Watergate: The Trail of Money

            Cutting through the sheets of rain are the wheels of a flat automobile.  A man inside, rendered nameless by the canons of his once beloved nation, stretches his eyes across parallel lines, all of them converging in the horizon, freeways that now imprison him into an uncertain direction.  He drives through the emptiness, dark wet asphalt still warm from the day’s tramples, and stained by the wheels of history.  He drives, and ahead is the Capitol Building of the United States of America.

June 16th, 1972

            You can say I don’t remember.  You can say I can’t recall.  I can’t give any answer to that, that I can recall.  You’ve made a complete statement, but make it very incomplete.
                                                                                    - Nixon

            Murray Johnson quickly ran his eyes over the gun his friend was pointing at him.  Unfortunately he did remember to undo the safety lock.
            “Calm down Jack, it really is me, I promise you.”  At this point in his life, there was not much else in the world that would stir his emotions.
            “B-b-but no, Murray is dead.  Your – his his name is on that wall d-down the street, he’s dead.  Okay, dead!”
            Taking a deep breath, Murray glanced outside, his hands in the pockets of his trench coat.  The rain had become weak, still puddles reflected the dark buildings in the distance.  Empty stores were locked under the orange city lights.  Newspapers flew in the wind.  So many things, so many things these people didn’t know.
            “Come on, Jack, let me in.  You don’t want to wake up the neighbors.  You can shoot me inside if you want.”
            “Don’t play around man, it’s a real gun, I swear.  And I can shoot!”  For a moment he released one hand from his intense grip to wipe his forehead then quickly regained control of the gun.  “Tell me, are you CIA?  Or what?  Secret service, Gestapo?!”
            “Yeah, all of those.  Come on, Jack, stop trying to impress me.”
            Murray lit a cigarette, shaking his head.  The smoke rose past his black hair and thick eyebrows, floating across the rim of his hat.  Jack sniffed, his eyes blinked behind the thin glasses.  He lowered his arms, set the gun down and coughed.
            “You know, you could have written letters.  At least.”
            “Actually, no.  I couldn’t.”

            The two friends sat for long silent moments in the small kitchen, their mugs of coffee still untouched.  The clock could be heard ticking, approaching midnight.  Jack thought about the past years.  Why would he come back?  Murray glanced at him but looked down at the table again.  Still, he was hiding so many things about his life.  But now he needed help, and the least Jack could do was to repay the numerous favors he had done for him in the days of the army.
            “Okay.  I’ll do it.”
            “You will?”  Murray started to reach into his pocket.  “Are you sure?  As long as you know the things that I know… I can’t guarantee you any kind of safety.”
            “Yeah.  I mean, hell that’s what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”  His face was serious, a patriotic solemnity.  Murray nodded, a smile formed in the corner of his mouth.  He pulled out a small metal box.
            “Put this in a safe place.  Now come with me.”

