Nixon's Secret (73 page)

“The fortunes of Deep Throat, of Alexander Haig, and of Bob Woodward had been intertwined since hours after the break-in of June 17, 1972,” wrote Colodny and Gettlin.
31
Although Colodny and Gettlin would conclude that Deep Throat was Haig, I believe they were only partially correct.

Robert Bennett, head of the Mullen Company, was another one of the sources that comprised the mysterious Deep Throat. As we covered with the Baker investigation of the CIA, Bennett fed stories to a grateful Woodward while the reporter helped deflect the role of the CIA in Watergate. Also, Baker’s report revealed that Bennett’s attorney fees for his Senate Watergate Committee appearances were partially paid for by the agency. Bennett wove a White House–centric narrative for Watergate that was fit to print for Woodward. Woodward was the king of access journalism, “an author whose books are written by his sources,” in the words of the late British/American journalist Christopher Hitchens.
32
Only three weeks after his first talk with Woodward, Bennett would brag to his CIA case officer Martin Lukoskie “that he had dissuaded reporters from the
Post
and
Star
from pursuing [stories] implicating the CIA in a Watergate Conspiracy.”
33

Charles Colson became certain of the CIA’s culpability in Watergate when he got a look at an internal agency file on Watergate in the spring of 1974. The file further detailed the role of Bennett in the manipulation of Woodward. “Then there’s [the] memo of March 1, 1973, which, to me, was the most critical document of all,” Colson said. “It was from the chief of the Central Cover Staff, Eric W. Eisenstadt, to the deputy director for plans. In it, there were specific references to various articles published by Woodward, which had been fed to Woodward by Bennett. And the articles were attached. It was comical, actually. I opened the file, the first time, and here was a story from the Washington Post (February 10, 1973): “Hunt Tried to Recruit Agents to Probe Senator Kennedy’s Life.” And here was Eisenstadt, taking credit for the article, along with the “Whispers about Colson” story from the March fifth edition of
Newsweek
.

It was all very self-congratulatory, about “what a good job the CIA is doing,” and how Schlesinger had commended them “for diverting attention away from the agency.”
34

While the elite media would call the dynamic
Washington Post
writing duo “Woodstein,” they were in fact two different and distinct reporters who I believe had two different objectives in their coverage of the Watergate case. It is important to understand that Woodward and Bernstein worked independently and did not share their notes, files, or sources. I first met Bernstein when he knocked on my apartment door in a one-bedroom apartment I was sharing with my then-girlfriend off of Dupont Circle. In his shoe leather approach to his Watergate investigation, Bernstein had obtained a CRP staff list and was working his way through it. Because of McCord’s phone call to the Porter household on the weekend of the break-ins, I knew that CRP was dissembling when they claimed no connection to the late-night entry into the DNC. I found Bernstein straight forward, trustworthy, and willing to follow the Watergate story wherever it went. I would later learn that one of Bernstein’s most important sources was John P. Sears.

Alan Pakula, who worked with both reporters in the making of the movie version of
All the President’s Men,
wrote, “Underneath all the arguments and fights—way down, they hated each other.”
35
Woodward went on to write a number of controversial and profitable books, whereas Bernstein would lose a fortune in his high-profile divorce and dissipate the rest on wine, women, and song. A wealthy friend of mine in New York told me he met Bernstein at a cocktail party and extended the veteran reporter his business card. The next day, Bernstein called him seeking a $10,000 loan.
36
Woodward’s embrace of Mark Felt as Deep Throat was, in my opinion, a tactical decision that did not comport with the truth. Too many seasoned critics were on to the fact that Deep Throat was most likely a literary device and that the source did not exist. In that sense, Felt’s public announcement was useful to Woodward. Only Carl Bernstein could queer this deal.

I firmly believe Bernstein’s seminal article for
Rolling Stone
outlining the intelligence community’s infiltration of the media is a shot across his partner Woodward’s bow. Bernstein’s ground-breaking book on CIA infiltration of the media bore a message to Woodward that his old partner understood Woodward’s deep connections to the intelligence community and that Bernstein would not be left behind in the saga of Watergate.

Bernstein had his own strange connection to the Columbia Plaza call girl ring. Bernstein was an acquaintance of porn shop owner and pimp Buster Riggin. Riggin had helped organize the working hours of the Columbia Plaza madams
37
and, according to confidential FBI and DC Police informant Robert Merritt, was an associate of DC crime boss Joseph Nesline and White House call girl Heidi Rikan.
38
Bernstein was an irregular patron of Riggin’s DC smut shop.

