headquarters, and during one of these he appears to have planted an electronic eavesdropping
device in the phone of DNC worker Spencer Oliver which, when it was discovered, re-focussedpublic attention on the Watergate scandal at the end of the summer of 1972.
Russell was well acquainted with Carmine Bellino, the chief investigator on the staff of Sam Ervin's
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices. Bellino was a Kennedy operative
who had superintended the seamy side of the JFK White House, including such figures as JudithExner, the president's alleged paramour. Later, Bellino would become the target of George Bush's (^)
most revealing public action during the Watergate period. Bellino's friend William Birely later
provided Russell with an apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, (thus allowing him to leave his
room in a rooming house on Q Street in the District), a new car, and sums of money.
Russell had been a heavy drinker, and his social circle was that of the prostitutes, whom he
sometimes patronized and sometimes served as a bouncer and goon. His familiarity with the brothel
milieu faciliatated his service for the Office of Security, which was to oversee the bugging and
other surveillance of Columbia Plaza and other locations.
Lou Russell was incontestably one of the most fascinating figures of Watergate. How remarkable,
then, that the indefatigable ferrets Woodward and Bernstein devoted so little attention to him,
deeming him worthy of mention in neither of their two books. Woodward and met with Russell, but
had ostensibly decided that there was "nothing to the story. Woodward claims to have seen nothing
in Russell beyond the obvious "old drunk." [fn 27]
The FBI had questioned Russell after the DNC break-ins, probing his whereabouts on June 16-17
with the suspicion that he had indeed been one of the burglars. But this questioning led to nothing.
Instead, Russell was contacted by Carmine Bellino, and later by Bellino's broker Birely, who set
Russell up in the new apartment (or safe house) already mentioned, where one of the ColumbiaPlaza prostitutes moved in with him.
By 1973, minority Republican staffers at the Ervin committee began to realize the importance of
Russell to a revisionist account of the scandal that might exonerate Nixon to some extent by shifting
the burden of guiRussell's telephone, job, and bank records. Two days later Russell replied to the committee that helt elsewhere. On May 9, 1973, the Ervin committe accordingly subpoenaed (^)
had no job records or diaries, had no bank account, made long-distance calls only to his daughter,
and could do nothing for the committee.
On May 16-17, 1973, D18, while the staff of the Ervin committee were pondering their next move vis-avis Russell, Russelleep Throat warned Woodward that "everybody's life is in danger." On May (^)
suffered a massive heart attack. This was the same day that McCord, advised by his lawyer and
Russell's, Fensterwald, began his public testimony to the Ervin committee on the coverup. Russell
was taken to Washington Adventist Hospital, where he recovered to some degree and convalesced
until June 20. Rustold his daughter after leaving the hospital that he believed that he had been poisoned, that someonesell was convinced that he had been the victim of an attempted assassination. He (^)
had entered his apartment (the Bellino-Birely safe house in Silver Spring) and "switched pills on
me." [fn 28]
Leaving the hospital on June 20, Rusremained on the payroll of James McCord, hesell was still very weak and pale. But now, although he also accepted a retainer from his friend John Leon, (^)
who had been engaged by the Republicans to carry out a counterinvestigation of the Watergate
affair. Leon was in contact with Jerris Leonard, a lawyer associated with Nixon, the GOP, the
Republican National Committee, and with Chairman George Bush. Leonard was a former assistant
attorney general for civil rights in the Nixon administration. Leonard had stepped down as head of