The Washington Post's Watergate investigation

The Washington Post's Watergate investigation transformed a burglary at Democratic headquarters into a sustained examination of campaign espionage, secret money, and the chain of responsibility behind both. Its force came not from a single revelation but from the accumulation of separately checked facts: the identity of a salaried campaign security coordinator, the path of a cashier's check, testimony about who authorized expenditures, and later accounts of the planned operation and efforts to suppress evidence. The reporting also unfolded as a contest over what Watergate meant—an isolated burglary, as official statements suggested, or a political operation reaching into the highest levels of government.

From burglary to a campaign connection

The investigation began as a police story unusual for the national staff. After Barry Sussman asked them to follow up, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein returned to the newsroom on Sunday, June 18, 1972. An Associated Press item in campaign spending reports supplied the first consequential connection: James McCord, one of the arrested men, was the security coordinator of the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The reporters recognized the importance of the identification but did not yet know what it meant. John Mitchell, the campaign manager, said McCord had been employed months earlier to help install the committee's security system, while denying that the burglars had been acting for the campaign or with its consent. Democratic chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien disputed the reassurance, arguing that the break-in raised questions about the integrity of the political process.

With official statements available through the wire services, the reporters turned to the people behind the names. They searched telephone books and address directories, called tenants of the office building where McCord Associates was located, and followed uncertain personal connections until Bob Woodward reached Harlan A. Westrell, who knew McCord. Those calls produced a detailed profile: McCord was a former FBI agent and former chief of physical security for the CIA, a military reservist and security-course instructor, and a full-time worker for the President's re-election committee. People who knew him described his integrity and his deference to authority. That portrait sharpened the story's central question: whether the burglars' connection to the campaign was merely employment in the past or evidence of a continuing chain of command.

The first joint reporting also altered the reporters' relationship. At first, each worried the other might claim the remaining story. When Bob Woodward drafted a report identifying a burglar as a salaried campaign security coordinator, Carl Bernstein began rewriting it; Bob Woodward judged the revision better. Their August 1 story about the Dahlberg check carried both names, and the byline became a standing partnership. They divided calls and leads, pooled information, and maintained separate telephone lists that eventually contained hundreds of contacts, with fewer than fifty duplicated. They called sources repeatedly, and even a source's failure to answer or return a call could be meaningful. The division of labor was not simply a convenience: it expanded their reach while allowing confidential sources to develop a relationship with one reporter at a time.

Following money and authority

Money supplied a way to test whether the campaign connection extended beyond McCord's job title. While copying records of checks associated with the Watergate operation, Bernstein found a fifth check: a $25,000 cashier's check payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg. It had been deposited with four Mexican checks, bringing the total deposit to $114,000; four days later, Bernard Barker withdrew $25,000, and the remaining $89,000 was withdrawn separately. The particular check and amounts made the financial trail concrete, but establishing what the money funded and who controlled it required further reporting.

A later account from Deep Throat strengthened the connection between the secret fund and the operation. The source told Bob Woodward that funds in Maurice Stans's safe had financed the Watergate bugging and other intelligence-gathering activities, and that John Mitchell's top assistants were among those who controlled the money. The resulting Washington Post story reported a special Committee for the Re-election of the President account holding more than $300,000 for sensitive political projects. It identified Gordon Liddy as a recipient, reported that account records had been destroyed, and connected Hugh Sloan's resignation to his suspicions about Watergate. The story's larger implication was that the indictments had not ended the conspiracy and that campaign workers still possessed answers.

Hugh Sloan's account helped move the investigation from a fund's existence toward its authorization. He said that when he was first approached for money, he telephoned Mitchell at the Justice Department; Mitchell told him to distribute it. Sloan described this as a routine procedure in a campaign with a budget exceeding $50 million, and said the calls had begun in 1971. He also said that Mitchell initially was the sole person authorized to approve expenditures, with authority later passed to others, including Jeb Magruder. This was evidence that Mitchell authorized campaign spending for activities described as apparently illegal; it was not, by itself, proof that he knew in advance about the burglary. Sloan explicitly maintained that a possibility remained that others had acted independently, though he doubted it.

