Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1972 New York legislature repealed the abortion rights law passed two year ago, but Rockefeller vetoed the repeal.
  
• 4/3/1972 Nixon signs into law a bill devaluing the dollar by raising the price of gold from $35 to $50 an ounce.
  
• 4/3/1972 Arthur Bremer showed up at a Humphrey rally.
  
• 4/4/1972 Wisconsin primary; McGovern won, followed by Wallace, Humphrey and Muskie; Lindsay got 7% and dropped out of the race.
  
• 4/4/1972 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., former congressman and civil rights leader, dies in Miami, Florida at the age of 63.
  
• 4/4/1972 Bremer attended a Wallace victory party; he began to keep a diary. Gore Vidal: "Bremer's diary is a fascinating work - of art? From what we know of the 22-year-old author he did not have a literary turn of mind (among his effects were comic books, some porno). He was a television baby, and a dull one. Politics had no interest for him. Yet suddenly - for reasons he never gives us - he decides to kill the President and starts to keep a diary on April 4 1972....For someone who is supposed to be nearly illiterate there are startling literary references and flourishes in the Bremer diary." Diary entry: "Hurray! Hurray! Great day for democracy and capitalism! A 50% voter turn out is expected! Now THAT'S confidence in America. Tired to bury pages 1-148 in Sheridan Park just south of Milw. on the lake front at 8-10 but the place was too crowded. Kids in parked cars & cars positioning for a good dark spot. The ground was too rocky. I was too near a land fill sight ( I'll never recover it after few weeks ) & a big 600 foot sheer cliff! Want to get rid of it in or near the big city. Oh Jesus! My birth was at 2:40 p.m. August 21, 1950 and that's the time my plane leaves. Ashes to Ashes. Copy of any birth certificate cost 2 bucks."
  
• 4/5/1972 Harrisburg 7 are acquitted of conspiring to kidnap Kissinger.
  
• 4/5/1972 $700,000 in Texas oil money is rushed to the Nixon campaign two days before the new disclosure law went into effect.
  
• 4/6/1972 Dean memo to Colson, stating the difficulties of trying to tie Larry O'Brien in with "some highly questionable leasing arrangements with the United States Government during the Johnson Administration."
  
• 4/7/1972 Lyndon Johnson suffered a heart attack.
  
• 4/7/1972 New federal election law takes effect, requiring full disclosure of all campaign contributions.
  
• 4/7/1972 Bremer stayed at the exclusive Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NY, where Humphrey was.
  
• 4/7/1972 $83,000 was disbursed to Gordon Liddy by Magruder.
  
• 4/8/1972 Bob Dole taunted Ted Kennedy to get into the primary race: "I think what we want to see is a little less profile, and a little more courage..."
  
• 4/8/1972 Sheik Abeid Amani Karume, ruler of Zanzibar, was assassinated.
  
• 4/10/1972 Robert Vesco contributed $200,000 in cash to Maurice Stans.
  
• 4/12/1972 The CIA's Office of Security ordered the surveillance against Jack Anderson to be terminated.
  
• 4/12/1972 Nixon, Mitchell and Haldeman met in the EOB to discuss politics; it was decided that McGovern had to be portrayed as a "radical," especially since he had called Nixon a "fascist."
  
• 4/12/1972 McCord was given $65,000 and told to purchase electronic eavesdropping equipment.
  
• 4/13/1972 Nixon and Canadian PM Trudeau agree to a joint effort to fight pollution in the Great Lakes area.
  
• 4/15/1972 William Haddad wrote to Jack Anderson, informing him of plans to spy on the Democrats.
  
• 4/15-18/1972 Bremer stays at the Sheraton Motor Inn in New Carrolton, Maryland.
  
• 4/15-20/1972 widespread anti-war demonstrations across US; many are arrested.
  
• 4/16/1972 Launching of Apollo 16.
  
• 4/20-24/1972 Kissinger secretly visits the USSR to talk with Brezhnev.
  
• 4/20-23/1972 Navy Capt. John Watts Young and Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Moss Duke spend a record 71 hours 2 minutes on the moon; this expedition, Apollo 16, explored the mountains of the moon.
  
