Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [206]
But now in late February, Magruder was troubled. All this pressure from the White House was getting to him. And he didn’t want to go ahead with Liddy’s intelligence operation.
Magruder met with Mitchell, as always, in a small, cluttered room just off the huge, ceremonial attorney general’s office that Mitchell rarely used, and handled some routine campaign business.
Finally, Magruder brought up “Gemstone.”
“Why do we even have to do this?” he asked.
“The president wants it done,” said Mitchell. “We need to get information on O’Brien.”
Magruder already knew that, and not just from Colson or Strachan. He had been in Mitchell’s office a few weeks earlier when Nixon himself called. While he could hear only Mitchell’s side of the conversation, it was clear that the president was pushing his attorney general to nail O’Brien.
Still, Magruder asked why. Why O’Brien? Everybody knew that party headquarters was a useless place to go for inside information on a presidential campaign.
Mitchell, who rarely showed any emotion, remained impassive as he revealed to Magruder the true motive for Watergate. His disclosure, the only one by anybody directly involved, has never before been made public.
There was some concern about a contribution, said the attorney general. The $100,000 that Howard Hughes had given Nixon through Rebozo, the transaction Jack Anderson had already reported. The money had not gone into the campaign, added Mitchell. Rebozo still had it. In fact, some of the money had already been spent.
And Larry O’Brien knew.
Mitchell said he had heard from Hank Greenspun—it wasn’t clear whether he meant directly from Greenspun or through others—that O’Brien knew all about the $100,000 and also knew that it had been passed to Rebozo long after the 1968 campaign.
It was important to find out what else O’Brien knew, and to get solid information on his own Hughes connection—to keep him quiet about Nixon.
A few weeks later, on March 30, at a meeting with Magruder in Key Biscayne, John Mitchell approved Liddy’s espionage plan. And he also approved the first target—Larry O’Brien’s office at the Watergate.
The first break-in was a great success. On Memorial Day weekend a team led by Liddy and Hunt entered Democratic National Committee headquarters, bugged O’Brien’s telephone, photographed papers from his desk, and made a clean getaway.*
But the O’Brien bug never worked, and Mitchell ordered Liddy back in. None of the burglars was ever told the true purpose of the break-in—no one ever told them about the Hughes connection—but this time Magruder did tell Liddy to photograph O’Brien’s “shit file” on Nixon, to find out what dirt he had on the president.
They never found out. At 2:30 Saturday morning, June 17, 1972, the police rushed in and broke up the second attempt at a third-rate burglary.
Richard Nixon was with Bebe Rebozo on Robert Abplanalp’s private island in the Bahamas when his burglars were caught at the Watergate, just as he had been three years earlier when he first received word that Howard Hughes had approved the $100,000 payoff that led to the break-in.
He returned to Key Biscayne early the next day, Sunday, June 18, and apparently learned of the big bust from his morning newspaper. He called Haldeman at the nearby Key Biscayne Hotel.
“What’s the crazy item about the DNC, Bob?” asked the president, affecting a lighthearted tone. “Why would anyone break into a National Committee headquarters? Track down Magruder and see what he knows about it.”
The president maintained his bemused air with Haldeman through the long weekend but meanwhile made a frantic series of phone calls to Colson, at one point so agitated he threw an ashtray across the room. On his first day back in Washington, Nixon finally revealed