TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/70s/70water.01a

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 8KB | 147 lines

                                                                                July 3, 1972

NATION

The Bugs at the Watergate


     It was just a strip of masking tape, but it is fast
stretching into the most provocative caper of 1972, an
extraordinary bit of bungling of great potential advantage to
the Democrats and damage to the Republicans in this election
year.

     Walking his late-night rounds at Washington's Watergate
office building, a security guard spotted the tape blocking the
bolt on a basement door. He removed it -- but on his return a
few minutes later he found the lock taped open again. He called
police, and a three-man squad found two more taped locks -- as
well as a jimmied door leading into the shadowy offices of the
Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor. Just outside
Chairman Larry O'Brien's inner sanctum, they flushed five men
wearing fingerprint-concealing surgical gloves and laden with
a James Bondian assortment of cameras, tools, intricate
electronic bugging gear and $6,500 in crisp, new bills, most of
which were serially numbered.

     O'Brien promptly accused the Republicans of "blatant
political espionage," adding that the event raises "the ugliest
questions about the integrity of the political process that I
have encountered in a quarter century." Former Attorney General
John Mitchell, who heads up Nixon's campaign Committee for the
Re-Election of the President, retorted that this was "sheer
demagoguery." The White House, through Presidential Press
Secretary Ron Ziegler, at first tried to dismiss the incident
as a "third-rate burglary attempt." That it was considerably
more serious became clear when the five arrested men were
identified. One was in the pay of Mitchell's committee; several
had past links to the CIA. Beyond that, shadowy trails reached
close enough to the White House, as one Republican admitted
privately, to shake the G.O.P. with fears that another ITT
scandal -- or worse -- was in the making.

     The man on the Republican payroll was James W. McCord,
Jr., 53, the $1,209-a-month chief security coordinator and
electronics expert of the Committee for the Re-Election of the
President. (In the best Mission: Impossible tradition, he was
promptly disavowed by Mitchell and fired.) He had retired in
1970 as a CIA security specialist and been recommended to the
Republicans by Al Wong, a Secret Service officer.

     Also captured in the Watergate were Bernard Barker, 55, a
key liaison between the CIA and the Cuban exiles who
participated in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and
Frank Sturgis, 37, another Bay of Pigs operative, who has since
built a ripe career as a soldier of fortune. The other men
arrested were anti-Castro Cubans: Eugenio Martinez, 49, a Miami
real estate broker employed by Barker's firm, and Virgilio
Gonzalez, 46, a barber before he fled Castro's Cuba who is now,
interestingly enough, a locksmith. It was suspected that two
lookouts escaped. Late in the week McCord was freed on bail, but
the other four remained in jail.

     Among papers found on two of the men were some bearing the
name Howard Hunt and the notation "W. House" or "W.H." with his
name. Hunt turned out to be a sometime journalist, a longtime
CIA agent and an occasional novelist (when first arrested, the
five offered aliases resembling names of characters in his
books). More recently Hunt has been a special White House
consultant; he served for several months in 1971 and 1972 on
narcotics intelligence work. He was recommended for the job by
Nixon's Special Counsel Charles W. Colson, admired and feared
in Washington as the Administration's chief hatchetman and
master of its dirty-trick department. Colson and Hunt are alumni
of Brown University and friends. Lately Hunt has been working
for a private public relations firm that does some Government
business. One coup: he persuaded Julie Eisenhower to star in a
30-second HEW spot for TV on opportunities for handicapped
children. Hunt has managed to keep in close touch with his old
friends; in fact, he and Barker had at least one recent
get-together in Miami.

     On advice of counsel, Hunt refused to talk with FBI agents
about that meeting or anything else, but they had better luck
elsewhere. Thanks to those crisp new bills the gang was
carrying, the financing of the operation was soon traced to
accounts controlled by Barker in Miami's Republic National Bank.
The money was part of $89,000 that Barker had received from an
as yet unidentified source in Mexico City in April. Recently all
was withdrawn and an estimated $30,000 was then spent for the
costly eavesdropping equipment as well as the group's living
and operating expenses.

     At first it was thought that the men had been attempting
to install the bugs in O'Brien's office. In fact, the devices
may have been there for some time; the men may have been
removing them for replanting in the Democratic headquarters in
Miami Beach. Diagrams were found of the key hotel suites that
the Democrats have reserved for the convention. But did the
Democrats really have any secrets worth all that trouble? There
might be some tactical advantage in monitoring the opposition's
strategy, but it would hardly seem worth the expense and high
risk.

     Some think that the Administration, if it did indeed set
up the operation, was after something else. There is, says one
insider, "almost a paranoia" in the Government about all of the
leaks of confidential papers and memoranda to Jack Anderson and
others; someone trying to find the source of the leaks might
have figured that O'Brien would know. (Oddly, Frank Sturgis is
a longtime Anderson source.) The trouble with both theories is
that they ascribe slightly sophomoric motives and methods to
presumably serious men.

     Suspicion. At his press conference, President Nixon
himself reiterated that "the White House has had no involvement
whatever in this particular incident." Inevitably the FBI's
investigation was being watched closely to make sure there was
no White House effort to whitewash the case. The first suspicion
arose when Mitchell and Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray were
both at the Newporter Inn in California's Newport Beach the day
after the arrests. But both denied seeing the other man there.
"The hotel is a big place," says Gray. "I was in Room 331, the
Mitchells were in a villa. One of my agents told me the
Mitchells were there." The FBI checks telephone records
routinely -- was it looking into Colson's recent telephone calls
from his home? No, Gray says, but the FBI had talked with Colson
about the case. His agents had, however, inquired at the White
House about Howard Hunt's telephone calls while working there.
"We were told that no records are kept of any calls made by the
people with the White House."

     To keep the heat on the investigation and gain all the
political mileage possible from what Washington wiseacres were
calling "the Second Bay of Pigs," O'Brien and the Democrats
filed a $1 million damage suit in the U.S. District of Columbia
Court, charging Mitchell's committee, the five snoops and
assorted John Does with conspiracy to violate civil rights.
Hard-driving Criminal Lawyer Edward Bennett Williams was signed
on as the Democrats' lawyer and began efforts to speed the case
into court. "It is likely," said Williams pointedly, "that we
can at least have all the facts developed by November."

     Meanwhile, at the beleaguered offices of the Committee for
the Re-Election of the President, someone with his sense of
humor intact put up a sign proclaiming FREE THE WATERGATE FIVE.