            The rain had completely stopped.  As the nation lay at rest, a short man and a tall man walked past giant square buildings with wide square windows and long square doors. Murray watched his feet step in and out of darkness, their shadows growing and receding across the sidewalk.  Jack scanned the surrounding area intently for the slightest movement.
            “Where are we heading, exactly?”
            “We are going to watch history happen.”
            “Oh.  Did you get us good seats? Heh, hehe…”
            “Yea.  Can you walk a little faster?  It’s almost two…”
            Arriving at an empty parking lot, they crept into a dark corner, making sure they could not be seen.  Across the street, several buildings were in plain sight.  A few windows were lit, but there was no one inside.  They heard the faint sound of dogs barking.  Nothing else seemed to be happening.
            “So, what are we waiting for?”
            Murray didn’t answer, he just looked down at his watch.  He whispered something to himself.
            “You know there’s a human misconception when it comes to important events.  People rarely realize it when something great or terrible has happened, something that will forever change the lives of millions, or the course of a civilization.”
            “Yeah.”
            “Do you know why?  They’re always looking in the wrong direction.”
            His eyes drifted into the horizon, looking at no particular spot.
            “What do you mean, exactly?”
            “I think maybe we fail to understand the big picture.  How everything is part of a chain.  Something that will happen in twenty years is the culmination of a hundred things that are happening now.”
            Jack’s eyes widened and he grinned with amusement.
            “You mean you saw into the future?  I heard of that military project – ”
            “No, you’re missing the point.  Come on.”
            “Oh, okay.  So, what were you saying again?”
            “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
            Murray crossed his arms and looked at his watch again.  Across the street they saw a flicker of light.  The moment had come.  The two held their breaths as several rays of light began to swing back and forth inside a room.  For several minutes the group of lights shifted from room to room, discretely.
            “Oh my God, Murray, how did you know about this?”
            “The people I worked with, the men I told you about.  They were planning this operation at the time that I resigned.  That is why some of them are so intent in finding me, you see?  They think I am a threat, that I’m going to intervene somehow.”
            The lights had stopped moving when they reached a certain room.  Jack could now see a group of silhouettes working meticulously.  They reached into drawers, under desks, behind cabinets.  One of them stood on a chair and displaced a piece of the ceiling.  Files were spread on a table and searched thoroughly.
            “What are they doing?”
            “These people just broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, they’re attempting to install an eavesdropping system inside those offices.”
            “Attempting?”
            Just then, one floor above where the burglars did their work, a light switched on.  A room was completely lit, and two men with guns were walking around.  The flashlights below suddenly flailed desperately and switched off.  Another room lit up, this time closer to the burglars.
            “Is that the police?  The police, they’re going to catch them!”
            “Yes, Jack,” he nodded and turned his face toward him.  “Yes, that is also part of the plan.”

 

January 20th, 1973

            If the Watergate operation is laid at the CIA’s feet where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall… If they want it to blow, they are on the right course.                                                            - McCord

            “This is where it starts getting exiting.  It has become public.  The papers have been writing about it.  The people are reading what the papers write… these are potential voters we are talking about here.  Now is the time when politicians speak very slowly because they have to think about every word they are going to say.”
            Jack struggled to keep up and listen at the same time, while Murray cruised through the crowds of people, effortlessly pushing them out of his way.  Rising on the tip of his toes, Jack caught a momentary glimpse of the American masses that populated the fields that day.  All awaited the passing of the motorcade, after which the newly re-elected President Richard Nixon would stand at the podium for his inaugural address.
            “Sure doesn’t seem like the President was damaged by all this, I mean, look at him, smiling.”
            “And there lies the trick to this career, not exposing that which is beneath the surface,” Murray patted him on the back, “that is why you would never make a good politician.”
            The two arrived at a water fountain, and while catching his breath, Jack struggled to gather his notes and formulate the next question.
            “So, back to those… important leads you mentioned, do you think you could give me something more concrete?  The past few issues have been spreading around very quickly, I want to continue the flow, I don’t want disappointed readers…”
The past semester had been productive for the two, although Jack usually felt at the bargaining end of the settlement.  Murray had seized the entire basement, working endless hours with electronic paraphernalia, and safekeeping the mysterious small metal box.  Occasionally he would provide insightful and realistic information for Jack’s independent newspaper, “The Diagonal Theories”, although not enough exactly to send shockwaves throughout the entire city of Washington.
            “I mean, you’ve talked about a whole bunch of details that mean nothing to me… the sequenced $100 bills found with Barker’s stuff, the fourteen different checks made out to McCord, listed on a memo marked ‘Confidential Eyes Only’?  You tell me files were shredded but you don’t tell me what the files said.  When are you ever going to tell me something exiting?”
            “When I read about it on your paper,” Murray sat under a tree, “Now come on, I’m telling you all the foreground you need to uncover what I know, and all the meanwhile you are waiting for something that will look good printed on a front page.  You are not listening to me.  All these details.  They are not meaningless.  But not until you have exhumed all the factual things and then drained all information contained within, will you finally be able to tell the difference between fiction and reality.”
            Jack slowly shook his head and waited.  His eyebrows were asking heaven for a translation.  “In other words…”
            “In other words, I’ve been telling you all sorts of things.  Follow the money.  There is more to a person than his actions, most of what is dishonest can be told from other people’s inflictions upon him.  I’ve been telling you all along, don’t assume simple lies and truths, try and see beyond what someone is saying... the motive.  Exhaust all possibilities, everything he did not say, then follow the money where your hunch is indicating.”
            Jack exhaled heavily and looked down the avenue.  There was plenty of money everywhere he looked.