• 4/25/1972 "NIXON: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind, power plants, whatever's left - POL [petroleum], the docks. And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people? KISSINGER: About two hundred thousand people. NIXON: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry? KISSINGER: That, I think, would just be too much. NIXON: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.
  
• 4/26/1972 John Stewart met with A.J. Woolston-Smith, William Haddad and others in New York. Wooly recalls that Haddad told of a plan to burglarize and bug the DNC and that McCord and Liddy were somehow involved, plus some Cuban exiles. It was believed that the operation would try to find evidence of Castro support for Democratic candidates. In a civil deposition, Stewart changed the date of this meeting to 6/20 to "conform to the facts." Such a late date (after the break-in) would have made Woolston-Smith's information worthless. Stewart later agreed that the meeting had taken place in April. (Secret Agenda p79,83)
  
• 4/27/1972 Muskie withdraws from the presidential race.
  
• 4/27/1972 Lucien Sarti is killed by Mexican police in Mexico City. According to Christian David, Sarti was the gunman on the Grassy Knoll. David said he was first offered a contract to kill JFK by a Mafioso chieftain in Marseilles who had been part of the Faustian bargain between U.S. intelligence and the Maria in W.W.II. David turned the contract down and it was passed along to Sarti - who accepted. David said that about two weeks before the assassination, Sarti flew from France to Mexico City, from where he drove or was driven to the U.S. border at Brownville, Texas. David believes it is the CIA who has Sarti killed in Mexico. David maintains that Sarti accepted the contract offer to assassinate JFK after he turned it down.
  
• 4/28/1972 William Haddad wrote to John Stewart: "I talked to Woolston-Smith. Yes, he does have good information; and yes, he did want to cover expenses for producing it in an acceptable way. He explains that he wasn't looking for payment for his services, but to cover what looked like necessary expenses to tie down his theory with factual presentations…I decided to see what a good investigative reporting operation could do with it now. So I went ahead along those lines. If they draw a blank, I'll be back to you on how to proceed, and I'll keep you informed. My own journalistic judgement is that the story is true and explosive. It would be nice for a third party to uncover it, but if they fail due to the type of inside work required, I would move back to Woolston-Smith." Haddad provided a copy of this letter to the Ervin Committee.
  
• 4/30/1972 Nixon memo to Haldeman: "It is vitally important you follow up on the Colson group to see that they continue...a strong assault on the press, on the Democratic candidates, and our opponents generally in the Congress and in the country on the Vietnam issue."
  
• 5/1/1972 At about 6:15pm McCord telephoned Alfred C. Baldwin III and offered him a job as bodyguard to Martha Mitchell. Baldwin was on a plane for Washington two hours later.
  
• 5/2/1972 After arriving in Washington, Alfred Baldwin headed for Chicago where Martha Mitchell was on a speaking tour. But they didn't get along, and he was soon reassigned 5/9.
  
• 5/2/1972 Indiana Democratic primary saw Hubert Humphrey beat George Wallace narrowly.
  
• 5/2/1972 This evening, Kissinger returned to Washington from Paris and found Nixon and Haig intent on renewed bombing of North Vietnam.
  
• 5/2/1972 8:30am (EST) J. Edgar Hoover's lifeless body is found in his bedroom by his housekeeper and chauffeur. "His housekeeper, Annie Fields, found his body beside his bed at about 8:30am. Dr James L. Luke, District of Columbia coroner, attributed death to 'hypertensive cardiovascular disease,' and said a heart attack might have been the direct cause. The location of the body indicated that Mr Hoover might have felt ill during the night and attempted to get up..." (Los Angeles Times 5/3) The DC coroner, Dr. James L. Luke, attributed death to "hypertensive cardiovascular disease," Hoover's personal doctor, Robert V. Choisser, denied that he had ever shown any sign of heart disease. Luke decided that an autopsy was "not warranted." (Washington Star 5/3) A year later, during the Watergate hearings, a witness matter-of-factly referred to "the murder of J. Edgar Hoover." (The Man and the Secrets 36) Haldeman told Nixon of Hoover's death; Nixon gasped and said, "Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!" (The Man and the Secrets 28) Publicly, Nixon would treat his death with great reverence: "..a national symbol of courage, patriotism," etc. In the corridors of power, though, their was panic over what might be discovered in his files; Nixon's Chief of Staff scrawled on a note: "find out what's there, who controls it - where skeletons are." (Official and Confidential 1-4) Ehrlichman recalled that Nixon told Gray on this day to find Hoover's secret files. (Witness to Power) 11:40am: according to Kleindeinst's instructions, Mohr sealed Hoover's personal office. Kleindeinst had wanted to secure Hoover's secret files, but Mohr did not mention the fact that those files were not in Hoover's office; they were in the office of his secretary, Helen Gandy. (The Man and the Secrets 31
  
