University of Southern California

The University of Southern California became an investigative lead in the Watergate story because several people who knew one another there later occupied positions in the Nixon White House or took part in campaign work. Reporters traced relationships among former students, accounts of their campus political practices, and allegations about Donald Segretti’s later operations. The university’s significance in the narrative is as the setting for this network—not as an institution shown directing or authorizing its members’ actions.

Campus Politics and Personal Connections

The reporters’ inquiry turned toward the University of Southern California and Boalt Hall law school at Berkeley, where Segretti had studied, as places to look for people who might know him. Robert Meyers reported that Segretti had been close at USC to several people who later joined the Nixon White House, including Ron Ziegler, Dwight Chapin, and Tim Elbourne. Other USC graduates in the administration included Mike Guhin and Gordon Strachan; Bart Porter, another former White House advance man, had received money from the campaign fund.

A former reporter on the Post’s city staff, Karlyn Barker, supplied a more personal route into the network. Her friend had attended USC with Segretti, Chapin, and Elbourne and had stayed in close contact with them. In Barker’s notes, the friend described a White House circle of USC associates and said that Chapin and Ziegler had called Segretti and Elbourne to help with Nixon campaign business. The account connected college friendships to later political activity, while remaining an informant’s description rather than proof that the university itself had participated.

Electioneering and the Alumni Network

The students named in Barker’s account belonged to a campus political party called Trojans for Representative Government. They called their hard-edged electioneering Ratfucking: stuffing ballot boxes, placing spies in an opposing camp, and circulating bogus campaign literature. The reported practices supplied a concrete campus precedent for the reporters’ inquiry into political sabotage, but the account does not establish that every former member later took part in the same methods.

The network extended beyond college. Ziegler and Chapin had joined Richard Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, managed by H. R. Haldeman. After graduation, Ziegler, Chapin, and Elbourne worked at J. Walter Thompson Advertising in Los Angeles, where Haldeman was a vice president. Segretti, meanwhile, was summoned to Washington and trained to work in a presidential election, according to Barker’s friend. These links gave the university’s former students a place in a chain running from campus politics through professional and campaign relationships to White House associates.

The Investigation Widens

The Post’s investigation developed the USC lead through separate reporting. Meyers found Larry Young, Segretti’s fraternity brother and former prospective business partner. Young said Segretti had described receiving instructions from E. Howard Hunt, although Young did not know which events those instructions concerned. He also said Segretti spoke of meeting Hunt and Chapin, whom he understood to be the operation’s general organizer. Young’s account made the connection between Segretti and the White House-associated network more specific, but it did not by itself identify the purpose of each instruction or prove who authorized particular acts.

Young further believed that, during a trip to Miami, Segretti met Hunt and Chapin and was asked—he did not know by whom—to recruit Cubans for an assault on the Doral Beach Hotel made to look as though it had been carried out by supporters of George McGovern. According to Young, Segretti refused because he considered the proposal blatantly illegal and violent. The allegation linked the reported political operation to a concrete plan, but its uncertain attribution matters: Young could not identify who made the request.

From Campus Lead to National Reporting

The Post’s October 1972 account used Segretti’s travels, approaches to prospective recruits, and background to tell a larger story of political espionage and disruption. The claim that at least 50 undercover Nixon operatives had traveled around the country appeared well into the article, rather than in its opening paragraphs. The story’s structure thus moved from an individual with USC connections toward a nationwide operation, with the university serving as one point of entry into a much larger network.

The report received broad newspaper circulation, and the New York Times independently contacted people who confirmed that Segretti had approached them. At the White House, Ron Ziegler declined repeatedly to discuss the Post’s story. The investigation consequently made the USC connections part of a public account of alleged campaign sabotage, while the book’s evidence keeps the distinction clear between a university, its former students, and the political activities attributed to some members of their circle.