Robert Meyers

Robert Meyers was a 29-year-old former Newsweek stringer whose field reporting helped The Washington Post trace Donald Segretti’s political work beyond the Watergate break-in. Sent to follow Segretti in California, Meyers tracked his movements, approached him at his apartment, and found Larry Young, a former fraternity brother who could describe Segretti’s connections with E. Howard Hunt. Meyers’s work helped turn an initially difficult pursuit into a report supported by a source willing to go on the record and provide a sworn statement.

Identity and Assignment

Meyers worked as a stringer, a reporter hired for individual assignments, and had followed The Washington Post’s Watergate coverage closely. When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein needed someone to pursue Segretti after he had abruptly ended a telephone conversation with Woodward, Barry Sussman suggested using a West Coast correspondent or a stringer recommended by the national desk. Bernstein called Meyers at home and brought him up to date. Meyers was in a bathtub when the call came; the book describes his appearance as more professorial than reporter-like, with a pipe, a wispy goatee, and rimless glasses.

The assignment demanded persistence rather than a quick interview. Meyers went to Marina del Rey, where Segretti lived, and began watching his apartment and speaking with neighbors. Segretti was away, and the people nearby knew little about his work beyond that he was a lawyer who traveled frequently. Meyers’s initial task was therefore to establish when Segretti returned and to find a way to speak with a man whose neighbors had little useful information about his politics.

The Marina del Rey Stakeout

Meyers’s observations brought the investigation close to Segretti’s private life without immediately yielding an interview. He watched the apartment building and its garage, checking for Segretti’s Mercedes and for signs that he had returned. On one occasion, Meyers climbed onto the balcony and looked inside: he saw dirty dishes, a fireplace with artificial logs, stereo equipment, books, magazines and records, and a bicycle in a hallway that appeared to lead toward the bedroom. The accumulated mail and an empty parking space reinforced that Segretti had not yet come back.

A matchstick Meyers had wedged into the interface of Segretti’s front door had fallen by Thursday morning, but Segretti was still absent. Meyers waited. When Segretti returned that afternoon, Meyers introduced himself as a reporter for The Washington Post and proposed a conversation. He raised the possibility that the paper had information about work Segretti had done on behalf of Edward M. Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey, then asked whether Segretti had a connection with either man. Segretti remained silent in the doorway. The encounter established direct contact, but it did not produce an account from Segretti himself.

Finding Larry Young

Meyers’s more consequential lead came through Larry Young, a fraternity brother of Segretti’s from their University of Southern California days. Young had been expected to be the other half of a firm called Young and Segretti. He told Meyers that Segretti had spoken to him about connections with the Nixon campaign. In the account Woodward began typing up, Young said that Segretti had described FBI discovery through telephone records associated with Hunt: the calls ran from Hunt to Segretti, and Hunt gave Segretti instructions. Young could not say which specific events those instructions concerned, but the account made a connection between Segretti’s operation and Hunt’s plans that Woodward and Bernstein had not previously recognized.

The account was initially off the record. Young said he would consider speaking on the record after obtaining legal advice about whether doing so could implicate attorney-client privilege; he had not represented Segretti as a lawyer, but had been approached as a friend. Meyers, Bernstein, and Woodward stayed in daily contact with him. On October 13, Young agreed to go on the record. Woodward checked whether Young might be mistaken or exaggerating about Segretti’s dealings with Hunt and Dwight Chapin, and Young said he was not. Meyers was then sent to obtain Young’s sworn statement confirming that the interviews accurately represented what Segretti had told him. The resulting account could be built largely on statements that were not anonymous, making it harder for the White House to dismiss the reporting simply on the grounds that its sources were unidentified.

Reporting Impact and Narrative Role

The reporting Meyers helped develop appeared amid a wider struggle over whether allegations of political espionage would receive public attention. An earlier Washington Post story about Watergate secret funds had been largely ignored by major outlets; Republican Senator Hugh Scott had dismissed the subject as a concern mainly of George McGovern and the media. Later, when the Post published its nationwide sabotage investigation over its wire service, more than half of its 220 domestic subscribers used the story, and coverage beyond the subscribers was also broad. The New York Times independently contacted people approached by Segretti, including Alex Shipley, and then summarized the Post’s allegations alongside their accounts. Meyers’s work was one part of a reporting effort whose reach expanded as additional sources confirmed the story.

His role was not that of a commentator or a source explaining the whole operation. It was practical and evidentiary: he followed a lead across the country, watched an apartment until its occupant returned, and found a friend who could describe the link to Hunt. That progression—from surveillance of an empty parking space to a source’s sworn confirmation—gave the investigation a new avenue beyond the initial Watergate case. The book’s account makes Meyers important not because it attributes the entire story to him, but because his reporting helped establish a connection the original pursuit of Segretti had not yet uncovered.