Part 39 (1/2)

A Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post article turned unexpectedly pensive: ”The 1972 political year began with hopes that it would be unlike the bitter, divisive past.... But in less than a week all that has pa.s.sed. The shooting of George Wallace of Alabama came exactly a week after President Nixon somberly announced the mining of North Vietnamese ports and increased bombing raids which raised the specter of a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union.” article turned unexpectedly pensive: ”The 1972 political year began with hopes that it would be unlike the bitter, divisive past.... But in less than a week all that has pa.s.sed. The shooting of George Wallace of Alabama came exactly a week after President Nixon somberly announced the mining of North Vietnamese ports and increased bombing raids which raised the specter of a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union.”

Wallace's shocked opponents suspended their campaigns. ”Say a prayer for our own country,” said George McGovern. A story that might any other day have made the front pages-a Republican congressman's district office in Royal Oak, Michigan, was destroyed by a firebomb-was relegated in the Post Post to a tiny item Chapter One. Newspapers and newsmagazines had begun every year since 1968 with earnest, hopeful predictions that this might be the year all the bitterness and division finally pa.s.sed. They hadn't been right once. to a tiny item Chapter One. Newspapers and newsmagazines had begun every year since 1968 with earnest, hopeful predictions that this might be the year all the bitterness and division finally pa.s.sed. They hadn't been right once.

Richard Nixon's reaction to the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination was different from that of his gentle-hearted compet.i.tor. Bob Haldeman waited an hour before interrupting an important meeting-the CEO of Pepsi, Don Kendall, was reporting on his progress in recruiting executives from every state for a business branch of the Committee to Re-Elect the President-to tell the president Wallace had been shot but was alive. Nixon's immediate response was panic. He must have had the fleeting thought it could be someone tied to him: they had a lot of loose cannons in the field. A vision of November 22, 1963, flashed before him-when the immediate presumption out of Dallas was that the shooter must have been a right-winger, and Barry Goldwater's decent chance to win the presidency disappeared.

Nixon uttered his political a.s.sessment: the issue was not ”the legalities or specifics. Don't worry about doing it all by the book, the problem is who wins the public opinion....

”What matters for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours is trying to get the right posture set before the press immediately leaps on exactly the wrong thing and starts making a big point of how the guy is a right-wing radical.”

The big news story the morning of the shooting was the exceedingly delicate question of whether the Kremlin, as mines floated in Haiphong Harbor, would cancel the late-May summit. The Wallace shooting now spiraled the political situation similarly beyond control, and Nixon was stricken with a rage to control. He called for Chuck Colson: ”He'll do anything.” The president smiled. ”I mean, anything!”

Colson was ordered to contact the FBI's number two man, Mark Felt, to draw a bead on the state of the investigation. Felt told him Secret Service agents had entered the suspect's apartment in Milwaukee and confiscated political paraphernalia of every description, but that the FBI was waiting for a warrant to search it further. Colson relayed that report in the Oval Office, and together he and Nixon waited for the FBI to call back.

The president, sucking down c.o.c.ktails, started woolgathering: ”left-wing propaganda” was what he hoped they'd find. ”Too bad we couldn't get somebody down there to plant it.” At which Colson realized that there was no reason they couldn't.

The next time he spoke to the FBI, it was with Nixon listening in. Colson told Felt they had heard rumors that Bremer was a left-winger. Colson wasn't reporting intelligence but inventing it, the better to cover his tracks for what he was about to do. Then Colson excused himself: certain operations it was better the president didn't know about.

When he came back, the president asked him, ”Is he a left-winger, right-winger?”

”Well, he's going to be a left-winger by the time we get through, I think.”

”Good. Keep at that, keep at that.”

”Yeah. I just wish that, G.o.d, I'd thought sooner about planting literature out there,” Colson said. The president laughed, as Colson, perhaps a bit too boastfully, noted, ”It may be a little late, although I've got one source that maybe-”

”Good.”

Colson grew vague, drawing back into pa.s.sive voice: ”I mean, if they found it near his apartment, that would be helpful.”