 

March 21st, 1973

            I have no knowledge of any political espionage other than the Watergate break-in.  To my personal knowledge, no higher-ups were involved.                                                                        - Hunt

            At least four of the the five men arrested in the June break-in are still being paid by persons unnamed, and C.R.P. officials cannot account for $900,000 in cash contributions.                                    - The New York Times

            A faint yellow light shone from the top of the living room, landing on a mess of newspaper clippings, files and notes scattered on the table and floor.  Jack was pacing around nervously in a circle, biting on a pencil and trying to avoid stepping on the mounds of information.
            “This doesn’t make sense… These men, I’m gathering a list but I couldn’t quite get my source to give me the names, I know there’s an M, a P and an L… these people were working off money from the Committee to Re-Elect the President.  At one point – here, right here – there was a total of six million dollars in a two-day period, coming into the slush fund, it’s what they supposedly use for, ah, for feeding fat cats, that’s what they call it.  Now the thing is… the numbers are always changing on the actual fund what people tell me is actually fluctuated between $350 thousand and almost a million…  And I mean, I’m not the only one who thinks that there’s a lot more, listen to this… just after the trial of the Watergate Seven.”

            I am not satisfied that the full Watergate story was disclosed at the trial and I will suggest the names of several persons who ought to be questioned.  I hope the Senate committee will be granted power by Congress by a broad enough resolution to get to the bottom of what happened in this case.                                                                                    - Judge Sirica
“There’s a lead – where is it… where did I put it – here.  Mitchell, he’s the guy who they’re all working under, he’s approved personal withdrawals from the fund during the period where he became campaign manager and at one point there were several files that were torn up at the office – no the, um… damn it, where was it…”
            “Any names?”
            “Yes, here, here… on the napkins, can you read it.”  Jack pulled a crumpled stack out of his pocket and spilled it out on the table.  “There were fifteen names, fifteen names with the amount of money transferred to them from the fund… filed soon after the incident and that was one document shredded by a George Liddy.  No, I’m sorry, Gordon Liddy.”
            “Nice work,” Murray was nodding from the stairway.  “Nice work.”
            “But I’m having troubles with confirmations here, I don’t know for sure whether the M. is McCord or Magruder, I don’t know where the – what the funds were used for in the instances where the files were shredded, I mean it could be anything, I don’t know how this is connected to a wire-tapping scheme against the head of the DNC or any of the events in the White House.  I know Mitchell worked closely with Nixon for his re-election campaign, but still I don’t know why they would – ”
            He stopped in his track to catch his breath, and noticed that Murray was pointing at something across the room.  The television was on, and a blue and red glow lit that corner of the house.  Jack walked over and turned up the volume.  A wide shot of a thousand people formed a disorderly wave underneath banners and flags, while confetti fell from the sky.

A Gallup poll taken two months ago, following the announcement of the peace settlement in Vietnam, puts the President’s popularity at a high of 68 percent, matching his previous high point in November, 1969, when his plan for the Vientnamization of the war was announced.

            “Why do you think the people like him?” Murray had walked over and now stood beside the television set.  Jack sat on the sofa, an overload of information and caffeine still impeded his clarity of thought.  Murray paced around the sofa.
            “Do you think they like what he does, the decisions he makes?  Or do you think the decisions he makes are based on what the people like?  Or both?  Do you think Presidents lie just to get a few more popularity points…  Not exactly.  You have to become familiarized with the game of politics to understand the purpose behind all this.  Why do you think the main concern in the Oval Office these days, the constant question:  will it play?”
            “Wait, wha…” Jack awoke from his mental torpor.  Something was finally leading up to the White House.  “Say that again.”
            Murray did not reply, but pulled the small metal case out of his pocket, and began to open it up.  Jack rose from his seat and leaned closer.  At the press of a button, an assemblage of wires and springs began playing a high-pitched recording that resonated between those walls.  Two men spoke.

