McGovernites' index card on Segretti

# The Story Of a GOP Trickster

The great gummy fungus called the Watergate case refused to curl up and die. Day by day, new details appeared, confirming the existence of a well-financed, well-organized eighteen-month GOP campaign to defame and confuse the Democratic opposition through espionage, legal and otherwise. Last week NEWSWEEK uncovered a new Republican operative—a Midwestern political sabotage agent who says he was recruited, coached, supplied and paid at least $2,000 by the GOP's amateurish spymaster, Donald H. Segretti. A telephone link was established between Segretti and the home and White House office of Dwight Chapin, appointments secretary to the President. If the President had not been directly soiled by the case so far, his Administration and party certainly had been—and George McGovern was riding the issue hard (page 36) as his last best hope of giving Mr. Nixon a race by Election Day.

From the White House last week came a new chorus of who-me piety: "If anyone had been involved in such activities, they would not long be at the White House," said press secretary Ron Ziegler, because espionage is "something we don't condone and won't tolerate." Up Pennsylvania Avenue, however, at the offices of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, the strain was beginning to tell. To prevent further leaks to the press, documents were shredded, and staffers were put to work spot-tailing other staffers ("We don't want them sleeping around," said personnel chief Robert Odle). Campaign manager Clark MacGregor was trotted out on White House orders to denounce The Washington Post, and read an unsubstantiated charge-on which he would field no questions—that

the Democrats were engaged in hankypanky themselves. The strains of the Watergate affair had set off a fiery new round in the four-year-old running battle between the Administration and the press, as well as intense competition among the media to break the latest tidbit of revelation (page 76).

All week long, fresh details came to light about the manifold activities of the mercurial Segretti, who had gone into hiding once his name surfaced two weeks ago. Telephone records disclosed that at least 28 calls from Segretti's Los Angeles home—or charged to his toll card—were put through last spring to Dwight Chapin's home, or to the White House, or to the home or office of former White House consultant E. Howard Hunt, who was one of the seven men indicted for the Watergate break-in.

**Boss:** Chapin's name on the call list offered circumstantial support, at least, for the earlier report by a friend of Segretti's that Segretti had named Chapin as his White House contact. And political insiders found it nearly impossible not to look beyond affable Dwight Chapin to H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, the President's chief of staff, who has been Chapin's boss and tutor for ten years, first at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and now at the White House. "Dwight didn't do a thing without Haldeman's authority or approval," a former Nixon aide noted last week. Chapin, who had been a friend and classmate of Segretti's at the University of Southern California where they had played a front-line role in campus political wars (following page), ducked reporters' questions with a "no comment," but the White House air was yeasty. "They told Chapin not to worry," one staffer said, "so he's

walking around trying not to worry.”

Whatever his connection with Chapin, Segretti clearly had a contact somewhere in the White House. He had jumped into big-time politics in 1962, while still an undergraduate, working with Chapin and fellow USC man Ron Ziegler on Mr. Nixon's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. Segretti spent a year in England after leaving USC, picked up a law degree at Berkeley and in 1968 entered the Army for three years, ending up in the Judge Advocate General's corps in Vietnam.

Back in the U.S. in February of 1971, while still in the service, he was invited by a White House official to lunch at the Golden Table, a restaurant just down the street from the State Department. A former CIA operative was also present: the purpose of the lunch was to check out Segretti for a possible role in the political intelligence operation then being put together by Administration aides. The ex-CIA man seemed unimpressed, but Segretti was evidently hired anyway. For the last half of 1971 he waterbugged around the country—Portland, Ore., Albuquerque, N.M., New York City, Manchester, N.H., Knoxville, Tenn., Tampa, Fla., as well as Washington on several occasions.

Early this year Segretti evidently turned up in the Middle West with a supply of funds and authority to hire agents. One of his top recruits, NEWSWEEK's Nicholas Horrock and Tom Joyce learned last week, was Charles Svihlik, 24, of Indianapolis, a former Young Republican leader and currently a state deputy GOP chairman. Svihlik told friends that Segretti, using the cover name Simmons, called Svihlik in early February, giving the name of Svihlik's friend Thomas Visny. (Visny, accord-

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Svihlik: $2,000 from a 'chipmunk'

Haynie © Louisville Courier-Journal

'Oh, you naughty little devils, you!'

30

Newsweek, October 30, 1972

Page 2

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1972

Mao-Tse-tung

Mao's
Triumph

In 1957 Mao wrote: "The actual situation when the United States controls the majority in the UN is only provisional and eventually will change."

Mao has been right! The United States has lost the majority and its influence is decreasing. The Chinese communist party declares now that Nixon comes to Peking to present America's capitulation.

Meantime, horrors transpire from Chinese communist prisons. Macists have gouged eyes with sulphuric acid and have cut tongues and hands of their helpless victims. In Tien-shin, China, Catholic priests have been even buried alive. At least 100,000 Christians are imprisoned today in China.

Rev. Richard Würmbrand, who spent himself 14 years in communist prisons, describes in his books the courageous acts of faith of our suffering Christian brethren in communist countries.

Be interested in the plight of our persecuted brethren behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains.

Mail coupon for the book, "Tortured for Christ" by Rev. Richard Würmbrand, Translated in 27 languages.

South Says North Yemen Took
Red Sea Isle; Wants It Back

ADEN, Oct 9 (Reuters)-The South Yemeni government today acquired North Yemen of sealing the island of Kamaran, in the Red Sea, and said that it would use all possible peaceful means to regain the island, but that it would use force if diplomacy failed.

We have enough force at our disposal to recover the island.

(The embassy added that North Yemen would welcome a visit to the island by the Arab League committee mediating the conflict between the two countries).

Mr. Khameri said today that about 4,000 persons live on the 80-square-mile island.

Mr. Khameri said about 1,000

Chou Talks
Of Succession
With Editors

Collective Rule
May Follow Mao

(Continued from Page 1)

Premier Alexei Kosygin in 1965: "Now that you don't want

China Trade
Boom Is Held
Unlikely Soon

But U.S. Official
Cites Peking Policies

By Stanley Karnow

WASHINGTON

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