Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh is a New York Times reporter whose experience investigating the My Lai cover-up and the national-security bureaucracy gave him an unusually informed perspective on Watergate. His brief encounter with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein becomes consequential when his reporting reveals that James McCord testified that money paid to the Watergate conspirators came directly from the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP)—an inside account that helped connect the break-in to the campaign’s secret funds.

Reporting Background and Outlook

At thirty-six, Hersh had already broken the story of the cover-up of My Lai and spent years reporting on military and national-security bureaucracies. The book presents that experience as central to his ability to recognize the implications of Watergate: he knew the people and institutions under scrutiny, and was not inclined to treat official explanations as trustworthy. At dinner with Woodward and Bernstein, he described the administration’s abiding characteristic as lying. His skepticism was not limited to the White House; he also sharply criticized a New York Times story, showing that his distrust extended to the press’s own work.

The April Dinner

A mutual friend arranged for Hersh to meet Woodward and Bernstein on April 8. His rumpled appearance—old tennis shoes, a frayed pinstriped shirt, and bleached khakis—made him unlike any reporter the two had met. The impression was reinforced by his public willingness to call Henry Kissinger a war criminal and by his candid account of both attraction to and repulsion from the power of the New York Times. The dinner brought together three reporters who were careful not to reveal everything they knew about Watergate, but Hersh’s offhand response to Bernstein’s teasing question soon turned the evening into a professional disclosure.

McCord’s Testimony and the Secret Fund

When the New York Times front page arrived at The Washington Post that night, Hersh’s “Just a little something” proved to be a report that McCord had testified the cash payoffs to the conspirators came directly from CRP. Since January, reporters had suspected that CRP paid to keep the defendants silent; McCord’s testimony was the first inside statement confirming that connection. Hersh’s report supplied a missing link between the break-in and the campaign organization, turning a long-held suspicion into a claim attributed to a participant’s testimony.

The disclosure also gave new significance to information Woodward and Bernstein had received months earlier from Hugh Sloan: the secret fund had continued to exist after the arrests, and money had been transferred from Maurice Stans’s safe to Fred LaRue. The reporters had not published that account because they could not confirm it or establish how the money was spent. McCord’s testimony now made it possible that the fund had financed the silence of the defendants. The book thus places Hersh’s report within a developing chain of evidence: his story did not resolve every question about the money, but it connected the suspected hush payments to CRP from the inside.

Narrative Role

Hersh appears briefly, but his reporting changes the evidentiary status of the hush-money theory. The dinner’s joking reference to a coming story gives way to a front-page disclosure that Woodward and Bernstein recognize as one of the connections they had been waiting for. His importance lies not in a sustained role in their investigation, but in the combination of institutional experience, independence from official assurances, and access to testimony that lets him expose a crucial link in the Watergate cover-up.