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Show On t wooded knoll near their home, author Jack Anderson and seven of his children inspect the spot from which Justice Department agents kept him under surveillance, hoping to discover his sources. The Anderson youths retaliated by keeping a careful watch on the government agents. Gettings admitted afterward that it had been "suggested " he go after Smith. "We probably did have the wrong man," acknowledged the prosecutor. In 1971, the President formed his private Plumbers Squad, including G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, to plug news leaks, among them my columns. They concluded mistakenly that the source was located on India-Pakist- ID by Jack Anderson WASHINGTON, D.C had been a better reporter, I might at have prevented the break-i- n Washington's Watergate on June 17, "1972, and changed the course of history Two months before the Water-buggewere captured, I was told about their plan to eavesdrop on the Democrats. With a little more diligent digging, I might have uncovered enough details to print the story. This would have bioken up the plot and huspared President Nixon his current miliation. Or I might have altered history more to George McGovern's liking. I learned last August that E. Howard Hunt, the f I rs c 4 romantic spy, had packed his Watergate papers in eight cardboard boxes, smuggled them out of the White House and hidden them away in an associate's basement in Alexandria, Va. I almost gained access to Hunt's hidden papers, but he reclaimed them just ahead of me. These contained dramatic documentation that would have bared the whole Watergate skulduggery in time for the voters to act. Investigating each other My own Watergate story began long before themame became a household word. Shortly after President Nixon moved into the White House, he and I began to investigate one another. I became aware in 1970 that he was using lie detectors and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to find out who my sources were. Inside the Pentagon, suspected sources were grilled behind the forbidding doors of Room 3E993. Some were followed and their neighbors were questioned. Once, the gumshoes zeroed in on the wrong man, a mild, bespectacled Pentagon aide named Gene Smith, who Was badgered, threatened and finally subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Norfolk, Va. Smith denied under oath that he had ever talked to me. U S Attorney Brian Henry Kissinger's staff. Innocent staffers were yanked from behind their desks and dragged to polygraph machines, although it was the White House, not my sources, doing the lying about Pakistan. Eventually an entire section of Kissingers staff was scattered around the world, and Adm. Robert Welander who headed it was exiled to the Atlantic fleet. The Plumbe.s start working The Plumbers really went to work on me in March, 1972, after I published a memo from Dita Beard to her ITT superiors linking an antitrust settlement with a $400,000 pledge to help finance the Republican Convention. The Washington Post reported that the White House was "directing a major effort to discredit columnist Jack Anderson and the ITT memorandum he published . . the effort includes feeding negative PARADE 2 JULY 22. 1973 |