The Liddy appellate opinion traces four Mexican bank checks and another check, totaling $114,000, through Bernard Barker’s Miami account. Most was withdrawn, and Liddy returned $111,500 in hundred-dollar bills to campaign treasurer Hugh Sloan. Sloan also testified that he disbursed $199,000 in cash to Liddy. Investigators recovered traceable bills from the burglars and their hotel rooms. [1]
This is subtler than a cartoon in which one campaign donor knowingly writes a check labeled burglary. Cash was converted, returned to a campaign fund, mixed and disbursed again. The evidentiary power lies in connecting people, accounts and currency across the chain, not in assuming every contributor understood the final purpose of a payment. [1]
The FBI’s released investigative summary records attention to the Dahlberg and Ogarrio checks and delays in authorizing interviews about that trail. A foreign bank or foreign intermediary can be important without proving that a foreign state sponsored the crime. The source and destination of money, the reason for routing it and the knowledge of each person are separate factual questions. [2]
The June 23 tape records Haldeman’s concern that investigators were reaching campaign-connected names. Nixon’s response helped turn the financial inquiry into an obstruction issue. The money trail therefore mattered twice: it linked the operation to campaign resources, and efforts to stop examination of it generated further evidence against officials. [3]