That Bernstein would seek out erotica at Riggan’s store is not odd; the journalist was a porn enthusiast and his sexual pursuits have become a thing of legend. Screenwriter/author Nora Ephron, who was married to Bernstein for four years in the late seventies, said that the reporter was “capable of having sex with a venetian blind.”
39
Indeed, while his wife, in the late stages of pregnancy, awaited the couple’s second child, Bernstein began an affair with Margaret Jay, wife to the British ambassador to Washington.
40
The affair was only the tip of the iceberg, as Bernstein had been a philanderer for majority of his marriage to Ephron. The womanizing Bernstein was later the subject of Epron’s bestselling book later turned movie
Heartburn.

Bernstein was so sexual that he became a regular at underground swinger parties held in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Arlington and Fairfax. These private parties were attended by a number of CIA personnel including John Arthur Paisley,
41
an electronics expert who was connected to the Nixon “Plumbers.” In 1979, the bloated corpse of Paisley was found in Chesapeake Bay, a bullet wound was found behind his ear, and two thirty-eight-pound diving belts had weighted down his body.
42
I myself, dabbling in the swinger lifestyle in Washington in the seventies, would see Bernstein at the parties where threesomes with two women seemed to be his favorite. Clearly, Bernstein was using his celebrity to fuel his carnal desires, leading Woodward to order a post-investigation to see if Bernstein had been compromised in his sexual CIA contacts.

Haig and his Pentagon patrons knew that it was only a matter of time before Nixon would be forced from office, and it was Haig who would walk Nixon inexorably toward the exit, while at the same time brokering control of Nixon’s papers and tapes, as well as the pardon of the thirty-seventh president. Haig’s leaks to Woodward would also explain some of the more bizarre stories regarding Nixon’s deterioration in
The Final Days,
where Woodward was clearly being briefed by one of the few men who still had access to Nixon.
The Final Days
would recount Nixon’s growing isolation, his heavy drinking, and his conversations with portraits of dead presidents on his nocturnal wanderings through a darkened White House.

NOTES

1
.     Strober, Deborah Hart. Strober, Gerald.
The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era
, p. 285.

2
.     Campbell, W. Joseph. “Did Watergate’s ‘Deep Throat’ know he was ‘Deep Throat’ April 15, 2012
http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/did-watergates-deep-throat-know-he-was-deep-throat/
.

3
.     Arak, Joel. “‘Deep Throat’ Daughter: $ a Factor. CBSNEWS. June 5, 2005.

4
.     Noah, Timothy. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Deep Throat.”
Slate.com
. May 8, 2012.

5
.     Sussman, Barry. “Why Deep Throat was an Unimportant Source and Other Reflections on Watergate.” July 24, 2005.
http://www.rjionline.org/ccj/commentary/why-deep-throat-was-unimportant-source-and-other-reflections-watergate
.

6
.     Himmelman, Jeff. “The Red Flag in the Flowerpot” New York Magazine. April 29, 2012.

7
.     Buchanan, Pat. J. “The unraveling Myth of Watergate.” Human Events. May 25, 2012.

9
.     Hunter, Derek. “Bob Woodward, Liar.” The Daily Caller. May 16, 2012.

10
.   Ibid.

11
.   Byers, Dylan. “Jeff Himmelman calls out Bob Woodward. Politico. April 30, 2012.

12
.   Gray, L. Patrick. In Nixon’s Web. p. 479.

13
.   Ibid, p. 480.

14
.   Ibid, pp. 488-489.

15
.   Ibid, p. 491.

16
.   Noah, Timothy. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Deep Throat.”
Slate.com
. May 8, 2012.

17
.   Stein, Jeff. “Woodward dismisses CIA guard’s dispute of Casey deathbed visit.” Washington Post. September 21, 2010.

18
.   Ibid.

19
.   Neumeister, Lawrence. “William Casey’s Widow Refutes Contents of Woodward’s Book.” Kentucky New Era. September 28, 1987.

20
.   Ibid.

21
.   Reagan, Ronald.The Reagan Diaries (Kindle Locations 11473-11475).

