teletypes to headquarters from
field offices which had conducted hundreds of
interviews. There were the first summaries of
information on the five burglars arrested in the
Democrats’ Watergate office building
headquarters: their names, their backgrounds,
their CIA connections, and their contacts with
E. Howard Hunt Jr., the former CIA operative and
White House consultant, and G. Gordon Liddy, the
former FBI agent. The files teemed with notes,
routing slips and queries bearing initials from
senior Bureau officials, dates and intelligence
classifications.
The outline of the Watergate cover-up was so
clear in retrospect. White House counsel John W.
Dean III, who later confessed to leading the
illegal obstruction of justice on behalf of
President Richard Nixon, “stated all requests
for investigation by FBI at White House must be
cleared through him,” according to a summary
dated six days after the June 17, 1972,
break-in.
A memo on October 10, 1972, addressed The
Washington Post story that Carl Bernstein and I
had written that day. It was probably our most
important story; it reported that the Watergate
break-in was not an isolated event but “stemmed
from a massive campaign of political spying and
sabotage” run by the White House and President
Nixon’s reelection committee. The two-page memo
stated that the FBI had learned that Donald H.
Segretti, who headed the efforts to harass
Democratic presidential candidates, had been
hired by Dwight L. Chapin, the president’s
appointments secretary, and paid by Herbert W.
Kalmbach, the president’s personal lawyer.
Because there was no direct connection to the
Watergate bugging, the memo said, the FBI had
not pursued the matter.
I smiled. Here were two of the reasons the
Watergate cover-up had worked at first: Dean’s
effectiveness in squelching further inquiry; and
the seeming utter lack of imagination on the
part of the FBI.
All of this was a pleasant, long,
well-documented reminder of names, events and
emotions as I sifted through the Bureau memos,
as best I could tell almost a complete set of
internal memos and investigative files. The
files and memos provided a kind of intimacy with
what had been four intense years of my life, as
Carl Bernstein and I covered the story for The
Washington Post and wrote two books about
Watergate: All the President’s Men, published in
1974, which was about our newspaper’s
investigation; and The Final Days, published in
1976, which chronicled the collapse of the Nixon
presidency.
At the time of my visit I was 48 years old, but
I was not there for a trip down memory lane. I
was not hunting for more information in the rich
history of Watergate; not looking for new
avenues, leads, surprises, contradictions,
unrevealed crimes or hidden meaning, although
the amazements of Watergate rarely ceased.
Instead, I was really there in further pursuit
of Deep Throat …
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Secret Man
by Bob Woodward
Copyright © 2005 by Bob Woodward.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Simon & Schuster
Copyright © 2005
Bob Woodward
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-8715-0
