WATERGATE AFFAIR Investigators’ allegations

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 15

WATERGATE AFFAIR Investigators’ allegations

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, November 1. Supporters of President Nixon “bugged” the Democratic Party headquarters to obtain details of intimate love affairs in addition to political information, according to a report by Congressional staff investigators.

Working for the House of representatives Banking Committee—which is controlled by Democrats —the investigators allege in their report that the “bugging” was at the instigation of the Committee to Re-elect President Nixon.

“It appears that the Nixon committee wanted the kind of information that would enable them to disrupt Demo-

cratic politics, as well as information of an intimate nature which could be used to smear the character of those working and dealing with the Democratic national committee,” the report says. “Rather than being a plan conceived and executed by over-zealous volunteers, as spokesmen of the Nixon committee have attempted to paint this scheme, it was conceived, directed, and executed for the benefit of the Nixon committee.”

The investigators base their allegations mainly on an interview with Mr Alfred Baldwin, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who has said he listened to conversations in a hotel room across the road from the committee headquarters. In a statement, the Committee to Re-elect President Nixon describes the report as “a dishonest collection of innuendo and fourth-hand hearsay,” and says that the House Banking Committee staff has relied on unnamed sources and “the unsupported statements of a confessed felon who is now making a career out of characterassassination for pay.” According to the investigators, Mr Baldwin told them: “I was instructed to listen to conversations involving political strategy, but if you got two secretaries discussing their love life, or a conversation involving someone in the Democratic national headquarters talking to someone other than his wife, and it was an intimate conversation, well, that was important, too.”

The report also alleges that another man, whose identity is not disclosed, told the staff investigators that Mr Hugh Sloan, the former treasurer of the finance sub-committee of the Committee to Re-elect the President, had talked of a plan to monitor the bank accounts of Democratic Senators and Congressmen. The investigators say that the Committee to Re-elect President Nixon received at least SUS3O,OOO through a Luxemburg bank late in March and in early April, before the law calling for the disclosure of sources of campaigni funds came into effect.