Richard E. Gerstein

Richard E. Gerstein was the state’s attorney for Dade County, Florida, and the elected prosecutor whose office subpoenaed telephone and bank records in the Watergate investigation. His role was significant less because he personally directed every detail than because his office was pursuing a separate local inquiry when federal investigators were giving reporters little help. In his encounters with Carl Bernstein, Gerstein appeared both politically established and pressed for time, while the records and their possible meaning remained largely in the hands of his chief investigator, Martin Dardis.

Identity and Position

Gerstein headed the state’s attorney’s office in Dade County, the metropolitan jurisdiction around Miami, Florida. He was a Democrat, forty-eight years old, a World War II bomber pilot, and, according to the office receptionist, the biggest vote-getter in the history of the state’s attorney’s office. His public standing was also reflected in his campaign: ten days before Bernstein visited, Gerstein had announced that he was seeking an unprecedented fifth term. The office was therefore not only a law-enforcement institution but also the workplace of a conspicuous local political figure in the middle of a reelection campaign.

The book introduces Gerstein through details that make that status tangible. His office occupied the sixth floor of the Metropolitan Dade County Justice building, across a narrow, palm-lined lane from the county jail. The reception room was busy with uniformed policemen, detectives, defendants, and prosecutors, many of whom stopped to ask receptionist Ruby how the boss was doing in his campaign. Bernstein, waiting there, read a local paper whose headline announced that Gerstein had cracked an interstate baby-sale racket. The setting presents a prosecutor with an active public profile and a crowded local caseload, not an official whose attention was devoted solely to Watergate.

The Records and the Investigation

Gerstein’s office had subpoenaed records as it tried to determine whether people involved in the break-in had violated Florida law. The inquiry began to open to Bernstein after the phone company said that a local district attorney had requested records. Bernstein checked with the U.S. Attorney in Miami, who denied having made such a request, then called local district attorneys until he reached Gerstein. Gerstein explained that his office had subpoenaed the material and that Dardis, his chief investigator, would know more about it.

Gerstein was willing to facilitate contact, but with a condition: Dardis would cooperate if The Washington Post did not reveal that it was dealing with the state’s attorney’s office. That condition marked a boundary around the source relationship. Gerstein did not offer the records directly or claim to know what they contained; he pointed Bernstein toward the investigator handling them and sought to protect the office’s identity in the reporter’s account.

The distinction between the office’s inquiry and Gerstein’s own knowledge became explicit when Bernstein finally met him. Gerstein said he could not get the FBI to tell him anything. He also said that he had left the whole matter to Dardis because he had been so busy. He knew there were checks but was unsure what they showed, and promised to arrange a meeting with Dardis as soon as he heard from him. His account establishes both the existence of documentary evidence and the limits of what Gerstein himself could confirm at that point.

Bernstein’s Visit and Their Exchange

Bernstein’s trip to Miami had already become a race against the newspaper’s first-edition deadline. He arrived expecting an early-afternoon appointment and information that might produce a story, but the New York Times had published the story he had hoped to pursue, and its source was unavailable. While waiting for Dardis, Bernstein tried to follow a separate lead from Bob Woodward: the Watergate suspects had bought photographic equipment and paid for processed film at a camera shop in a Cuban neighborhood in Miami.

After Gerstein’s office delayed him, Bernstein asked for a meeting and was escorted to Gerstein’s outer office. Gerstein was in conference; when he eventually invited Bernstein in, the reporter explained that it was almost five o’clock and the paper’s deadline was approaching. He proposed getting that day’s story out first and talking later. Gerstein, who had admitted that he did not know what Dardis’s records showed, again said that he would arrange access when he heard from the investigator.

Before leaving, Bernstein passed Gerstein the camera-shop lead, although he regarded trading information with a source as a delicate last resort. He asked Gerstein to call if anything turned up. That small exchange made the contact reciprocal: Bernstein was not only pressing for access to the state’s evidence but also supplying a possible lead for the local inquiry. The book does not establish what came of that tip, so its significance lies in the terms of the encounter rather than in a documented result.

Character and Narrative Role

Gerstein’s part in the episode is defined by a tension between access and distance. His office had taken formal steps to obtain records relevant to possible violations of Florida law, and he was prepared to connect Bernstein with the investigator. Yet he had delegated the matter, did not know what the checks meant, and was occupied by other responsibilities, including a reelection campaign. His willingness to help did not make him a fully informed guide to the evidence.

The narrative reinforces that distinction when Bernstein, after another delay, complained that the office had been jerking him around. Gerstein responded that he would get Bernstein in immediately, said he did not know what was going on, and apologized. The account presents him as genuinely apologetic rather than as knowingly obstructive. His importance to the reporting lies in this limited but consequential position: a locally powerful prosecutor had opened a path toward records, but the reporter still had to reach the investigator who possessed the details, negotiate confidentiality, and work against the clock.