October 10, 1972: White House Official Wrote ‘Canuck Letter’

Washington Post staff writer Marilyn Berger reports that the deputy director of White House communications, Ken W. Clawson, told her in regards to the infamous “Canuck letter” (see February 24-25, 1972) that sabotaged Democrat Edmund Muskie’s presidential campaign, “I wrote the letter.” Berger says the conversation took place on September 25, over drinks at her apartment.
Woodward Skeptical - Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is initially dubious; Clawson, a former Post reporter, had joined the White House a mere three weeks before the letter was given to the Union-Leader. But Woodward remembers something a friend had told him about new White House aides being ordered to prove themselves by “screwing an enemy of the White House.” Perhaps the letter was Clawson’s rite of initiation, Woodward reasons. Berger says that Clawson saw nothing morally or ethically wrong with writing such a letter. “That’s politics, that’s the way things are,” he told her. Berger confirms the story during a hastily arranged lunch date with Clawson, but Clawson says he will deny it “on a stack of Bibles over his mother’s grave” if asked. In a phone call to Woodward, Clawson denies writing the letter, and claims that Berger is mistaken. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 136-141]
Alleged Author Never Located - The conservative newspaper publisher who printed the letter, William Loeb of the Manchester Union-Leader, says that the letter’s purported author, “Paul Davenport,” has never been located, and though he believes the letter to be authentic, he is now investigating the particulars of the letter because of a letter he has received that alleged someone else was paid $1,000 to assist with the “Canuck hoax.” The editor of the Union-Leader, B. J. McQuaid, says cryptically that Clawson had been “useful” to the paper in connection with the letter. [Washington Post, 10/10/1972]