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15. Cambodia, Bombs, and Impeachment
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157 CHAPTER 15 Cambodia, Bombs, and Impeachment Feeling the Stress When Sy Hersh, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward met for dinner in April 1973, Woodward refused to toke on the marijuana they passed around. He knew the White House was looking to cut the credibility of the Post reporters . “These Goddamn cannibals,” Nixon said in an April 27 meeting with press secretary Ronald Ziegler. “Hell, they’re not after [Bob] Haldeman or [John] Erlichman or [John] Dean; they’re after me, the President.” Nixon was working with Ziegler on a speech that he would give right after the resignation of his top aides; he wanted it to be aggressive. “We aren’t going to take this crap,” he declared. “They can attack the President’s men, but they must not attack the President.” Then, he asked Ziegler, “Hersh, can you talk to him?” No, no, Ziegler replied. He needed to “hit on” Clifton Daniel, the bureau chief, or Scotty Reston, the columnist. Ziegler rehearsed his pitch. “Can’t run a story like this in the New York Times . . . on speculation about the President of the United States. You have an obligation as a major newspaper and so on . . .” And while such an approach might make inroads with Daniel or Reston, he knew it had no chance with Sy Hersh.1 ForhispartHershwasabletokeephammeringawaybecausehissources in the Justice Department were so good. Mark Feldstein, biographer of muckrakingcolumnistJackAnderson,feltHershhadaleguponWoodward in developing Justice Department sources. Seymour Glanzer and Earl Silbert, both Jewish, were more comfortable with Hersh than the Waspy Woodward, he argued. In mid-May someone leaked a document just to Hersh indicating that burglar James McCord was told by the White House to say he was working for the CIA when he led a team into Democratic headquarters. He refused. And then, on May 10, Hersh reported that 158 CAMBODIA, BOMBS, AND IMPEACHMENT federal prosecutors felt that John Dean, the president’s former counsel, had no evidence to link Nixon to the break-in or cover-up. The story was wrong; Hersh had made his first mistake. But inside the White House the Dean story hit close to home. Haldeman and Nixon met the morning of Hersh’s story, trying to figure out if Dean had anything on the president. They fretted over a safe Dean kept with national security documents, and worried that Hersh would find out. “Seymour Hersh—he’s got a good line into there,” Haldeman said about Hersh’s connection to the prosecutors. “He’s been accurate on everything he’s printed.”2 That assessment turned out to be false, and perhaps to make up for his error, Hersh pushed the Dean angle hard, reporting next that the lawyer tried to set up a spy ring to infiltrate protestors at the upcoming Republican National Convention. Then on June 3 Hersh contradicted his initial Dean story, reporting that Dean told Senate investigators he huddled more than forty times with Nixon, who showed “great interest” in the Watergate matter.3 The White House was indignant, charging that the story was “part of a careful, coordinated strategy . . . using innuendo, distortion of fact and outright falsehood. We categorically deny the assertions.” But Hersh rebutted the denial. “We’re all scared to death by this guy,” said an unidentified source with close connections to top White House officials. “We don’t know what he can or can’t prove.” And the anger was not just in their prepared statement. Meeting with Nixon on June 5, his new counsel, J. Fred Buzhardt, called Hersh’s story “very careless,” adding, “I think Woodward and Bernstein wrote it accurately.”4 While both the Post and the Times had an army of reporters covering Watergate, it was Hersh and Woodward and Bernstein who were dueling daily for scoops. “There was a lot of pressure on Hersh,” Woodward said. “When we beat him, the people would have a fit at the Times. They’d call him up late at night to get him to confirm our story and do better.” Once, Woodward wrote a story that indicated that Nixon had bugged his own brother, Donald, to make sure he wasn’t doing anything to embarrass the president. Hersh was furious at being scooped. He called Woodward and yelled, “You fucker, you fucker!” It wasn’t the only time that Woodward and Bernstein angered him. In All the President’s Men they described him as pudgy. “Do I look pudgy to you?” Hersh fired back. “I’m much more [35.175...