What he was simultaneously revealing and obscuring was that Howard Hunt was on his way to Milwaukee. While the FBI waited fastidiously for their search warrant, he was going to try to sneak McGovern and Kennedy literature into Arthur Bremer's quarantined apartment. It looked, however, that he wouldn't be able to do it. Thus Colson's frustration that he hadn't thought of it earlier.

Another mission that night fared better. Nixon met with his secretary of the treasury, who was scheduled the next day to resign-like all Nixon's most trusted confidants, to take on a job in his campaign, in this case heading Democrats for Nixon. At Nixon's instigation, one of Connally's last official acts was to officially bestow Secret Service protection on two more Democrats whose status as presidential contenders Nixon wanted to boost: Ted Kennedy and s.h.i.+rley Chisholm. Life Life happened to have a photographer and reporter with Kennedy-one more will-he-or-won't-he? feature-when his detail arrived. They ran a story on what it was like to be a Kennedy when an a.s.sa.s.sination occurred, how the ”harmless, disturbed” hangers-on Senate staffers called ”our regulars” suddenly took on a more menacing aspect; how Kennedy had to explain to his children-and later that night, Robert Kennedy's children-what they were seeing on TV. happened to have a photographer and reporter with Kennedy-one more will-he-or-won't-he? feature-when his detail arrived. They ran a story on what it was like to be a Kennedy when an a.s.sa.s.sination occurred, how the ”harmless, disturbed” hangers-on Senate staffers called ”our regulars” suddenly took on a more menacing aspect; how Kennedy had to explain to his children-and later that night, Robert Kennedy's children-what they were seeing on TV.

From then on, hungover newsmen made the extra effort to get to the morning events for the candidates they were covering. None wanted to miss the one where he got shot.

Within a week the world learned that George Wallace, having won sympathy landslides in Maryland and Michigan, would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Humphrey had to win California in June to hope to stop the South Dakotan on the first ballot; yet McGovern, underdog no more, was spending four times as much money there as Humphrey and looked likely to pull out a landslide. That raised the awkward possibility that the labor chieftains, Dixie courthouse bosses, and Mayor Daleys would read the writing on the wall and fall in behind McGovern, holding their noses against the radical's stench-uniting the Democrats, much to the president's chagrin.

Nixon flew halfway across the world for his triumphant summit in Russia as an article ran in the Post Post with George Gallup's byline: ”McGovern and HHH Abreast vs. Nixon.” The point was not merely that Nixon's lead-estimated to be between eight and twelve points, depending on whether Wallace was included-was too close for comfort. It was that Humphrey and McGovern each did approximately with George Gallup's byline: ”McGovern and HHH Abreast vs. Nixon.” The point was not merely that Nixon's lead-estimated to be between eight and twelve points, depending on whether Wallace was included-was too close for comfort. It was that Humphrey and McGovern each did approximately the same the same against him. That meant the theory behind his dirty-tricks strategy-McGovern was the least electable candidate-wasn't being borne out by the facts. against him. That meant the theory behind his dirty-tricks strategy-McGovern was the least electable candidate-wasn't being borne out by the facts.

But who would he face in November? Democratic county chairmen predicted Humphrey would be the nominee. But McGovern appeared to be far ahead on delegates. With the Wallace shooting, the situation became yet more confused. What would happen at the Democratic convention, opening July 10, with Wallace's delegates? If he was incapacitated, would they still be allowed to vote for him? If not, how would they be disposed of? What kind of deals would Wallace be able or prepared to make: on the nomination, on delegate credentials, on the traveling platform hearings set to get under way in eleven cities at the end of May? If things didn't work out to his satisfaction, could he still threaten a third-party bid?

A behind-the-scenes figure was now thrust to the forefront: DNC chair Larry O'Brien, who would be responsible for these delicate and unprecedented decisions. Would he decide in the interests of Humphrey, a longtime close a.s.sociate? Or McGovern, who won nearly four times as many votes as Humphrey in the May 23 Oregon primary? Or kowtow to the Wallace const.i.tuency in the face of the vociferous antibusing sentiment?