22
.   Neumeister, Lawrence. “William Casey’s Widow Refutes Contents of Woodward’s Book.” Kentucky New Era. September 28, 1987.

23
.   Woodward/Colodny and Gettlin interview. March 6, 1989.

24
.   Moorer/Gettlin interview.

25
.   Laird/Colodny and Gettlin interview. March 6, 1989.

26
.   Friedheim/Gettlin interview. September 25, 1990.

27
.   Benatar, Giselle. “Endless Conspiracies,” Entertainment Weekly. November 1, 1991.

28
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert. Silent Coup, p. 288.

29
.   Barnes, Fred. “The White House at War, The Weekly Standard. December 2, 2002.

30
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert. Silent Coup, p. 283.

31
.   Hitchens, Christopher. “Bob Woodward: Stenographer to the Stars,”
Salon.com
. July 1, 1996.

32
.   Waldron, Lamar. Watergate: The Hidden History, p. 621.

33
.   Hougan, Jim. Secret Agenda, p. 273.

34
.   Shepard, Alicia C. “After 30 Years, The Scoop on Woodward and Bernstein.” November 26, 2006.

35
.   Interview with Joseph J. Jingoli - August 26, 2011.

36
.   Merritt, Robert.
Watergate Exposed,
p. 4.

37
.   Merritt, Robert.
http://www.watergateexposed.com/watergateexposed-blog.html
.

38
.   The Reliable Source. “Carl Bernstein recalls post-divorce relationship with Nora Ephron.
The Washington Post.
June 27, 2012.

39
.   “Unfaithfully Yours: Adultery in America.
People.
August 18, 1986.

40
.   Havill, Adrian.
Deep Truth,
p.105.

41
.   “Nation: The Puzzling Paisley Case,”
Time.
June 22, 1979.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“PARDON ME”

“I’ll stay long enough to get Nixon the pardon”

—Alexander M. Haig
1

J
oachim Bertran was rail thin, with a black pencil mustache. His appointment as the military attaché in the Washington, DC, Cuban Consulate was considered a plum posting. Back in Cuba, Bertran had taught military strategy at the academy, which is somewhat of a joke since Joachim, in the vein of Cuban revolutionary José Martí, was more of a poet than he was a soldier.

I met Bertran in rabidly anti-Communist right-wing circles where he and Barker were both active through the seventies. Bertran and his wife, Olgaita, were close friends of Bernard “Macho” Barker and his third wife.

Second Lieutenant Bertran was not particularly political, and his wife and two children lived a comfortable existence in the Maryland suburbs of DC. They read in the newspapers about the fall of Batista. Bertran received orders to return to Havana for “debriefing.” The night before he was to leave a CIA man knocked on his door and told him he was on a list to be “liquidated” by the Castro regime and that return to his homeland was unwise. He never returned to Cuba. His savings and what meager assets he had were lost. Because his command of English was not strong, he would struggle as a Fuller Brush man, printer, and shoe salesman. He would retire in Miami, spending nights playing dominos in the meeting hall of the 2506 Brigade veterans, which also housed a musty Bay of Pigs museum. It was there that Joachim would become intimate with Barker. “He was a bulldog of a man, but quiet,” Joachim would tell me. “He looked like just another business man until you looked in his eyes,” he said. “He had the eyes of a killer.”

Joachim continued. “Macho knew Haig from the planning of the Bay of Pigs. He said they saw him strutting around the JMWAVE headquarters [a CIA planning station and Cuban exile training facility south of Miami]. They called him ‘El Pollo’ because he strutted like a rooster. Macho said even the military guys laughed because Haig habitually wore every medal and ribbon he had,” he told me over mojitos in a rundown bar on Calle Ocho in the Little Havana section of Miami.

“Hunt, Eugenio [Martinez], Sturgis, hell, we all knew Haig,” Bertran told me. Haig not only worked to serve his masters at the JCS and the CIA in muting the détente policies of Nixon and Kissinger in favor of a harder-line military stance, but also had a direct connection to at least four of the Watergate burglars through his Bay of Pigs experience.

To understand both the fallout from the Watergate break-ins and President’s Gerald Ford’s ultimate pardon of his predecessor Richard Nixon, one needs to understand General Alexander M. Haig. Al Haig was a tough, brilliant military man with a reputation for handling difficult problems. Haig was a renowned bureaucratic infighter and strategic leaker who understood Washington, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the media of his day.