All the President's Men Read Free Page A

emphasize that this man and the other people involved were not operating on either our behalf or with our consent. There is no place in our campaign or in the electoral process for this type of activity, and we will not permit or condone it.”
    In Washington, the Democratic national chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, said the break-in “raised the ugliest question about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter-century of political activity. No mere statement of innocence by Mr.Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell, will dispel these questions.”
    The wire services, which had carried the Mitchell and O’Brien statements, could be relied upon to gather official pronouncements from the national politicians. The reporters turned their attention to the burglars.
    The telephone book listed the private security consulting agency run by McCord. There was no answer. They checked the local “crisscross” directories which list phone numbers by street addresses. There was no answer at either McCord’s home or his business. The address of McCord Associates, 414 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, Maryland, is a large office building, and the cross-reference directory for Rockville lists the tenants. The reporters divided the names and began calling them at home. One attorney recalled that a teenage girl who had worked part-time for him the previous summer knew McCord, or perhaps it was the girl’s father who knew him. The attorney could only remember vaguely the girl’s last name—Westall or something like that. They contacted five persons with similar last names before Woodward finally reached Harlan A. Westrell, who said he knew McCord.
    Westrell, who obviously had not read the papers, wondered why Woodward wanted to know about McCord. Woodward said simply that he was seeking information for a possible story. Westrell seemed flattered and provided some information about McCord, his friends and his background. He gave Woodward some other names to call.
    Gradually, a spare profile of McCord began to emerge: a native of the Texas Panhandle; deeply religious, active in the First Baptist Church of Washington; father of an Air Force Academy cadet and a retarded daughter; ex-FBI agent; military reservist; former chief of physical security for the CIA; teacher of a security course at Montgomery Junior College; a family man; extremely conscientious; quiet; reliable. John Mitchell’s description of McCord notwithstanding, those who knew him agreed that he worked full-time for the President’s re-election committee.
    Several persons referred to McCord’s integrity, his “rocklike” character, but there was something else. Westrell and three others described McCord as the consummate “government man”—reluctant to act on his own initiative, respectful of the chain of command, unquestioning in following orders.
    Woodward typed out the first three paragraphs of a story identifying one of the Watergate burglars as a salaried security coordinator of the President’s re-election committee and handed it to an editor on the city desk. A minute later, Bernstein was looking over the editor’s shoulder, Woodward noticed. Then Bernstein was walking back to his desk with the first page of the story; soon he was typing. Woodward finished the second page and passed it to the editor. Bernstein had soon relieved him of it and was back at his typewriter. Woodward decided to walk over and find out what was happening.
    Bernstein was rewriting the story. Woodward read the rewritten version. It was better.
    •   •   •
    That night, Woodward drove to McCord’s home, a large two-story brick house, classically suburban, set in a cul-de-sac not far from Route 70-S, the main highway through Rockville. The lights were on, but no one answered the door.
    After midnight, Woodward received a call at home from Eugene Bachinski, the Post’s regular night police reporter. The night police beat is generally considered