-National security.  We had to get information for national security grounds.
-Then the question is why didn’t the CIA do it, or why didn’t the FBI do it?
-Neither could be trusted.
-I think we could get by on that.

      “See where I’m getting at?”
Jack frowned, trying to understand the context of the conversation.  These past years, his view of the political reality was becoming more and more concrete because of Murray’s company, yet with the deeper understanding came speculations that were more and more difficult to interpret and comprehend.
“This other instance, a conversation recorded just yesterday,” Murray switched a dial on the little machine, “A telephone conversation…”

You’ve got to have something where it doesn’t appear that I am doing this in, you know, just in a – saying to hell with the Congress and to hell with people, we are not going to tell you anything because of Executive Privilege.  That, they don’t understand.  But if you say, “No, we are willing to cooperate,” and you’ve made a complete statement, but make it very incomplete.  See, that is what I mean.

            “This was spoken in the White House?” Jack leapt across the room to grab his notepad.  “By whom – you haven’t been clipping wires, have you?”
            “Don’t worry, I only borrow from the dirty work of others.”
            “So that’s what you’ve been working on down in the basement!”  He reached for the metal gadget but Murray moved it away.  “What else have you – so you’re always, you’ve always been taking walks down the quarter and probably within minutes you intercept their transmission devices and tap into their communications systems just long enough so that your signal is not detected, it’s – it’s ingenious!  Let me see – “
            “It’s not that simple, Jack.  There are people inside… people who I have worked with.  We call them The Plumbers, they have the whole architectural layout of the building on the palm of their hands, supposedly under Nixon’s permission, strictly for preventing government secrets from leaking to the media.  There are underground rooms– “
            “Jesus, what –“
            “…Rooms where these recordings take place and transcripts are made, everything is documented.  Listening into entire head-of-staff meetings, phone conversations and confidential relays to the President with the use of meticulously installed microphones.  I am not sure exactly who knows and who doesn’t, the staff has changed so much since I was there that the lines that divide our people and their people are not well defined anymore.”
            “Their people?  Wait – I don’t understand,” Jack was running around desperately trying to find the pen that he had dropped on the floor, “I know about – I knew that all these things existed but how is there a whole team exchanging information with outside sources… I mean, I just, I thought all this was strictly for record-keeping purposes.”
            “Well now, my friend,” suddenly Murray was amused at how quickly he was catching up.  “We are not all working in unison.  One can expect that conspirators may very well conspire against each other…”
            Hearing his stubborn friend utter the mystical c-word gave Jack a sudden reassurance that had been missing these past nine months.
            “How does it work?” Jack pointed at the object.
            “I get a different one each day.  Each day the location, time and code is different, the variation to all of the three is a compounded geometrical method which only my contact and I are familiar with.  I am never seen speaking to him.  He delivers the package and after a thirty-second delay, I pick it up.  Thus, the secrets of the White House leak, drop by drop.”
            “Today!  You went out for a walk today, you gave me some excuse like you wanted to see the ducks swim across the Mall?!  What did he give you?”
            “Today was a very important day… listen…”

