PROLOGUE
THEY CAME TO CALIFORNIA TO RUIN A MAN. Not to kill him, not literally. But the next best thing.
On a summer day in 1971, two men in wigs and glasses strolled along a sunny sidewalk in Los Angeles. One had a black mustache and walked with a limp. The other carried a camera on a strap over his shoulder.
They stopped in front of a three-story building of brick and glass. The man with the mustache posed beside the entryway, smiling like a tourist while his friend snapped a series of surveillance shots. They quickly repeated the process in front of alternative entry and escape points—low windows and the door in the back.
As they headed to their hotel, the mustached man’s limp grew increasingly pronounced and by the time they reached the lobby, he was struggling to keep up. After shutting the door of their shared room, he yanked off his shoe, causing a heel-shaped hunk of lead to drop to the carpet. He pulled off his wig and glasses. The mustache stayed on; that part was real. This was G. Gordon Liddy, former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The photographer, a retired Central Intelligence Agency agent named Howard Hunt, sat down to take notes. All that remained was to visit the target building under operating conditions. That is, at night.
Hunt and Liddy were part of a secret team working directly for the president of the United States. The focus of their mission was a man named Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was all over the TV news that summer, and his blue eyes blazed from the covers of magazines. The press was calling him brilliant, intense, unpredictable. Some said he was a hero; some said the exact opposite. The president considered Ellsberg a traitor. At a White House meeting, the president’s top foreign policy advisor put it bluntly: “Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs.”
Precisely what Hunt and Liddy were planning to do.
After dark the operatives got back into their disguises. Liddy refused to put the lead hunk into his shoe—the limp-inducing device was part of his cover, designed to distract passersby from his face, but it was just too painful. He did, however, plan to try out a different piece of espionage equipment loaned to him by the CIA, a tobacco pouch with a miniature camera hidden in the bottom, and a hole for the camera lens.
They walked out into the warm summer night. It was just a few blocks to the building. The front door was not locked. Liddy pulled the tobacco pouch and a pipe from his pocket, and stuck the pipe in his mouth.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor and started down the dark hall toward the office of a psychiatrist named Lewis Fielding. A woman stepped out of a different office, holding cleaning supplies. Hunt thought she looked Mexican American.
“Señora,” Hunt began, “somos doctores y amigos de Doctor Fielding.”
The woman, Maria Martinez, seemed unconvinced these visitors were really doctors and Fielding’s friends.
Hunt continued in Spanish. “With your permission, we would like to go into his office for a moment and leave for him something he has been expecting.”
She hesitated.
“Please, we promise not to take anything.”
Shrugging, she said, “Very well, caballeros.”
Martinez unlocked Fielding’s door and flicked on a light in the small reception room. Liddy entered with his tobacco pouch. Martinez stood by the door, expecting him to drop off his delivery and come right out. He didn’t come out.
“What’s he doing in there?” she asked.
“Writing a message to the doctor,” Hunt said.
She took a step into the office just as Liddy strode out.
“Well, I left it,” he said.
Hunt thanked the woman and tipped her. Liddy snapped a few photos with his tobacco pouch as they walked toward the exit.
“Did you have time to get any shots?” Hunt asked.
“A few, but Jesus, I kept thinking she was going to charge in on me!”
Anyway, it all looked fine, Liddy reported when they got outside. The filing cabinets had locks, but they were child’s play. If the information they needed was in those files, it was there for the taking.
The men drove to the airport to catch the red-eye back to Washington. They could report to the White House with confidence that the operation to destroy Daniel Ellsberg was most definitely feasible.