• 5/2/1972 11:45am Kleindeinst announced to the public that Hoover had died. Rumors were already circulating that Hoover had been murdered. Nixon then told the press that Hoover had been one of his "closest friends and advisers." The major media gave Hoover cautious praise, but in small-town newspapers he was given glowing praise. 12:15pm Hoover's body is removed from his home by the funeral home of Joseph Gawler's Sons. 2:15pm Nixon told Mohr that Hoover was to be given a full state funeral.
  
• 5/2/1972 This afternoon, L. Patrick Gray met with Mohr and demanded to know where the secret files were; Mohr assured him there were no secret files. Mohr would later explain that there had been a disagreement over the semantic definition of what a secret file was. Clyde Tolson moved into Hoover's home this afternoon. Nixon wrote in his diary, "He died at the right time; fortunately, he died in office. It would have killed him had he been forced out of office...I am particularly glad that I did not force him out at the end of last year." (RN)
  
• 5/2/1972 When the undertakers reach Hoover's house around 12:30 PM, there are men there - fifteen or eighteen of them - virtually taking the place apart - trying to find Hoover's secret files. Mark Frazier. a young reporter, picks up three leads that indicate that Hoover was the victim of assassination. Hoover had been the target of two break-in operations. A first break-in attempt, in "late winter of 1972", was designed to "retrieve documents that were thought to be used as potential blackmail against the White House." It failed but was followed by a second, successful break-in. "This time," reports Frazier, "whether through misunderstanding or design, a poison of the thiophosphate genre was placed on Hoover's personal toilet articles." Thiophosphate is a compound used in insecticides, highly toxic to human beings if taken orally, inhaled or absorbed through the pores of the skin. Ingestion can result in a fatal heart seizure and can be detected only if an autopsy is performed within hours of death.
  
• 5/3/1972 President Nixon appoints L. Patrick Gray III to be acting director of the FBI. This morning, Gray once again demanded Hoover's files from Mohr, who once again stonewalled. (The Man and the Secrets)
  
• 5/3/1972 A contingent of 10 Miami Cubans was brought to Washington on an emergency basis on orders of Liddy and Hunt. Led by Barker, they had been phoned by Hunt the previous night. The purpose of the trip was said to be guard Hoover's coffin from anti-war demonstrators, and to capture a Vietcong flag from those demonstrators who were planning to march at the Capitol. Many found this explanation unbelievable. The Cubans told conflicting stories about what they did in Washington. According to Mark C. Frazier in the Harvard Crimson (11/20/1973), the Cubans were brought in to burglarize Hoover's residence to get at his secret files. Felipe De Diego told the Crimson's reporter that he himself had made a successful entry into Hoover's house, though he later denied the story. (Secret Agenda p134) It was expensive to bring the Cubans in, since besides their room and board, they were also compensated for "lost income" when they were working for CRP. They were generally only brought in when they were going to be used immediately. (Secret Agenda p139)
  
• 5/3/1972 Hoover's 1000-pound lead casket (to protect the corpse from troublemakers) was brought to the Rotunda where he lay in state. Meanwhile, nearby, an antiwar demonstration was being infiltrated by the Hunt-Liddy crew, who tried to start fights with the protestors. Frank Sturgis and Reinaldo Pico were arrested by capitol police, but an unidentified man in a gray suit, flashing either FBI or CIA credentials, got the officers to let them go. (Nightmare 214; The Man and the Secrets)
  
