chunk: Over the next few weeks, Woodward and Bernstein connect the five burglars to thousands of dollars in diverted campaign contributions to Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP, or CREEP). Bradlee and others at the Post dislike the two young reporters' reliance on unnamed sources like Deep Throat, and wonder why the Nixon administration would break the law when the President is likely to defeat Democratic nominee George McGovern.
  Through former CREEP treasurer Hugh W. Sloan, Jr. (Stephen Collins), Woodward and Bernstein connect a slush fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars to White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldemanâ"the second most important man in this country"âand former Nixon Attorney General John N. Mitchell, now head of CREEP. They learn that CREEP used the fund to begin a "ratfucking" campaign to sabotage Democratic presidential candidates a year before the Watergate burglary, when Nixon was behind Edmund Muskie in the polls.