The story that still nags at me - Edward S. Muskie

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1987 by David Broder

Had those facts been known, I might havedescribed Muskie in different terms: not as a victim of his over-ambitious campaign strategy and his too-human temperament, but as the victim of a fraud, managed by operatives of a frightenened and unscrupulous president. That story surely would have had a different impact.

Given Loeb's history, there was ample reasonfor skepticism about the origins of the "Canuck letter.' Indeed, in my story about the Manchester incident, I devoted seven paragraphs to that subject, noting that "the Deerfield Beach telephone company does not list a Paul Morrison among the 15 Morrisons in its directory,' and noting that Loeb, while promising "a very interesting followup' on the letter, had not yet produced the author.

The story also quoted at length the denials ofthe senator and others who were with him in Florida that any such thing happened. But regrettably, none of us reporting the story pursued the mystery of authorship. We were in New Hampshire, tracking the candidates through the final week of the primary campaign. Paul Morrison, if he existed, was one thousand miles to the south. And the story, in our eyes, was not the provocation but the reaction.

It was not until seven months later, when Nixonwas sailing toward a landslide victory over McGovern and Muskie was back tending to his Senate business, that the mystery began to unravel. Marilyn Berger, then a colleague at the Post, told me that Ken W. Clawson, a former Post reporter who had gone to work at the White House as deputy director of information, had told her that he was the author of "the Canuck letter.'

I urged Berger to tell her story to Carl Bernsteinand Bob Woodward, and on October 10 they described "the Canuck letter' as part of a "massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf' of the reelection effort by White House and Nixon campaign officials. As Woodward and Bernstein spelled it out in their stories and book, All the President's Men, there was a trail of incidents going back to mid-1971 suggesting, in Muskie's words, that "somebody was out to ambush us.' Letters attacking other Democrats were sent out on facsimiles of Muskie's Senate stationery. Sensitive polling data disappeared from his headquarters. Phony campaign flyers were distributed in his name. Harassing phone calls were made to voters by people purporting to be Muskie campaign workers. On and on the list went, making it clear that Muskie was the victim of systematic sabotage.

Had Muskie made such charges the previouswinter without proof, he would likely have been judged paranoid or a cry-baby by most reporters. Had he been able at the time to provide the proof, the political history of the year would undoubtedly have been very different.

The coverage of the incident shows that whena reporter's information is incomplete, there is a great risk of misleading the reader. I put the Manchester speech into the context--accurately, I believe--of a campaign and a personality that were accessible to jurnalistic view. I did not put it into the context of campaign sabotage. Unwittingly, I did my part in the work of the Nixon operatives in helping destroy the credibility of the Muskie candidacy.