• 5/3/1972 This afternoon, Gray was told by Kleindeinst that he was to be the new acting FBI director. After the announcement was made, Tolson decided to resign. Other FBI officials were also not happy that someone from outside the Bureau had been chosen. In his column, Jack Anderson criticized Hoover for misusing his power in his later years, but praised him for making the FBI an incorruptible and efficient organization. Coretta Scott King, widow of MLK, released a bitter statement criticizing Hoover. Communist Party leader Gus Hall called Hoover "a servant of racism, reaction and repression."
  
• 5/3/1972 Los Angeles Times: "Nixon praised Mr Hoover as a 'truly remarkable man' and 'one of my closest personal friends and advisers....because of his indomitable courage against sometimes vicious attacks, has made certain that the flag of the FBI will always fly high.' Acting Atty Gen. Richard G. Kleindienst said, 'The nation has lost a giant among its patriots....was from time to time the object of misplaced public attack...'" Spiro Agnew said that Hoover "stood steadfast against the political assaults and personal vilification that sought to undermine his stature..." John Mitchell, one of his staunchest supporters, said, "Anybody who would say anything against J Edgar Hoover would be maligning him. He didn't deserve it." Hubert Humphrey praised him as "a man of unquestioned ability, personal integrity and professional competence." Ted Kennedy: "Even those who differed with him always had the highest respect for his honesty, integrity, and his desire to do what he thought best for the country. He will be missed and remembered" The article also stated, "Gov. Reagan said in Sacramento that no other man has meant more to this country in the 20th century that Mr. Hoover." The article quoted Hoover as once having said that Ramsey Clark was "like a jellyfish, a softie. If there was a worse attorney general, it was Ramsey Clark. You never knew which way he was going to flop on an issue. He was worse than [RFK]. At least Kennedy stuck by his guns, even when he was wrong."
  
• 5/4/1972 Hoover's funeral was attended by numerous dignitaries. Tolson resigned as associate director of the FBI.
  
• 5/4/1972 Gray told the press, "None of you guys are going to believe this...but there are no dossiers or secret [FBI] files. There are just general files, and I took steps to keep their integrity." Meanwhile, Helen Gandy and Mark Felt were busy moving Hoover's files to his house, where Tolson would store them in the recreation room. Gandy would later say that the boxes she moved contained only Hoover's personal records. Gray soon received an anonymous letter warning him that Mohr had lied to him about there not being any secret files, and that Tolson had directed the files to be brought to Hoover's house immediately after the Director's death. (The Man and the Secrets)
  
• 5/5/1972 McCord associate rents room 419 at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge across the street from the Watergate.
  
• 5/8/1972 International Monetary Fund announces a reduction in the parity of the US dollar to gold.
  
• 5/10/1972 L. Patrick Gray announced he wished to form an advisory committee of experts from outside the FBI, and wanted to begin hiring women agents.
  
• 5/10/1972 Bremer attended a Wallace rally in Cadillac, Michigan, where he sat with a neatly dressed man about 40 years old.
  
• 5/11/1972 Interior Secretary Morton grants a permit for construction of the controversial trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
  
• 5/11/1972 Mohr told Gray again that there were no secret Hoover files.
  
• 5/11/1972 Alfred Baldwin started his new job for McCord, involving surveillance of anti-war activities. McCord sent him to the Howard Johnson's across from the Watergate complex. Records show that the room he took, #419, had been rented by McCord Associates 5/5, while Baldwin was still staying at the Roger Smith Hotel. Many find it odd that McCord would rent the room in his own name, and Baldwin received mail there using his real name. (Secret Agenda p137)
  
• 5/12/1972 The last of Hoover's files are moved to his house. (The Man and the Secrets)
  
• 5/12-13/1972 Bremer is seen at a Wallace rally at the Reid Hotel in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
  
• 5/15/1972 Nixon memo to Colson asking for a strategy to make the media doomsayers about the Haiphong mining "admit that they were wrong."
  
