How did JFK’s campaign obtain this incriminating evidence? By paying the contemporary equivalent of $100,000 to a Los Angeles accountant named Phillip Reiner, one of the Hughes middlemen used to conceal Nixon’s role in the deal. Reiner was a Democrat who recently had had a falling-out with his partners. With his attorney, Reiner had contacted Robert Kennedy, his brother’s campaign manager. Soon after, a break-in occurred at the accountant’s old office – and the Kennedys suddenly acquired a thick file filled with secret records documenting Nixon’s shady deal. (Reiner’s estranged partner filed a burglary report with the police, but the crime was never solved.)
With hard evidence in hand, the Kennedy camp passed the dirt to Anderson.
News outlets around the country trumpeted the revelations in headlines. The political hit inflicted maximum damage on Nixon and reinforced his conviction that his enemies in the press and politics were out to get him…
Indeed, the mysterious break-in to recover Nixon’s incriminating financial documents convinced him that such burglaries were standard practice in national politics. Nixon vowed that he would never be caught unprepared again, and he ultimately established his own corps of hard-nosed operatives to carry out espionage and sabotage, which culminated in the botched break-in a dozen years later at the Watergate office of the Democratic Party.
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