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Investigators expect other pieces of the cover-up to fall into place soon. Last week the IRS agreed to let the Watergate committee examine "relevant" portions of its files on Rebozo, Rose Mary Woods and the President's brothers. The agency finally gave in when a memo from Lenzner was leaked; it attacked the IRS for truckling to the White House. Lenzner charged that it was not until a year after the disclosure of the $100,000 contribution that the agency got around to interviewing Rebozo about the matter. Even then, in May 1973, its investigation was perfunctory. IRS Agent John Bartlett told Rebozo that he had been cleared before all the relevant documents had been examined. Rather than talking to Rose Mary Woods directly, Bartlett got in touch with Rebozo's attorney, who talked with White House Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt, who obtained a letter from Miss Woods explaining her role in the matter. Buzhardt composed the letter, in which the President's secretary said that she was aware of the contribution but had no further details to offer about it.
Buzhardt, always in the background of recent White House maneuvers, may turn out to be a key figure in the $100,000 misunderstanding. "There is some evidence," says a committee staff member, "that he was put in charge of the Hughes-Rebozo cover-up." Buzhardt appeared before the Watergate committee but provided so little information that he has been summoned again. "It was an incredible performance," says an investigator. "He couldn't remember anything—not even what he was doing two days before he testified."
The Real Problem. Some people in the White House claim to have better memories and such misgivings in the present atmosphere that they are even willing to suggest that the real problem with the use of the $100,000 is that some of it went to the President himself. This story has it that in his first talk with Kalmbach, Rebozo said that the money had gone to the "Nixon brothers," Rose Mary Woods and others, letting Kalmbach mistakenly assume—as Rebozo had intended—that by Nixon brothers he was excluding the President. If that tale, which is being leaked to investigators by some White House aides, should prove accurate, it would be damaging almost beyond calculation to the President's position.
In the course of the investigation, Lenzner's tactics have managed to infuriate the White House, the minority staff members of the Watergate committee and occasionally even the majority staff members, particularly since Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski has pursued his own investigation into the $100,000. Lenzner's detractors accuse him of resorting to underhanded methods at the last moment to make up for a lackluster record of investigation and an abrasive performance as a committee interrogator. Complains Chief Minority Counsel Fred Thompson: "Certain members of the majority staff are panicking now that we're getting close to the deadline. We are seeing another onslaught of 'sources close to the committee' stories, evidently for the aggrandizement of a few staffers."