does not include john mitchell, maurice stans or other figures that could be expected to make the trial first rate political drama. the justice department wants to handle the case as a routine burglary and bugging. they were paying money for individuals to shut up about what they knew. but there s a problem. hunt s wife dies in a plane crash in december of 1972. and hunt s position on what he needs to stay silent changes. a panicked colson called me one day. colson wants to know what he should do because hunt clearly wants clemency and some assurances. when hunt lost his wife, it put his family in a terrible situation, and he was on his way to prison.
to learn that the burglars thought they were working for him. to keep the burglars quiet, the nixon white house starts talking to the cia about paying their legal fees and their salaries through the end of their trial. i went in to meet with the deputy director of the cia, vernon walters. we had a very frank conversation. i said those who were arrested at the dnc appear to have connections with the cia. and they re now in a lot of trouble. is this the sort of thing to where the cia can come in and take care of them? and the cia says what? why? we re not going to be paying your spies. that s going make the country think we re somehow involved. the next thing i heard about money to take care of the people who had been arrested at the watergate was from john mitchell, who said to get the service of herbert combach, a
and that s really when you reach a tipping point in a democracy. that s how dictators come to power. . within hours of the arrests at the watergate, the nixon white house started covering up. i was the desk officer of the cover-up. i get the information and gather it, and then i share it with haldeman, ehrlichman, mitchell, and they were making decisions based on it as to how they can contain this problem. after the break-in, the fbi started an intense investigation to find out who in fact was responsible for sending these people in. and how high up the orders came. john dean s primary job was to keep the investigators the
and then i went a few more words into the first paragraph, and mitchell said, jesus. and then i got to the end of the first paragraph, by which time the drift of the story was unmistakable. and mitchell said jesus christ, all that crap, you re putting it in the paper. if you print that katherine graham is going to get her tit caught in a big fat ringer. and when this campaign is over, we re going do a little story on you two boys, and hung up the phone. i have to say, it is the most chilling story i ve ever experienced as a reporter, because the threat was real. the brazenness that they could say those things about us, we ll do a little story on you and about mrs. graham spoke volumes about their perception of their own dominance and power. i called ben bradley, the
we were running out of time. they called the hearing for october 10th and asked for voluntary appearances. so even though we didn t have subpoena power, we thought we could get them. we called john mitchell, maurice stans and tom dean, and they of course did not show up. as a result, patman just had the cameras come in and take pictures of all the empty chairs with their name plates, and the cover-up went on.