October 10, 1972: Campaign ‘Agent Provocateur’ Staying in Touch with White House

The same afternoon that the Washington Post runs its article on the Nixon campaign’s “massive conspiracy” to disrupt the elections (see October 10, 1972), Nixon chief of staff H. R. Haldeman updates President Nixon of the situation with campaign “agent provocateur” Donald Segretti (see June 27, 1971, and Beyond). “Segretti, just so you know, is incommunicado,” Haldeman says. “But he calls [White House counsel] John Dean from a public phone and calls on a line that’s not traceable every day around noon. He’ll do anything. I’m told he was supposedly the ideal guy for this kind of thing. He’s a guy that loves this sort of college prank politics.” Nixon thinks Segretti should sue the Post: “I know he’ll lose it, but good God, in the public mind it creates an impression that they lied…. Right, Bob? You see the point? Sue the sons of b_tches.” [Reeves, 2001, pp. 531-532]