The First of Many Smoking Guns
The nature of fame and renown is fickle. If you think of media and reporters regarding Watergate, you’re going to think of Woodward and Bernstein – this story made their careers, and made them arguably the most famous reporters in American history. And in terms of media outlets, it took the Washington Post from a local paper with big designs into the national spotlight as one of the most important news sources in the country.
And yet. If not for a crucial decision and plane trip, it might not have played out that way.
Meet Walter Rugaber, a White House reporter for the New York Times. Rugaber was young but well-respected, a guy who clearly seemed like he was going places. And in early July, Rugaber’s reporter spidey senses were tingling a LOT about Miami and Dade county, the place where Bernard Barker’s bank was located.
Rugaber got to Miami, and over the course of a background interview with the US Attorney for that region – a lifelong Democrat named Richard Gerstein – both the reporter and his interview subject got pretty excited about what the other guy seemed to know.
Gerstein used his subpoena power to get Bernard Barker’s phone records, and on July 25 of 1972, the first mini-boomlet story ran in the Times detailing that Watergate burglar Barker had called CREEP headquarters more than a dozen times in April and May before the burglary. That story was, in the grand scheme, kind of a nothing-burger on its own; the White House and G. Gordon himself knew that Liddy was going to be offered up as a scapegoat and patsy in all this, and Barker’s calls all were to a phone in Liddy’s office. Still no wider connection. Still a “rogue group” within CREEP…
…but the story’s most seismic impact was at the Washington Post. Editor in chief Ben Bradlee was furious when he read that July 25 story. His paper – which had kind of “owned” the Watergate story since it happened had been scooped, and scooped by a damn fine reporter at the biggest paper in the country.
And so after dressing down both of his own young reporters who’d been on the Watergate beat for missing this crucial link, he had Carl Bernstein on a plane, headed to Miami to see what he could find.
Bernstein arrived in Miami on July 31st. As he arrived, he picked up a copy of the morning New York Times, and saw Walter Rugaber’s biggest bombshell report on the front page.
Rugaber’s story in the Times detailed how the sequential $100 bills found with the Watergate burglars had come from withdrawals from Barker’s bank account in the amount of $89,000, from early May. That amount – $89,000 – matched exactly the amount of four cashiers check drafts from Banco Internacional in Mexico City that had been deposited in Barker’s account just a few weeks earlier.
That story was pretty big, and got national play. Every reporter with a connection to the White House recognized instantly that the Mexico City connection fit with what was already known at the time about the Nixon Campaign fundraising sprint during the “dark” fundraising reporting month in March/April. It was still frustratingly short of being the big smoking gun that incontrovertibly tied the White House to the burglars…but it was close. (It’s likely most reporters also recognized that the complexity of a story dealing with the ins and outs of campaign finance and funding was probably going to zoom over the heads of most who’d read it.)
There was one other important thing in that New York Times story that only a competing newspaper like the Washington Post would notice: it was datelined from Mexico City.
About the time Rugaber’s first report hit the Times on July 25th, Gerstein had gotten Barker’s bank records. (Side note: it pays to have subpoena power on your side. If you’re wondering if someone in the Trump White House knew about what Richard Gerstein did, and how it would eventually help bring down Nixon…and thus that’s why a whole bunch of qualified, Democratic-president appointed US Atttorneys were fired in 2017…well, I’m wondering that, too.) In those bank records, Gerstein and Rugaber found the four deposits drawn on the Mexico City bank as cashier’s drafts. They also found a fifth big deposit into Barker’s bank account that had been a personal check written over to him. The name on that $25,000 check was “Kenneth Dahlberg”.
Gerstein and reporter Walter Rugaber spent the next few days trying to find out who “Kenneth Dahlberg” was, but had no luck. (It apparently didn’t occur to Rugaber to phone that into the Times research department for them to look – he trusted Gerstein’s office on that research, and Gerstein’s office was, well, let’s just say far from efficient.)
On July 30th, Rugaber made a fateful decision: he’d follow the Mexico City money trail first. He’d stay in touch with Gerstein’s office and let them know what he found.
This would be one of the most fateful early decisions in the entire history of Watergate reporting. Maybe the MOST fateful one would happen as Carl Bernstein read Rugaber’s New York Times story as he sat in the Miami airport that morning of July 31st.
Bernstein went to a newstand in the airport and got a bunch of change and found a payphone to call the Washington Post offices. Thankfully for him, he got Post City editor Barry Sussman on the phone. (Sussman – to whom both Bernstein and Woodward would directly report to – plays a huge role in the the actual Watergate reporting, as well as in the book All The President’s Men. For whatever reason, his character was completely written out of the movie, apparently to avoid confusing viewers and a lot of what Sussman did was given to the characters of Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) and Howard Simon (Martin Balsam) in the film. Sussman was displeased by this, to say the least, and even considered legal action.)
Sussman let Bernstein know that the latest Times scoop on the money trail that had hit front pages that morning had Bradlee in an even worse disposition than when Bernstein had left for Miami. Bernstein told him he understood, but he was there in Miami now. But where was the story? Should he (Bernstein) stay in Miami or follow Rugaber to Mexico City?
And Barry Sussman, City Editor at the Washington Post, makes what might be the single most important decision in the Watergate saga – at least as far as the Post is concerned. He tells Bernstein to stay in Miami to see what he can dig up.
Bernstein hails a cab and heads over to Richard Gerstein’s office. If Walter Rugaber had found a bombshell in reporting the Mexico City money in Bernard Barker’s bank account, Carl Bernstein is about to find another bombshell that will eventually feel nuclear in nature.