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Caulfield took this proposal back to Dean, who replied: "Go back to him and tell him that we are checking on these wiretaps, but this time impress upon him as fully as you can that this offer comes from the very highest level of the White House." Caulfield asked Dean if there was a name he could use. "No," said Dean, "I don't want you to do that. But tell him that the message comes from the very highest levels." Caulfield asked: "Do you want me to tell him it comes from the President?" "No," replied Dean, "don't do that. Say it comes from way at the top."
Since Caulfield had brought up the name of Anthony Ulasewicz, another little man was called to testify. Once Ulasewicz had outlined his job as a sleuth, Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. asked him if he thought that the "wire-men" on the New York police force were more competent than the Watergate raiders. Replied Ulasewicz: "Any old retired man in the New York police department... would not have gone in [to the Watergate] with an army, that's for sure."
Judging from the testimony of two other participants, Bernard L. Barker and Alfred C. Baldwin, they were even more in the dark about the affair. A convicted Watergate conspirator who gave his address as Cell Block 4, District of Columbia Jail, Barker described how his love of Cuba, where he was born and spent half his life, led him to join the Bay of Pigs operation under the supervision of E. Howard Hunt Jr. Ten years later, Hunt once again sought his help. Barker made it clear that he was not being paid to think. "I was there to follow orders," he told the committee, "I was part of Hunt's image."
When pressed for his motives, Barker spoke vaguely of national security, as if he were not too certain what the concept meant. He said he had joined the Watergate operation to discover whether the Democrats were receiving campaign contributions from leftist organizations at home and abroad, but nothing to that effect was found. He also had helped burglarize the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, he said, in order to get information about a "traitor" who he claimed had passed secret documents to the Soviets.
Convert. Also caught in the Watergate web, Baldwin testified that even when he was arrested, he was not sure what was going on. A onetime FBI agent who had joined C.R.P. with the hope that he might "do well" and "obtain permanent employment," Baldwin had been working for weeks in the Howard Johnson's motel across from Watergate. With earphones on his head, he jotted down more than 200 conversations from bugs that had been successfully placed in telephones in the Democratic National Committee offices during the Memorial Day weekend. On the night of the breakin, he was given a walkie-talkie and instructed to keep in touch with the five raiders inside Democratic headquarters. Eventually, someone whispered over the walkie-talkie: "They've got us." The next thing he knew, Hunt stormed into the room, made a hurried trip to the bathroom, then darted out again, shouting to Baldwin to pick up the electronic equipment and the logs of the tapes and run. Baldwin called after the fleeing Hunt: "Does this mean I won't be going to [the convention in] Miami?"