Bob Bennett was thrown headfirst into the Watergate scandal from the first day - June 17.
"I'll never forget it. It changed my life." Bennett says he was pulled into the maelstrom of Watergate by circumstance - one of the planners worked for him. The break-in itself could have been planned, unknown to Bennett, in the offices of Bennett's firm. Some said Bennett was directly involved, although he was cleared by a later investigation. At one time, Bennett was named as "Deep Throat," the supposed White House insider who leaked valuable information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.Bennett and Woodward both say Bennett was not Deep Throat, although he was a source on several of Woodward's stories. But that gets ahead of the story. Here is how Bennett recalls Watergate:
Several years before the break-in, Bennett - son of then-Utah Sen. Wallace F. Bennett - left the Nixon administration and purchased the Washington, D.C.-based Robert R. Mullen & Co. public relations firm. Mullen had started as Dwight Eisenhower's press secretary in Europe and had a successful firm.
Bennett brought with him the PR accounts of billionaire Howard Hughes and Amtrack. Mullen already had many clients, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt was an employee at Mullen when Bennett arrived, working on a Housing, Education and Welfare Department account. "I knew nothing of Hunt's background other than he'd written 40 books," recalls Bennett. During the 1950s, Central Intelligence Agency officials approached Mullen and asked if they could use the firm's European offices as fronts for their spy work. Mullen agreed. Bennett said he purchased the firm from Mullen with Mullen never telling him that the company had a CIA contract. "This (CIA contract) came to light after I'd been working at Mullen for several months. I agreed to allow it to continue, since it had no connection at all with our regular business," says Bennett. After he learned of the CIA contract, he also learned that Hunt was retired from the CIA. "Because of his retirement restrictions, Hunt was unable to give me any more than the barest details of what he'd done" at CIA.
A few months after Bennett took over Mullen, top Nixon aide Chuck Colson - who Bennett knew from his years at the White House - called Bennett and asked "if I'd make Howard Hunt available to the White House on a part-time basis through the 1972 re-election campaign." Colson told Bennett that Hunt would be a consultant to Nixon. "I assured Chuck of my loyalty to the party and President Nixon and said that I'd rearrange Hunt's work schedule to make it possible for him to be available for whatever assignments Chuck might give him."
Shortly after, Hunt asked Bennett to meet a friend of his - G. Gordon Liddy, mastermind of the Watergate break-in. "We (three) went to lunch together, and Gordon indicated he might be able to bring some public relations business to the Mullen Co. He never did."
But Hunt and Liddy started meeting often, and behind closed doors, in Hunt's Mullen office. Bennett said he didn't mind, since for those hours Hunt's salary was paid by the White House, not by the Mullen Co.
Also at the time, Hunt asked Bennett's nephew, Bob Fletcher, if Fletcher knew a college student who might go to work as a "mole" in a Democratic campaign and report gossip around campaign headquarters. Fletcher introduced Hunt to Tom Gregory, whom Hunt recruited directly to work in the Edmund Muskie presidential campaign. "I did not recruit Gregory," says Bennett.
Shortly before the June 1972 break-in, Fletcher came to Bennett and asked if he'd meet with Gregory, who was unhappy with what Hunt was asking him to do. They met, and Bennett recalls, "It was during this meeting that Gregory told me of discussions (with Hunt) about break-ins and bugging. I told Tom that I had no idea this was what Howard was up to, and that Tom must leave the situation immediately." Bennett says he was never specifically told about a Watergate break-in plan but only that some people were thinking about some illegal break-ins. Bennett put Gregory's resignation letter on Hunt's desk but didn't see Hunt until after the June 17 break-in. After reading about the break-in in the morning Washington Post, Bennett called Hunt into his office and asked him if he knew anything about it. "He said he had knowledge of it but that he was not personally involved."
FBI agents soon called Bennett and started asking questions. After another discussion with Hunt, Hunt pulled Bennett into his office and told him that the White House suggested that Hunt leave the country "until the whole thing blew over." "Hunt then said that John Dean would be in touch with me to give me some money that I should pass along to his wife," recalls Bennett. That never took place. Several days later, Hunt called Bennett and Bennett fired him over the telephone. He had nothing more to do with Liddy or Hunt, although he was often called by media reporters and questioned by various authorities.
Bennett says because of various investigations, hearings and commissions working on the Watergate scandal, his involvement in the incident was never accurately or fully reported until the final Rockefeller Commission report - "which came out after all the convictions, resignations and books were finished." By then, the press wasn't much interested. "It is much more fun to go back to fragmentary evidence that can be misinterpreted than spend time with the dull but complete (Rockefeller) statement that says there is really nothing wrong with Bob Bennett," he says.
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(Additional information)
Self-serving and wimpy?
Wayne Owens and Bob Bennett see each other's role in Watergate differently. Says Owens of Bennett: There's not a chance Bob Bennett was Deep Throat. he didn't know enough. It's a self-serving invention he came up with to build his prestige by trying to show he was well-connected." Says Bennett of Owens: Owen didn't lost the 1974 Senate race because he was too tough on Richard Nixon, he lost in part because his televised appearance on the House Judicary Committee showed Owens was "ineffective and worse, wimpy."