• 5/15/1972 George Wallace was shot down in the middle of a crowd at a Maryland shopping mall, apparently the victim of a "lone nut," Arthur Herman Bremer, age 21 of Milwaukee. Wallace survived, but was paralyzed from the waist down. CBS photographer Laurens Pierce caught part of the shooting on film. Wallace is seen with his right side exposed as Bremer reaches forward through the crowd, plants the gun near Wallace's stomach, and fires. Bremer continues firing four more shots, all in essentially the same forward direction, roughly parallel to the ground. Due largely to what was shown on the film, and to the apparent premeditation exhibited in his alleged diary, Bremer was arrested, tried and convicted. Gail Aiken, the sister of Arthur Bremer is a religious follower of Oliver Owen, a fundamentalist preacher and horse trader. Owen is the man who had told authorities that Sirhan Sirhan had wanted to buy a lead pony from him and had asked that the horse be delivered to the rear of the Ambassador Hotel on election night, (the night of RFK's assassination) when he would have the money. (Sirhan had four $100 dollar bills on his person when arrested.) What had made Owen's disclosure even more provocative was his description of the young couple accompanying Sirhan. Owen was dismissed as a publicity seeker -- even though he hid from the press.
  
• 5/15/1972 (AP 6/9/05) In a phone call between President Nixon and the man who would become "Deep Throat," the president instructed FBI official Mark Felt to aggressively pursue the case against the gunman who shot George Wallace. There must be no public suspicion of a cover-up, Nixon said, in the wounding of the Alabama governor who was then running for president. Nixon expressed satisfaction when Felt told him the suspect had some cuts and bruises. "I hope they worked him over a little bit more than that," Nixon said. "I think they did pretty well," Felt responded with a chuckle. Nixon talked to Felt hours after the shooting, saying "the main thing is to be sure that we don't go through the thing that we went through with the Kennedy assassination where we didn't really follow up adequately." "We'll take care of that," Felt assured the president. "You've got to remember that if we don't follow it adequately with this fellow, they're gonna think, `Well, my God if Kennedy is shot everybody goes to check everything, but with Wallace we sort of cover it up.' You understand?" "Yeah I sure do," Felt replied."
  
• 5/15/1972 (Reuters, 02-28-02) President Richard Nixon sought to paint the would-be assassin of White House hopeful George Wallace in 1972 as a backer of rival Democratic candidates, audio tapes made public on Thursday showed. "Look, can we play the game a little smart for a change?" he barked at aides on May 15, 1972, hours after the assassination attempt by loner Arthur Bremer left Wallace paralyzed below the waist. Wallace, who died in 1998, was a long-time Alabama governor and avowed segregationist who entered the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries. In the conversation with top aides, Nixon suggested that the Democrats had somehow smeared U.S. conservatives by pinning on the "right wing," as he put it, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A commission chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who once defected to the Soviet Union, acted alone in killing Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. "And it was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated," Nixon said without making clear why he considered the Warren Commision findings a sham. Turning back to the wounding of Wallace in Laurel, Maryland, he added: "And I respectfully suggest, can we pin this on one of theirs?" Nixon was speaking to H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, then his chief of staff, and Charles Colson, then a special counsel to the president. "Just say he (the shooter) was a supporter of McGovern and Kennedy," Nixon ordered, referring to Democrats George McGovern of South Dakota, who lost the 1972 election in a landslide to the incumbent, and Edward Kennedy of Massachussetts, who went on to make a brief White House run in 1980. "Now, just put that out!" Nixon said, his voice rising for emphasis. "Just say you have it on unmistakable evidence." Haldeman interrupts Nixon to say that the suspect had been arrested previously "so there ought to be a record on him." "Screw the record!" Nixon shot back. "Just say he was a supporter of that nut, and put it out." The president did not make clear whom he meant by that "nut."
  