Sources, silence, and corroboration

The investigation depended on people inside the campaign who faced pressure to remain silent. During evening visits to Committee for the Re-election of the President employees' homes, Bernstein encountered frightened staff members: one pleaded with him to leave before others saw him, and another began to cry. The reporting also pursued the question of Sally Harmony, Gordon Liddy's secretary. A campaign bookkeeper told Bernstein that people had already lied to the grand jury and that Harmony and others had lied, though she did not specify what those lies concerned. Reports from employees also pointed to wholesale destruction of records in the days after the break-in, but those accounts were secondhand and lacked specifics. The investigation preserved those limits even as the fragments suggested a broader effort to conceal information.

Confidential sources supplied leads, not substitutes for checking. Deep Throat had previously warned Bob Woodward that the FBI wanted to know where the newspaper was getting information and that the reporters might be followed. After the indictments, Bob Woodward broke their usual rule against telephone contact and read the source a draft describing campaign workers' information about the funding. Deep Throat judged the draft too cautious and urged stronger language, then confirmed that campaign funds had paid for the operation and that wiretap logs had reached some of the aides who disbursed the money. Bob Woodward read his notes to Carl Bernstein, who wrote a new lead identifying the fund and Mitchell's principal assistants. The exchange illustrates the method's tension: a source could point toward a larger claim, but the published account still had to rest on information that could be supported.

That distinction mattered as the reporting reached senior officials. In April 1973, the newspaper reported Jeb Magruder's statements to federal prosecutors that John Mitchell and John Dean had approved and helped plan the bugging operation, and that Mitchell and Dean later arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted conspirators. The report attributed the account to Magruder and to three sources in the White House and the committee. This was a new and more direct allegation about planning and concealment, not merely a further inference from the movement of money. The investigation's public claims grew as its sources and corroboration changed.

Denial, counterattack, and political consequence

The newspaper's disclosures met repeated attempts to narrow or discredit the story. After the break-in, White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler called it a third-rate burglary attempt and said it did not merit further comment. O'Brien filed a $1 million civil suit against the committee the following day, citing Charles Colson's potential involvement and arguing that the emerging facts pointed toward the White House. Months later, when reporting on the connection between Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti brought Watergate closer to the Oval Office, the White House selected the Post as a target even though Time had developed damaging information as well. The administration's anger, widely reported, gave the newspaper's allegations additional currency; telephone records published by The New York Times then documented calls involving Segretti, the White House, Chapin, and Howard Hunt, weakening the administration's position.

The investigation's reach extended from the campaign operation to the handling of evidence and the conduct of the administration. Deep Throat told Bob Woodward that, in a June 28 meeting, John Ehrlichman and John Dean had characterized the files held by L. Patrick Gray as political dynamite and had made clear that they should disappear. According to the account, Gray kept the files for about a week before putting them in a burn bag, understanding what was wanted even though he said he had not been explicitly ordered to destroy them. This disclosure connected the investigation not only to the original operation but also to attempts to keep damaging material from becoming public.

On April 30, Richard Nixon accepted the resignations of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. In his televised address, he said that the effort to conceal facts had kept the public and himself from the truth, accepted responsibility as the person at the top, and credited the grand jury, prosecutors, Judge John Sirica, and a vigorous free press with bringing facts to light. The following day, Ziegler apologized publicly to The Washington Post, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein for his earlier criticism, acknowledging that the comments had been mistaken in light of subsequent developments. These moments did not conclude the investigation, but they marked a reversal in the public standing of the newspaper's reporting: its claims, first dismissed and attacked, had become difficult for the administration to treat as mere rumor. The investigation's significance lies in how it made that reversal possible—by following small, verifiable traces until they could be connected, while keeping the difference between suspicion, corroboration, and demonstrated authorization visible.