Nixon could formulate no coherent strategic plan for the general election until he knew which which Democratic Party he might be running against. Hopefully, he would soon have the intelligence he needed. The same team that had broken into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's shrink had established a beachhead at the Howard Johnson's across from DNC chair O'Brien's office at the Watergate complex, ready to effectuate the revised CRYSTAL phase of Gordon Liddy's Operation GEMSTONE. Democratic Party he might be running against. Hopefully, he would soon have the intelligence he needed. The same team that had broken into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's shrink had established a beachhead at the Howard Johnson's across from DNC chair O'Brien's office at the Watergate complex, ready to effectuate the revised CRYSTAL phase of Gordon Liddy's Operation GEMSTONE.

There had already, on May 16, been a mysterious break-in at the offices of a Was.h.i.+ngton law firm close to Humphrey. On May 22, as the president toasted the chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, Bernard Barker's Cubans flew to D.C. A sixth-floor Howard Johnson's room had been transformed into a listening post, manned by a former FBI agent named Al Baldwin. D-day for cracking Larry O'Brien's office was May 26, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. But already things were awry. They were smoother criminals than Arthur Bremer, but not by much.

Six Cubans checked into the Watergate's hotel Friday afternoon. But since the Committee to Re-Elect's security chief James McCord arrived with only four walkie-talkies, two men had to be struck from the team. They were supposed to refer to each other by aliases. But McCord got fl.u.s.tered and used real names.

Hunt and the Cubans were disguised as businessmen attending a banquet in the Watergate's Continental Room, which Hunt had booked for its convenient access to a service corridor. Apparently they decided neither inebriation nor torpor would hinder their mission: the epicurean Hunt catered an extravagant meal and libations (nursing a bleeding ulcer, he took his whiskey mixed with milk).

He chased off the waiter with a large tip and ran a movie to m.u.f.fle the sound of their final consultation. Then, at ten thirty, a security guard poked his head in to tell them their rental time was up. So they turned off the lights and hid in a closet until midnight. But the team's locksmith-proprietor of the Missing Link Key Shop in Miami-couldn't open the door to the service corridor.

A second group, led by Liddy, simultaneously cased McGovern campaign headquarters across town, the first of several abortive break-in attempts there. The problem: d.a.m.ned idealistic McGovern volunteers never left the office, even in the middle of the night.

The Cubans tried the Watergate again the next night. This time their only cover was signing the registry that they were visiting the Federal Reserve Board offices on the eighth floor-and this time, the door to the DNC office wouldn't fall to the locksmith. ”He says he doesn't have the right tools,” Barker reported to Hunt and Liddy's listening post. Though thanks to Maurice Stans, they had the means to fly the locksmith all the way back to Miami, to return the next day with his full set of picks and pries.

Liddy's team moved out for another, more predawn run at the McGovern offices. Liddy positioned himself in the back alley. In front, they stationed an operative who worked undercover in the McGovern campaign to tell them the lay of the office. A policeman spotted him loitering nervously on this crime-ridden street and ordered him to move along. The men John Mitch.e.l.l paid for ”security” had just barely avoided getting the chief counsel of the president of the United States's campaign staff caught casing a burglary.

It was Sunday, May 28. The locksmith, early in the evening, pried open a door on the B-2 level of the Watergate parking garage. Alongside a Hunt-Liddy operative named Frank Sturgis-he was born Frank Angelo Fiorini, but used a cover name from one of Howard Hunt's novels-he taped the latch open. They continued picking and taping locks all the way up to the threshold. The strike team would enter later, removing the tape and locking the doors behind them.

It worked. Cubans rifled DNC files, removing doc.u.ments to photograph. James McCord installed taps on two phones. He tested them with a small pocket receiver and decided they worked to his satisfaction. Across the street Hunt and Liddy spied the darting flashlight beams across the way and embraced: ”The horse is in the house.”