• 5/16/1972 Colson memo on Wallace shooting; he urged FBI agent Mark Felt to find out "what was behind the attempted assassination because it might have other implications..." Colson had heard "rumors that there were political motivations in the killing, to wit: Bremer had ties with Kennedy or McGovern political operatives...the psychiatrist considered the man dangerous to himself as well as to others and possibly very disturbed...Gray further said the record revealed that he was a dues-paying member of the Young Democrats...I advised Gray that he should be aware of the need to determine the political motives as quickly as possible."
  
• 5/18/1972 Agnew returns from a six-day visit to Thailand, Japan and South Vietnam.
  
• 5/18/1972 Nixon memo to Haldeman and Fred Malek: "One department which particularly needs a housecleaning is the CIA. The problem in the CIA is muscle-bound bureaucracy...its personnel, just like the personnel in State, is primarily Ivy League and the Georgetown set rather than the type of people that we get into the services and the FBI. I want a study made immediately as to how many people in CIA could be removed by Presidential action...the reduction in force should be accomplished solely on the ground of its being necessary for budget reasons, but you will both know the real reason..."
  
• 5/18/1972 Gray received a letter from a former FBI agent telling him that there were indeed secret Hoover files, but Gray did not act on this. (The Man and the Secrets)
  
• 5/22-30/1972 Nixon summit with Brezhnev in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev. Nixon was the first US president to visit Moscow.
  
• 5/22/1972 Supreme Court rules that juries need not return unanimous verdicts to convict defendants in state criminal court cases.
  
• 5/22/1972 Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez, Felipe DeDiego, Reinaldo Pico and Frank Sturgis arrive in Washington, meet with Hunt, Liddy, McCord and Gregory to make plans for the break-in. The Cubans were put up in the Manger Hamilton Hotel. E. Howard Hunt assembles his "Miami team" in the Hamilton Manger Hotel in Washington under the guise of an Ameritas sales meeting. There are Barker, Martinez, Sturgis, and de Diego (who registers under the name Jose Piedra, a brother-in-law who has been shot down over the Bay of Pigs), as well as a new addition, Virgilio Gonzalez, a professional locksmith who is a loyal follower of Carlos Prio's. Hunt tells them that if they help the White House now, "it would be a decisive factor at a later date for obtaining help in the liberation of Cuba." He briefs them on the target: the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex. He says they will be looking for evidence that Fidel Castro has secretly contributed $1 million to George McGovern. Hunt feels certain that this challenge will pump up the Cubans for the upcoming mission.
  
• 5/25/1972 Nixon had dinner with Brezhnev in Moscow and saw a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi.
  
• 5/25/1972 In Washington, Liddy shot out the floodlights at the rear door of McGovern's headquarters in preparation for an anticipated later entry.
  
• 5/26/1972 Nixon and Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), the first agreement to limit the number and type of nuclear weapons systems. (Nat Geographic Aug 05) Nixon hosted a dinner for the Soviet leadership at the residence of the US ambassador, and later signed the SALT Treaty in the Kremlin.
  
• 5/26/1972 The Cubans checked into the Watergate hotel, posing as representatives of a phony firm called Ameritas (or it was a real firm with with Bernard Barker was closely associated). They failed to penetrate the DNC that night via a banquet room. Across the street, McCord and Baldwin were in the Howard Johnsons monitoring the DNC, though from their vantage point they could only see a small part of the DNC offices. In addition, the DNC offices were on the sixth floor, while their room at Hojos was on the fourth. According to Hunt, the operation failed because a door alarm that McCord was supposed to have done something about was still working. Actually, researcher Bob Fink talked with the building's maintenance supervisor, Royce Lea, and found that there was never any alarm anywhere in the area Hunt claimed he saw one. Fink: "We crawled through the building, tracing the supposed movements of the burglars, and it was obvious that the break-ins couldn't have happened the way McCord and the others said. They'd have had to walk through concrete walls, and go through doors where there were no doors." (Secret Agenda p145) Hunt wrote later that McCord told him that the DNC offices were usually empty after 10pm, though the security logbooks show that the DNC was routinely occupied until after midnight. (Undercover p233)
  
• 5/27/1972 Nixon spent the day in Leningrad, then returned to Moscow.
  
