Political dirty tricks

Political dirty tricks are the covert espionage, sabotage, and other improper operations used against political opponents in the book. Their significance lies not only in the individual acts but in the system that enabled them: secret campaign money, authorization by senior officials, a wider repertoire of surveillance, and later efforts to conceal what had been done. As the reporting connected these elements, what had been dismissed as an isolated break-in emerged as part of a broader political operation.

Meaning and Scope

The book places dirty tricks within a range of political actions rather than treating the phrase as a synonym for the Watergate break-in alone. Its account describes a pattern of illegal and quasi-legal activity extending back to 1969. The Secret Service forwarded information about a Democratic presidential candidate's private life to the White House; health records belonging to Senator Eagleton reached John Ehrlichman's office before they were leaked to the press; and H. R. Haldeman personally ordered an FBI investigation of CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr in 1971. These operations differed in form, but together they indicate a political environment in which government and campaign resources could be turned against perceived opponents.

The book's index also groups the subject under both “Dirty tricks” and “Ratfucking,” cross-referencing the wider campaign discussion with later material concerning E. Howard Hunt. That organization reflects the recurring nature of the subject: dirty tricks appear not as a single plot with one method, but as a repertoire of covert political interference. The available evidence identifies surveillance, political sabotage, and the gathering or leaking of damaging information; it does not establish that every operation in the wider pattern had the same participants or chain of authorization.

Money and Authorization

The financing of the Watergate espionage operation shows how covert political work could be embedded in campaign administration. The Washington Post reported that funds were controlled by several principal assistants to John Mitchell, formerly the manager of Richard Nixon's campaign, and kept in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The account contained more than $300,000 earmarked for sensitive political projects, and G. Gordon Liddy was among those who received money. Records relating to the account had been destroyed; Hugh Sloan's resignation, the report said, had followed his suspicions about Watergate.

A separate trail of checks supplied a concrete financial detail. Among four Mexican checks was a $25,000 cashier's check drawn on a Florida bank and payable to Kenneth Dahlberg. It was deposited on April 20 with the other four checks, producing a total deposit of $114,000. Four days later, Bernard Barker withdrew $25,000, while the remaining $89,000 was withdrawn separately. The check trail connected campaign money to the Watergate defendants' finances, but the figures alone did not identify who had authorized each use; the reporting and subsequent accounts of the fund supplied further links.

Sloan described the authorization process as routine within a campaign whose budget exceeded $50 million. Beginning in 1971, when he needed money he would telephone Mitchell at the Justice Department, and Mitchell would tell him to disburse it. The reporters understood the implication: while serving as Attorney General, Mitchell had authorized campaign expenditures for apparently illegal activity against the political opposition. Sloan said Mitchell was initially the sole person able to authorize expenditures; authority later passed to others, including Jeb Stuart Magruder. The account thus moves beyond the existence of a secret fund to identify a mechanism of approval, while distinguishing evidence of authorization from proof about the knowledge of every person involved.

Operations and Public Exposure

The first public framing of Watergate pushed in the opposite direction from the emerging evidence. The day after the break-in, Democratic Party chairman O'Brien filed a $1 million civil-damages suit against the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Citing the potential involvement of Charles Colson, he said the facts were developing a clear line to the White House and argued that the bungled attempt raised questions about how many other attempts had occurred and who was involved. His statement was an accusation and a warning, not itself proof of the full operation; its importance was that it placed the break-in within a larger question of political responsibility.

The Washington Post's account of the secret fund gave that question financial and organizational detail. It named the fund's controllers, its purpose, the money received by Liddy, the destruction of records, and Sloan's suspicions. The report's broader implication was that the Watergate indictments had not ended the conspiracy and that campaign workers might know more about the unanswered questions. When the White House later made the Post a target of its counterattack, newspapers around the country reported the confrontation, and the administration's effort to discredit the paper also gave its allegations wider currency.

Independent documentation further narrowed the space for denial. The New York Times reported telephone records showing that Donald Segretti's telephone or credit card had been used for at least half a dozen calls to the White House and Dwight Chapin's home, and at least 21 calls to E. Howard Hunt's home and office. Those records did not by themselves establish the purpose of every call, but they supplied a documented connection that was harder to dismiss as hearsay or innuendo. The episode illustrates how the public meaning of dirty tricks was built incrementally: allegations prompted scrutiny, records established contact, and further reporting tested what the connections could demonstrate.

Concealment and Political Consequences

The evidence concerning the cover-up extends the story from operations to the handling of their traces. According to information Deep Throat gave Bob Woodward, on June 28 L. Patrick Gray was told in a meeting with John Ehrlichman and John Dean that the files were “political dynamite” and should “never see the light of day.” Deep Throat also reported that Ehrlichman had suggested putting the files in the river. Gray kept them for about a week and then said he put them in a burn bag. He reportedly was not directly ordered to destroy them, but understood what Dean and Ehrlichman wanted. The account is mediated through a confidential source; its distinctions between explicit instruction and understood intent are central to what it does and does not establish.

Magruder later told federal prosecutors that Mitchell and Dean had approved and helped plan the Watergate bugging operation, and that they later arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted conspirators. The report attributed these statements to three sources in the White House and the campaign committee. That account joined the planning of the break-in to the subsequent hush-money effort, turning the issue from a campaign operation into an alleged effort to obstruct accountability.

The political response eventually included Richard Nixon's acknowledgment of responsibility and the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. In his April 30 address, Nixon said that the easiest course would be to blame those to whom he had delegated campaign responsibility, but called that cowardly and accepted responsibility as the man at the top. The following day, press secretary Ronald Ziegler apologized publicly to the Washington Post and its reporters for earlier criticism, saying that the White House had been wrong. These statements did not erase the earlier denials or resolve every question about individual knowledge. They marked a reversal in the administration's public position as the accumulated evidence made the account of Watergate as a trivial, isolated burglary increasingly untenable.