As G. Gordon Liddy wrote in his memoirs, ”The experience of the past ten years left no doubt in my mind that the United States was at war internally as well as externally.” Finally, the good guys had a leg up. His boss was, indeed, harvesting another triumph. In Moscow, Nixon and Brezhnev had signed their historic Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty two days earlier. On the twenty-eighth, the president made a historic radio and television address to the people of the Soviet Union-”a message of friends.h.i.+p from all the people of the United States and to share with you some of my thoughts about the relations between two countries and about the way to peace and progress in the world.... As great powers, we shall sometimes be compet.i.tors, but we need never be enemies.”

To a nation well sick of Cold War tensions and the rotten jungle war it had brought, this proved catnip. In the next Gallup Poll Nixon's approval rating, 49 percent at the beginning of the year, was now 61 percent. The last six months had been his most successful as president. Inflation was down from 4.4 percent to 3.2 percent. It all threw into disarray the best-laid plans of the Democratic presidential contenders, whose a.s.sumption as they had planned their campaigns had been that the primary would be where all the action was, because beating this snore of an unpopular president would be easy.

In California two Democratic senators, next-door neighbors in Was.h.i.+ngton, once close friends, whose children left their handprints together in the wet cement of the Humphreys' patio, were scratching each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out. Or rather Hubert Humphrey was scratching out George McGovern's. The candidate of reform and openness simply sighed his dismay. ”Dirty politics,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote, ”confused him.”

The burbling happy warrior from Minnesota had been carrying out his third presidential campaign as a cla.s.sic glad-handing, backslapping, ward-heeling, something-for-everyone Democrat; young McGovernites were convinced he was on uppers. Now, Humphrey s.h.i.+fted to dirty pool. His adviser the old Kennedy hand Kenny O'Donnell lied to the press that Humphrey didn't even need California to win the nomination. Actually, if he lost California, he was through. Every little const.i.tuency counted. Pamphlets circulated signed by Lorne Greene (ne Lorne Hyman Greene): ”Senator McGovern, now you claim to support the state of Israel, but why, before this primary campaign, have you acted and voted against her?” In actuality on the crucial litmus tests-the sale of F-4 Phantom jets and moving America's emba.s.sy to Jerusalem-their supports were pretty much identical, the same as Scoop Jackson's. But the Field poll showed McGovern 20 points ahead, and Humphrey was desperate.

The May 26 morning papers handed Humphrey an a.s.sist. Amnesty, abortion, and the legalization of pot Amnesty, abortion, and the legalization of pot simply didn't scan, but tart-tongued Senator Hugh Scott (R-Pa.) came to the rescue by declaring McGovern ”the acid, abortion, and amnesty-the triple-A-candidate.” McGovern responded that Scott himself was one of ”these entrenched Establishment figures at the top of both political parties” who were ”afraid” of his war against political privilege. Then he prepared to debate his opponent, glad for a change to fight this thing out on the issues, honestly and in the open. simply didn't scan, but tart-tongued Senator Hugh Scott (R-Pa.) came to the rescue by declaring McGovern ”the acid, abortion, and amnesty-the triple-A-candidate.” McGovern responded that Scott himself was one of ”these entrenched Establishment figures at the top of both political parties” who were ”afraid” of his war against political privilege. Then he prepared to debate his opponent, glad for a change to fight this thing out on the issues, honestly and in the open.

ABC's Issues and Answers Issues and Answers had asked McGovern earlier if he would join Humphrey in a one-hour joint appearance on national TV. Way ahead, McGovern should have turned down the debate-especially since Humphrey was $700,000 in debt and couldn't air TV commercials. Instead McGovern jumped at the chance. NBC and CBS extended the same invitation. McGovern eagerly accepted those, too. had asked McGovern earlier if he would join Humphrey in a one-hour joint appearance on national TV. Way ahead, McGovern should have turned down the debate-especially since Humphrey was $700,000 in debt and couldn't air TV commercials. Instead McGovern jumped at the chance. NBC and CBS extended the same invitation. McGovern eagerly accepted those, too.

