June 5, 1972

The first problem is that one of the two bugs they left on a phone didn't work. The second problem...oh, where to start? They're really not very well set up to turn their bug into useful campaign intelligence. Basically, they have McCord to get things working technically, which takes a while to get organized, and one guy, the recently hired Al Baldwin, in the room at the Howard Johnson listening to the intercepted calls. If he's eating lunch or distracted, then no one listens to the calls, which are not being recorded. The phone that they have isn't Lawrence O'Brien's; it's being used by several people, and (when someone is listening) it doesn't seem to be picking up anything useful. Plus the notes are a mess; on June 5, Liddy has his secretary, Sally Harmony, type up the notes as Liddy reads them -- Liddy has even bought "Gemstone" stationary.

Meanwhile, Richard Nixon has returned from a triumphant trip to the Soviet Union, which along with his China summit a bit earlier has suddenly positioned him nicely on foreign policy going into the election (doesn't hurt that the economy is booming, too). George McGovern had picked up two solid wins in Oregon and Rhode Island back on May 23, leading into what looked as if it would be the decisive California primary on June 6. The election is no longer nearly as precarious as it had looked even just three weeks earlier. But no one tells the men at CRP that; in fact, the demand for information appears to continue just as strongly as ever, and now there's a $250K budget to justify. Sitting around with one bug broken and nothing useful coming in isn't going to be enough for long.