During the fall of 1972, investigators sought to determine the particulars of the secret campaign slush fund maintained by the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP). On October 25, the Washington Post asserted that former campaign treasurer, Hugh W. Sloan, Jr., had testified before a grand jury that White House Chief of Staff H. R. (Bob) Haldeman and four other individuals had access to a secret fund. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler denied its existence and Haldeman’s connection to it, telling a reporter that White House Counsel John Dean had informed him “there was no secret fund.”
One day later, the Congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) revealed the existence of a $350,000 fund in the office of CREEP Finance Chairman Maurice Stans. That same day, the Chair of CREEP, Clark MacGregor, acknowledged the existence of a campaign fund in several interviews. Despite reports to the contrary, he maintained that some of the money in the fund was left over from the 1968 campaign. MacGregor also stated that, based on what he had been told, all payments from the fund were appropriate.