• 5/27/1972 A second break-in attempt late tonight. There seven of them, including McCord, and all wore business suits. They signed into a security visitors log (these pages were later torn out), McCord explaining that they were going to the Federal Reserve Board on the eighth floor. The FRB had been burglarized recently, and security had been tightened. McCord knew that the FRB guard was due to make his rounds at about their time of entry. If the guard glanced at the visitors' log, and then saw no one in the Federal Reserve's offices, he would immediately become suspicious. Martinez recalled, "It all seemed funny to me. Eight men going to work at midnight…Then we went up to the eighth floor, walked down to the sixth and do you believe it, we couldn't open that door, and we had to cancel the operation…all the time while we were working on the door, McCord would be going to the eighth floor. It is still a mystery to me what he was doing there. At 2:00am I went up to tell him about our problems, and there I saw him talking to two guards. What happened? I thought. Have we been caught? No, he knew the guards. So I did not ask questions, but I thought maybe McCord was working there." Hunt's account of the second break-in in his memoirs is clearly wrong, or perhaps deliberately falsified. (Undercover p225) Gonzalez was unable to pick the lock to the DNC door, saying that he required special tools. Hearing about this, Liddy was concerned that Gonzalez had damaged the lock so as to make it obvious that a break-in had been attempted; Liddy came over to the Watergate at 2:55am to check it out personally. Liddy then told Gonzalez to fly to Miami immediately to pick up the necessary tools.
  
• 5/27-28/1972 A covert unit of President Nixon's "Plumbers" installs surveillance equipment in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington's Watergate hotel and office complex. The Washington police report an attempt to unscrew a lock on the door of the Committee's office between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m., but do not know as yet who tried to force the lock. Some of the five men caught burglarizing the same offices six weeks later (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972) are currently registered at the Watergate Hotel, according to subsequent police investigations. [Washington Post, 6/18/1972; Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007] Change of Plans - According to one of the burglary team (see April-June 1972), Eugenio Martinez, the original plan centers on a fake "banquet" in the Watergate hotel for their fake company, the Ameritus Corporation, to be held in a private dining room that has access to the elevators. While team leader and White House aide E. Howard Hunt hosts the banquet, Martinez and the other burglars will use the elevator to go to the DNC offices and "complete the mission." Virgilio Gonzalez, a locksmith, will open the door; Frank Sturgis, Reinaldo Pico, and Felipe de Diego will act as lookouts; Bernard Barker will get the documents; Martinez will take photographs; and James McCord will "do his job," apparently involving electronics that Martinez does not understand. First Time Failure - Apparently they do not follow their plan. Instead, Hunt and the seven members of what Martinez calls "McCord's army" enter the Watergate complex at midnight, and they enter and sign in under the eye of a policeman. McCord explains that they are all going to work at the Federal Reserve offices on the eighth floor, an explanation Martinez feels is shaky. They are unable to get in through the doors of the sixth floor, and are forced to cancel the operation. Martinez recalls that while the others attempt to get in to the sixth floor, McCord is busy doing something else on the eighth floor; at 2 a.m., he sees McCord on the eighth floor talking to two guards. What McCord is doing, Martinez does not know. "I did not ask questions, but I thought maybe McCord was working there," he will later recall. "It was the only thing that made sense. He was the one who led us to the place and it would not have made sense for us to have rooms at the Watergate and go on this operation if there was not someone there on the inside." Hunt is furious at the failure to get into the DNC offices, and reschedules the operation for the next night. Gonzales flies to Miami and brings back his entire set of lockpicking tools. Martinez questions the laxity of the planthe lack of floor plans, information about the elevators, knowledge of the guards' schedules, and no contingency plans for failure. Hunt tells him, through Barker: "You are an operative. Your mission is to do what you are told and not to ask questions." Success - The second try is successful. Gonzalez and Sturgis get through the doors and usher everyone in, with one of them calling over their walkie-talkie, "The horse is in the house." Martinez recalls taking "thirty or forty" photographs of campaign contributor documents, and McCord plants three phone taps, telling the others that while the first two might be discovered, the third will not. They return to their hotel rooms about 5 a.m. [Harper's, 10/1974]
  