I think that there is no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got.  We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing.  It is growing daily.  Basically it is because (1) we are being blackmailed; (2) People are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people in the line…  I said Jack come up with a plan that, you know – a normal infiltration, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing.  He did, he put together a plan.  It was kicked around.  They said we still need something so I was told to look around and that is when I came up with Gordon Liddy.  They needed a lawyer.  Gordon had an intelligence background from his FBI service.  He had done some extremely sensitive things at the White House and he had apparently done them well.  Going into Ellsberg’s doctor’s office – and things like this.  He worked with leaks.  He was interested in doing it, so he was told to put together a plan, you know, how he would run an intelligence operation.  Magruder called me in January – this was January of ’72 – and said you come over to Mitchell’s office and sit in a meeting where Liddy is going to lay his plan out.  So I came over and Liddy laid out a million dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on: all in codes, and involved black bag operations, kidnapping, providing prostitutes to weaken the opposition, bugging, mugging teams.  It was just an incredible thing.  Mitchell didn’t go with it at all he just sat there puffing and laughing.  And so Liddy was told to go back to the drawing board and come up with something realistic.  That is the last I heard of it and I thought it was turned off because it was an absurd proposal.  Then Magruder probably went to Mitchell and said, “They are pushing us like crazy for this from the White House” and so Mitchell probably puffed on his pipe and said, “Go ahead,” and never really reflected on what it was all about.  So they had some plan that obviously had different targets they were going to go after.  They were going to infiltrate and bug, and do all this sort of thing to a lot of these targets.  This is knowledge I have after the fact.  Apparently after they had initially broken in and bugged the DNC they were getting information.  The next point in time that I became aware of anything was on June 17th when I got the word that there had been this break in at Watergate and somebody from our Committee had been caught in the DNC.  And I said, “Oh, (deleted).”  You know, eventually putting the pieces together… I know that as God is my maker, I had no knowledge that they were going to do this…  We decided there was no price too high to pay to let this thing blow up in front of the election.

October 10th, 1973

            I have had full confidence in Mr. Mitchell and in the people in the Republican Organization and I think that that kind of unattributed report is counter-productive.  We must bear in mind that those who published it have already shown their sympathy for the other ticket.                        - Agnew

            “And there we have it, a web of accusation and corruption trickling upward through the gears of this political machine.  The powers that be are falling over each other now, positioning themselves in a struggle of power and law.  Yet the base of this pyramid is precarious, and it will soon collapse.”
            The two men sat on the grass and felt the breath of nature on their faces.  A crooked tree reached above their heads to cover them from the sun, and they felt like philosophers in ancient Greece.
            “Now that the Vice-President of the United States, Agnew, is resigning and our former Attorney General John Mitchell, highest ranking law enforcement officer in this country has been called a crook, what else is left to write about?”
            “Tell me something, when you first started printing your paper, what kinds of headlines did you expect to be writing when it came to Watergate?”
            “Ah… maybe saying that the whole operation was actually part of a presidential assassination cover-up, somehow related to Area 51, that President Nixon was commanding leader of the project, that maybe it was actually coordinated by an inside communist government acting secretively to destroy the Democratic… I don’t know, whatever.”
            “And now that you have mastered the workings of our system, what is the one thing that is more real than anything else, in this time and age?”
            “The primordial human faculties of knowledge and wisdom?”
            “Money.  It is the one fuel that still throbs between all layers of humanity, interconnecting by pure necessity even that which is separated by hatred and war.  You see, democratic rule has lost its purpose, making managerial decisions based on image rather than change, economy rather than prosperity, interest rather than principle.  Soon the day will arrive when the warring nations will cease their fighting, while continuing to share weapons of mass destruction amongst each other.  They will feed their children the illusion of good and evil, leave them crouching in fear, awaiting attacks that will never come.  As long as this tension is maintained, no one will question their power, no human frailties will disrupt the system, and most importantly, no one will watch over their money.”
            “Well, I’m a little more optimistic than that, I think…”
            “Really?  Do you think we’ll have an honest government one day?”
            “Well.  I think that the human kind is sliding into wider and deeper associational channels.   Do you know what I mean?  We are not simply bystanders anymore, we are bridging gaps between each other in order to join one million other Americans, one billion other Citizens in the process of writing our own history.  Because of our accumulated knowledge and passionate interactions in the world of literature, art and technology, we will triumph over our oppressors.  We will fight battles without going to war, and we will survive great depressions without selling our souls.  Through the power of will, we will govern ourselves, and through the power of unity we will govern the world.  That is what I believe.”
            “Deep.  Maybe you should be President.”           

 

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but I shall be content if it is judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future.  My history has been composed to be an everlasting possession, not the showpiece of an hour.                                                                                                            - Thucydides (460 – 400 B.C.)

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