April 6/7, 1972

Sorry, I slipped behind again...

The next step was funding Liddy's projects. That happened, Emery reports, around April 6. Why is that day important? Because the new FECA went into effect on April 7, 1972, and that was important because it began disclosure of campaign spending and contributions. And that was important, among other reasons, because a whole lot of people who wanted Nixon to know they supported him didn't necessarily want others to find out. The results was that the campaign committee was overflowing with unregulated money, much of it actually in cash.

Some of which went to G. Gordon Liddy, in order to get Gemstone going, right around the time that the deadline hit and money suddenly had to be accounted for in a totally different way.

(Not that it always was, with the Nixon men, as you might expect. After all, if cash was sitting there, who was to say whether it had materialized before or after the deadline, or at least perhaps it was okay if it had been pledged before the deadline but only actually showed up later. At least, that's what the Committee's lawyer basically was telling them. That lawyer? G. Gordon Liddy, wearing another of his hats. They wound up getting in trouble for campaign finance, too.