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 Columbia Plaza 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 guilt elsewhere. On May 9, 1973, the Ervin
committe accordingly subpoenaed Russell's telephone, job, and bank records. Two days
later Russell replied to the committee that he 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, Deep Throat warned Woodward that "everybody's life is in
danger." On May 18, while the staff of the Ervin committee were pondering their next
move vis-avis Russell, Russell 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.
Russell was convinced that he had been the victim of an attempted assassination. He told
his daughter after leaving the hospital that he believed that he had been poisoned, that
someone 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, Russell was still very weak and pale. But now, although
he remained on the payroll of James McCord, 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 the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA) on March 17, 1973. In June, 1973 Leonard was special counsel
to George Bush personally, hired by Bush and not by the RNC. Leonard says today that
his job consisted in helping to keep the Republican Party separate from Watergate,
deflecting Watergate from the party "so it would not be a party thing." [fn 29] As Hougan
tells it, "Leon was convinced that Watergate was a set-up, that prostitution was at the
heart of the affair, and that the Watergate arrests had taken place following a tip-off to the
police; in other words, the June 17 buglary had been sabotaged from within, Leon
believed, and he intended to prove it." [fn 30] "Integral to Leon's theory of the affair was
Russell's relationship to the Ervin committee's chief investigator, Carmine Bellino, and
the circumstances surrounding Russell's relocation to Silver Spring in the immediate
aftermath of the Watergate arrests. In an investigative memorandum submitted to GOP