• 5/27/1972 Richard Nixon is nearing the end of the first-ever summit to be held between American and Soviet presidents. Nixon is preparing to make a television speech to the Soviet people. Five thousand miles away in Washington, the first of several illegal entries into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex is taking place. On his way home from the Soviet Union, Nixon stopped to visit the Shah of Iran. The Shah wanted to arm the Iraqi Kurds to distract Baghdad's government during a border dispute. Nixon and Kissinger gave him the OK and in fact got the CIA to help arm the Kurds with Communist-origin weapons to establish "plausible deniability." (NYT, Safire 2/5/1976; Pike Report) The Kurds really only trusted the US, though they had sometimes allied themselves with Iraq's Communists and the Soviet Union. Kurdish leader Mustafa al-Barzani had spent a dozen years in the USSR and spoke Russian. Barzani said, however, that the Kurds were "ready to become the 51st state" of the US. (Pike Report, London Times 11/26-28/1974)
  
• 5/28/1972 Nixon made a live TV address to the people of the US and USSR: "Let our goal now be a world free of fear..."
  
• 5/28/1972 A third break-in attempt at the Watergate at about 11pm. Gonzalez returned from Miami with the tools he needed. This time they intended to tape open the locks to the doors leading from the underground garage to the basement stairwell. Shortly after 11pm, Hunt and four Cubans succeeded in getting inside, but an hour later Barker and his men left after photographing only a small amount of documents on Larry O'Brien's desk. Then McCord, after placing some bugs, ordered them to leave. Hunt was disappointed by the results (Undercover p227-28) but Liddy remembers that he and Hunt were "delighted" with how the operations had gone. (Will p233) The photos had been taken on O'Brien's desk, but after being in McCord's possession for several days, they appear to have changed. The man who developed them, Michael Richardson (of Rich's Photos in Miami), later told the FBI that the film he developed for Barker 6/10/1972 showed surgically-gloved hands holding down political documents against the background of a "shag-type rug." The FBI determined that no such rug was in the Watergate rooms, but Alfred Baldwin's room in the Hojo did have a shag rug. (Secret Agenda p156-7)
  
• 5/29/1972 Monitoring of phones in the DNC began as Alfred Baldwin moved to a room on a higher floor of the Hojo to improve reception. Baldwin was the only person assigned to monitor conversations, and he did it on an ad hoc basis. If the bug on O'Brien's phone had actually worked, then Baldwin would have been expected to monitor two bugs at once. Baldwin and McCord both claim that no tape recorders were used, despite the fact that two recorders were available in the room. Baldwin's hurriedly scribbled accounts of phone conversations were useless as evidence. Liddy wondered about this, but McCord gave him ridiculous reasons for not using recorders. (Will p235; Secret Agenda p162) Liddy told Jim Hougan: "It was the most ridiculous fucking electronic surveillance operation I've ever seen. With all the equipment we had, the money he spent…goddamn it, he could probably have gotten what he needed at the Radio Shack." McCord took Baldwin's scribblings and sent the summaries to Liddy; the summaries were the basis for the Gemstone File, which was destroyed by Magruder shortly after the Watergate arrests. McCord wasn't even able to effectively tune in to the one bug until around 6/1. The one in O'Brien's office didn't seem to be working. This bug, according to Liddy, was supposed to be a very sophisticated one that McCord paid $30,000 for.
  
• 5/29/1972 Watergate guard Leroy Brown notified the police that there had been an attempted break-in over the weekend. Police noted an attempt to unscrew the DNC's lock from its front door, and this effort had damaged the lock.
  
• 5/30/1972 Ehrlichman memo to Nixon about Victor Marchetti: "You will recall that Dick Helms asked you for help" in dealing with Marchetti. "We got Helms the necessary help to file an action against Marchetti and the District Court has entered a comprehensive injunction against Marchetti disclosing any secrets."
  
• 5/30/1972 Bremer's arraignment; his attorney entered a plea of not guilty due to insanity.