More Money Laundering
With new campaign financing regulations scheduled to go into effect in April 1972, the CRP focused in the late winter of 1972 on raising as much money as possible. Campaign contributions would have to be reported after April 7, but the money received before then could be laundered and thus be untraceable when it came time to report donations. Herbert Kalmbach collected secret donations, much of it in cash, under the explicit instructions of Richard Nixon, who made it known that the reward of an ambassadorship would require a donation of a quarter of a million dollars.
Most of the money (but not all, to have no money to report on April 7 would have been an obvious falsehood) was laundered through banks in Mexico and Venezuela, some of it by the White House Plumbers. Cash was placed in safes in the White House and the offices of the CRP, run by former Attorney General Mitchell, who was leading the President’s re-election campaign. More cash was hidden in safe deposit boxes around the country. Some of the money was routed by E. Howard Hunt hired young volunteers for the Democratic Party, to report back to the CRP as spies.
CRP Finance director Maurice Stans began a fundraising drive across the country, focused on the South, and helped donors set up laundering systems so that their donations could not be traced. On this funding drive, Stans used the velvet glove and the iron fist. Promises of easy access to the White House and threats of government investigation if donations weren’t forthcoming were used as necessary. By law, corporations were not allowed to make direct donations to political campaigns, but the means of transferring funds via banks in Mexico and Venezuela, which did not allow the subpoena of bank records, allowed for these illegal contributions to be made.
The illegally acquired campaign funds were to be used by the CRP and the White House Plumbers to fund the so-called White House Dirty Tricks which were already being employed to discredit Democratic candidates, certain reporters, newspapers, and other news outlets. They were also used for travel and other expenses, and other illegal activities which would mark the remainder of Richard Nixon’s time in office. The campaign funds were also diverted, illegally, to cover the legal fees of the men caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. CRP funds were used to send thousands of telegrams to the White House claiming to support the mining of Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam, prepared by campaign operatives under false names.
Nixon’s defenders have long claimed that these operations were all done without his approval or even knowledge and that they were deliberately kept from the President. The papers and tapes held in the Nixon Presidential Library and the later testimony of thousands of individuals inside the administration and outside of government provides overwhelming evidence that Nixon was not only aware of the fundraising and its illicit use, in many instances he directed where some of the money was to be spent. Following the arrest of the Watergate burglars, for example, Nixon called Haldeman and suggested that he have Bebe Rebozo start a fund for their defense in Miami. The slush fund money could then be deposited in the defense fund.