Wedge by Mark Riebling

Author:Mark Riebling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

* * *

SMOKING GUN

A WET HAZE OBSCURED the Goddess of Freedom atop the United States Capitol on May 3, 1972. At the base of the building a black automobile braked gently to a stop; it was a hearse. Eight Marine pallbearers started slowly up the thirty-five steps, bearing the flag-draped coffin past a column of honor guards. A drizzle thickened to rain, and the Marines almost lost their footing; two suffered ruptures as they struggled up. But they reached the bronze doors of the Rotunda, and then were under the awesome dome. There, upon the catafalque once built for Abraham Lincoln, they placed the body of John Edgar Hoover, dead from heart failure the day before.

A few hours later, as Hoover lay in state, an antiwar demonstration began on the steps outside—and then a demonstration against the demonstration. As actress Jane Fonda took the megaphone, there moved also along the margins of the crowd nine Miami Cubans, hired by the Plumbers to be ready to repulse a rush for Hoover’s casket. But the only trouble occurred when the Cubans, who could not contain themselves, got into scuffles while shouting “Traitors! Castro-lovers! Communists!”

The Cubans’ leader, Eugenio “Macho” Martinez, recounted those details proudly to his controllers, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who drove over afterward and picked him up. It was getting dark as they headed down Virginia Avenue and Liddy pointed to the complex of structures called Watergate.

“That’s our next job, Macho,” Liddy said.

“What is it?”

“Democratic National Headquarters—and after McGovern’s nominated, it’ll be his headquarters, too.”

“There’s a report,” Hunt broke in, “that Castro’s been getting money to the Democrats. The idea is to photograph the list of contributors the Democrats are required to keep. Once we have those lists, we can have them checked to determine whether the contributors are bona fide or merely fronts for Castro or Hanoi money.”

They drove on into the night, plotting how to tie domestic antiwar personalities to foreign communists—precisely what the feuding FBI and CIA had largely failed to do since 1967. That failure had caused creation of the Plumbers, as has been seen, but the FBI-CIA wedge was to figure even more fundamentally in White House attempts to cover up the Plumbers’ crimes, causing the worst political scandal in American history.

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