The CBS show came first, on Sunday, May 28. The opening question was to Humphrey: George Herman asked if California was do-or-die for him. Humphrey gave a brief denial before borrowing a trick from Jack Kennedy in 1960: he changed the subject, in order to attack. Humphrey said, ”We were both wrong on Vietnam,” because both had voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. McGovern always distinguished himself from the compet.i.tion on Vietnam with the slogan ”right from the start.” Here, Humphrey was calling him a flip-flopper-and added, ”In taxation, he is contradictory and inconsistent.”

Humphrey then spoke to a Nixonite anxiety: that America would become weak. ”On defense cuts...I believe they cut into the muscle to the very fiber of our national security.” McGovern would turn America ”into a second-cla.s.s power.”

When it came time for McGovern to speak, he spluttered, ”I find it almost impossible to believe that the senator from Minnesota would attack my record on Vietnam.”

He was truly taken aback that his old friend would insult the intelligence of knowledgeable voters with the claim that somehow their Vietnam records were equivalent. But most voters, of course, are not knowledgeable. A show like this might be their first introduction to the candidates. McGovern, calling his opponent ”the senator from Minnesota,” was following a strategy of courtesy in the hopes of mending fences with Humphrey forces for the general election. But thrown on the defensive, he he looked like the mean-spirited one-testily recalling October of 1967, when ”Senator Humphrey was saying Vietnam is 'our greatest adventure and a wonderful one it is.'” looked like the mean-spirited one-testily recalling October of 1967, when ”Senator Humphrey was saying Vietnam is 'our greatest adventure and a wonderful one it is.'”

Humphrey got dirtier. One of the panelists asked a Vietnam question. Humphrey, close-lipped, somehow changed the subject to...welfare: ”When it comes to other aspects, such as in welfare legislation he calls a horrible mess, let me say that a seventy-two-billion-dollar welfare proposal that Senator McGovern makes today is not only a horrible mess, it would be an unbelievable burden upon the taxpayer.”

When Humphrey finished, it was McGovern's turn to answer the question about Vietnam. So he answered the question about Vietnam. Then the show went on commercial break, leaving Humphrey's welfare smear hanging.

What had just happened? Basically, McGovern had become attracted, late in 1971, to a ”demogrant” proposal to counter the Nixon administration's stalemated Family a.s.sistance Program legislation. It differed from Nixon's not in kind but in detail and degree. Like FAP, the more money a family earned, the less the federal benefit-the benefit adjusted so that additional money earned would give a family a bigger total income. At least theoretically, the program as it had been presented to McGovern would be paid for by reducing income-tax loopholes for the rich. Humphrey's ”$72 billion”-the defense budget was then about $80 billion-was the cost of an unrelated proposal from the National Welfare Rights Organization for a $6,500 guaranteed income for every American. The actual figure McGovern used as a concrete example when discussing his own welfare-and-taxation proposal was $1,000 per family member.

CBS came back from commercial, Humphrey's underhanded blow hanging in the air. The moderator, responsibly enough, asked Humphrey where he got the $72 billion figure; he said from a Senate Finance Committee bill McGovern had submitted. McGovern angrily shot back that he had indeed submitted the NWRO's bill as a courtesy but that he did not support it.

Responsibly enough, the moderator followed up: how much would would his own proposal cost? his own proposal cost?

”I honestly don't know. I don't have the figures,” he responded.

”Oh, G.o.d,” McGovern staffers moaned. ”There it goes.”

McGovern wanted to campaign on issues. But he was bored by their details. Richard Nixon was bored by them, too. But Richard Nixon was willing to bulls.h.i.+t. Nixon's introduced the FAP on TV in 1969 by noting, ”What the nation needs is not more welfare, but more 'workfare'”-fudging the fact that he was proposing a minimum income for even those who didn't work. That was what people remembered. What people remembered from this debate was Humphrey's scowling line ”Senator McGovern has concocted a fantastic welfare scheme which will give everyone, even Nelson Rockefeller, $1,000, and it will cost the taxpayers sixty or seventy billion dollars,” and Humphrey's claim that to pay for it ”a secretary working in San Francisco, making $8,000...would have an increase in his or her taxes under Senator McGovern's welfare proposal of $567.”

The helpless splutter of the prairie populist, unwilling to bulls.h.i.+t in return: ”That simply is not true.”