All the President's Men

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1974

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Index of Terms

The Canuck Letter and the Crying Speech

The Canuck letter was a major component of CRP’s “dirty tricks” during the 1972 Democratic primary. It was the summary of a conversation between candidate Edmund Muskie, his staff, and several unnamed persons in Florida. Muskie, a senator from Maine, was asked how his experiences in Maine would inform his response to race issues. One of his campaign aides responded that in Maine “we don’t have Blacks, but we have Canucks,” referring to American of French Canadian descent. Supposedly the senator laughed and said, “Come to New England and see.”

When the letter was published in a New England newspaper, there was a hostile reaction from many union leaders and traditional Democratic supporters across the region, including attacks on Muskie’s wife, Jane. Days later, Muskie responded to the story. In the only major story written about the speech, the reporter said that tears were rolling down Muskie’s face and that he repeatedly had to pause to regain composure. Muskie and others later denied the story, claiming it was rain, not tears, on his face. However, the damage was done, and the Canuck letter effectively ended his otherwise promising campaign. When confronted, Donald Segretti freely admitted that he and Kenneth Clawson had written the letter and had fabricated the controversy (262).

Dirty Tricks

“Dirty tricks” are attempts by opposition campaigns to disrupt and derail the activities of their electoral adversaries by introducing additional friction to even everyday activities. In 1972, Nixon’s dirty tricks team, led by Donald Segretti, played an important role in disrupting both the Democratic primary election and the general election. On the lower end of the intensity spectrum, example of their tactics included calling in dozens of unpaid-for pizzas to campaign offices during important events, calling in protest threats that pressured venue owners to cancel campaign appearances, and stuffing letters to manipulate straw polls in favor of the president. Higher-intensity operations involved forging documents to incriminate candidates (such as the Canuck letter) and doing opposition research to uncover especially incriminating evidence. Low-intensity dirty tricks often skirted the boundaries of legality, but some, including the forgery of classified government documents, were clearly illegal.

Leaks and Plumbing

The term “leak” refers to the unauthorized release of information by government officials to reporters. This information can be confidential, as in the case of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of classified Pentagon records to New York Times journalists. The information also may not be confidential but may nevertheless be protected because its release might embarrass the administration or derail one of its policies. Leaks are a natural and exceedingly common component of everyday government activities and, in certain cases, may even be created by politicians to elicit a desired effect in the media environment. Plumbing is a euphemism for the act of tracking down officials and journalists who are leaking information. Nixon aggressively pursued leakers, and the favorite tactics of his plumbers were phone taps and burglaries.

Money Laundering

Money laundering is a process by which the origin of funds can be concealed through a series of transfers before being paid to a recipient account. This is commonly done by crime organizations, whose money, which has been acquired as the proceeds of a criminal business, needs to be “washed” or laundered so that it can be deposited and spent freely by the people in charge of the business. This can involve transferring money to several different banks, changing currency, or buying and selling certain untraceable goods. In the context of the Watergate scandal, money was raised by Maurice Stans from wealthy Americans who did not want to be seen donating to Richard Nixon’s campaign fund, or who wanted to exceed or circumvent federal election contribution laws. They paid Stans in either cash or goods such as bonds, gold, stock certificates, or other valuable but untraceable goods. Stans then transferred all these payments to cash and deposited them in an account in Mexico City. This Mexican account was out of reach for federal election investigators, but not the FBI. Funds were then transferred from Mexico to accounts across the United States, mainly with banks whose managers or directors were friendly to Richard Nixon and who would not ask many questions as to the funds’ origins. The money in these accounts was then either transferred to CRP directly or to agents whom CRP hoped to keep out of official records, such as the Watergate burglars.