So…not a lot has been happening, 50 years ago these days.
But some stuff has been. Stuff that’s difficult to assign exact dates to, other than knowing that they occurred in the first 2 weeks of July.
I mean, how dead is the Watergate beat 2-3 weeks after the break-in? Carl Bernstein has been returned to his regular duties on the Virginia local desk at the Post. Bob Woodward is on a two week family vacation.
Dead.
But stuff is happening.
1. Get out of Jail Free Card
One interesting thing as the calendar flips to July, 1972: all five Watergate burglars remain in jail and haven’t yet bonded out. And E. Howard Hunt is furious about that.
Throughout the shoddy planning stages of this operation (and others), G. Gordon Liddy assured Hunt and his compatriots that they were working for the President, and that if they were ever to be jailed, they should shut up and wait for assistance from on high. “We’ll get the same treatment the Agency guys get,” assures Liddy. Full legal aid; financial help for the families; strings pulled; pardons if needed.
But none of that is happening yet, and Howard Hunt has hired his own criminal defense lawyer and is thinking about contacting the FBI and rolling over. What Hunt doesn’t know is that money has been approved – direct from the White House, in that June 23 Oval Office meeting – and is on the way.
John Dean’s been assigned that particular bit, and he is not only rounding up the money, but also trying to find the most circumspect, secret way to deliver it. Dean decides to use a fringe-y character named Tony Ulasewicz to be his point man on disbursement of funds. Ulasewicz is a former cop and current private detective who’s done a ton of dirty work for the White House, including being their point man on digging up dirt on Chappaquiddick.
Ulasewicz, after making some surreptitious phone calls (he’ll always use a revolving set of pay phones; in fact he’ll use so many pay phones that he’ll start carrying around one of those old bus driver change-making things.) He discovers that Howard Hunt’s wife, Dorothy, is in regular contact with the wives of the jailed burglars. She’ll be the point for getting the money turned around.
The five now also have an actual criminal defense lawyer, and not Douglas Caddy who wanted nothing to do with the case (in fact, Caddy told his and Hunt’s mutual bosses at the Robert Mullen Company about this, and the Mullen Company subsequently relieved Hunt of his duties there.) All five burglars are now represented (by the same lawyer at this point), and after Dorothy Hunt delivers the first cash from Ulasewicz and Dean (literally bundled hundreds and twenties in brown paper bags), they’re finally free on bail shortly after the July 4 celebrations.
But the five men and their families need money. They’re un-hireable, and no longer able to pull CREEP paychecks. In a memorable phone call in the first week of July, Ulasewicz tells Dorothy Hunt to find out from all the families what they’d estimate their individual monetary needs for a given month might be, and to get back to him.
The next day, though, before Dorothy Hunt can finish getting that info, Ulasewicz calls her again. Actually, he says, making these payouts is pretty dangerous. The amount of money isn’t what scares him, it’s the number of payment drop-offs that bothers him. Each drop-off risks exposure, and so he and Dean would much rather handle things in some lump sum payouts.
So, Ulasewicz says, have the families of the burglars estimate what they’d need financially for, oh, let’s just say…five months. Yeah. Five months. Tell me tomorrow what everyone will need for five months and I’ll get that to you right away, says Ulasewicz.
And so Dorothy Hunt calls all the families of the burglars and works with them over the phone to figure out how much money they’ll need for the next five months for their “first” payout.
But when James McCord’s wife tells her husband about this conversation, instead of relief, McCord feels his blood run cold.
Five months. That covers payment for living expenses through…November of 1972. McCord starts to get a sinking feeling that this isn’t going to be the “first” payout. It’s going to be the only payout, to keep everyone quiet until election day. And after? A voice in his mind that he’d always paid attention to when he was in the CIA, one that maybe screamed at him to not put tape on a door lock a couple of weeks ago, is screaming at him again now, and telling him that after November he and the burglars and Liddy and Hunt will be left to twist in the wind.
This time, he might hear that voice. And he might act on what it’s telling him.