United States Capitol

The United States Capitol is where a proposed Senate investigation of Watergate took shape as a test of political power: the inquiry’s scope was challenged, White House pressure was organized, and the resolution ultimately passed unanimously. For Bob Woodward, the building was also a reporting ground. Moving between the Senate cafeteria, a phone booth in the press gallery, and the floor, he followed efforts to alter the investigation and found evidence that the White House was actively trying to influence the vote.

Setting and institutional stakes

Before the Senate vote, Woodward had written about Sam Ervin’s intention to summon presidential aides and challenge the claim of executive privilege. The conflict was already taking shape as a contest over whether Congress could investigate the White House. The Capitol gave that conflict a visible institutional setting: senators debated the proposed committee’s authority while aides and reporters tried to identify the strategy behind the proceedings.

On February 5, Sam Ervin introduced a resolution allocating $500,000 for a Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate break-in and related allegations. The Democratic Policy Committee supported it without qualification. The anticipated obstacle was a last-minute maneuver by the White House and Republicans, making the vote, scheduled for February 7, a test not only of whether a committee would be created but of how far its investigation could reach.

Woodward follows the maneuvering

Woodward arrived at the Capitol at about 8:30 on the morning of the vote to see whether a blocking strategy was developing. In the Senate cafeteria, he spoke with an administrative assistant to a Republican senator. The aide described a proposed amendment that would extend the investigation to the 1964 and 1968 campaigns. The suggestion fit a familiar defensive approach: rather than leave the inquiry confined to Watergate and the current campaign, broaden its reach to past elections as well.

A second Republican aide said that people were trying hard and that word had come down to make a major push. Woodward then called the White House from a phone booth in the press gallery. A source there confirmed that the effort was underway, reporting that H. R. Haldeman had energized much of the staff and that White House personnel were expected to call senators they knew. The location matters to the account not as scenery but as a route through which Woodward tested what he had heard: the cafeteria yielded a warning about the amendment, and the press-gallery call connected that warning to an organized White House effort.

Debate, amendments, and passage

On the Senate floor, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, the minority leader, called Ervin’s resolution exceptionally broad and its authority extraordinary. He warned that committee staff might use it for blackmail. John Tower of Texas and Barry Goldwater of Arizona joined the criticism. Scott also alleged extensive Republican wiretapping during the 1968 campaign, but neither he nor the other senators offered a concrete example or a specific charge. The proceedings therefore placed sweeping claims about the proposed investigation beside an absence of substantiation for the countercharge used to challenge it.

Democrats rejected every amendment proposed by the minority. When the final vote was called, Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues, and the resolution passed 77–0. Veteran Senate reporters told Woodward that the unanimity merely reflected Republican recognition of the Democratic majority’s power. Woodward was less certain that the vote could be explained as simple submission; he thought the senators on the floor were reading the political winds. The distinction leaves the vote with two possible meanings in the account: a tactical acknowledgment of numbers, or a sign that resisting the investigation had become politically untenable.

The Capitol as a reporting vantage point

As he left the Capitol, Woodward asked a Republican senator about a man he had noticed near the floor during the crucial amendment votes. The senator identified him as a Justice Department lawyer whom the White House had sent to draft the amendments. That observation gave the earlier reports of pressure a tangible institutional connection: the White House effort was not limited to calls made by staff but included a lawyer present in the Senate’s legislative process.

The Capitol thus brings together the competing layers of the episode. The Senate’s formal vote established the committee, while the proposed amendments, unsupported accusations, coordinated calls, and lawyer on the floor revealed the effort to shape what the committee could examine. For Woodward, the movement through the building produced more than a result to report; it exposed the contest over the investigation’s reach as it was happening.