There was an Admiral Moorer in that book - I think he had Woodward under his wing. In the book he is quoted as saying something like “It is ridiculous - unimaginable that we would be spying on the White House...â€
It was many years later that I read an article (U.S. News - 1990’s??) where Admiral Moorer was caught up in some scandal where they posed as military museums and got stuff from the military at a discount, but sold a lot of it back off to foreign countries - perhaps even enemies. In that article hes is quoted as saying “It is ridiculous - unimaginable that we would be selling arms....”
Seriously - it was almost verbatium from his quote of 20-30 years earlier! So much so that even with my bad memory I was able to find the quote in the book and put the mag article in there as a bookmark. (Hmmm - now where is that, I know it is around here SOMEWHERE!)
I always wondered what Nixon meant when he was trying to protect the breakin guys (Cubans) and can be heard on the tapes (write before the silent part IIRC) saying something like “...that could open up that whole Cuban thing...” I always wondered if they were involved in the Bay of Pigs, and Nixon was trying to protect that (and Kennedy).
In spite of his problems, Nixon really had a passion for keeping the dirty secrets of the government secret - regardless whether they were his secrets or not. (The Pentagon Papers were created under LBJ and supposed to be secret). And the State and Military going against the Presidency which it sounds like here he wanted to keep quiet. Both things if he had spun them the other way may have helped him.
Admiral Thomas Moorer was Bob Woodward’s boss. Moorer was one of the four sources who told the authors that Woodward had been briefing Alexander Haig, something that Woodward had been denying in public.
Nixon had thought that Atty Gen’l John Mitchell had planned the break in. But Nixon never asked Mitchell. Mitchell thought Nixon must have planned it. But Mitchell never asked Nixon. Both men thought they were protecting the other.
Nixon selected his own investigator inside the White House to learn what had happened. He picked John Dean. Very bad luck for Nixon.
Dean was able to control and direct the flow of information concerning Watergate. When Dean saw that the Senate investigators were closing in and about to discover his role he ran to the Senate and said “I can give you the President”.