Martin F. Dardis, 83; Investigator Linked Watergate Burglars to Nixon

Martin F. Dardis, the Florida investigator whose probe of the crisp $100 bills found on the Watergate burglars provided a vital link to President Nixon’s reelection campaign, has died. He was 83.

Dardis died Tuesday of a vascular condition at a nursing home in Palm City, Fla., his daughter Erin Dardis told the Associated Press.

Just weeks after the burglary at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., Dardis got a tip that the currency the men had been carrying came from the Miami branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Dardis, then the chief investigator for Dade County State Atty. Richard Gerstein, made some inquiries at the Federal Reserve and found that the bills came from a branch of the Republic Bank in Miami.

He subpoenaed the bank’s records for Bernard L. Barker, one of the Watergate burglars who lived in Miami and had worked for the CIA during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The records showed two accounts that contained five cashier’s checks totaling more than $114,000. Four of the checks came from a Mexico City bank, but the fifth check -- for $25,000 -- came from a Boca Raton bank and was from Kenneth H. Dahlberg.

The fifth check proved to be the key link to Nixon’s reelection apparatus, as Dahlberg turned out to be a longtime Nixon loyalist and fundraiser who served as director of his Midwestern campaign in the 1968 election.

Some weeks later, Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post went to Miami to meet with Dardis and review what he had found through his subpoena. Dardis showed him the bank records and pointed out the Dahlberg connection but didn’t know who he was.

Bernstein and his colleague Bob Woodward followed the trail to Dahlberg, who said he gave the check to officials of the Nixon reelection campaign. It was the first direct link between the Watergate break-in and funds donated to Nixon’s presidential campaign.

Years later, Woodward told the Miami Herald that Dardis’ investigative work had been pivotal.

“In a literal sense, it was the connective tissue,” Woodward said.

For his part, Dardis felt that his contributions to the Post reporters’ Watergate probe were never fully recognized. He resented being portrayed in “All the President’s Men,” their account of the investigation, as a “buffoon.” In the film of the book, he was portrayed by actor Ned Beatty.

Had he never investigated the Watergate break-in, Dardis would have still had a colorful life.

As a teenager, he dropped out of school and rode the rails. He lied about his age and joined the Army at 16.

He would eventually be awarded a Silver Star for saving a downed flier from behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Years later, Dardis would recall that the flier mistook him for the enemy and nearly shot him.

After the war, Dardis went into police work in upstate New York and Florida before working as an investigator, first for the Florida attorney general and then the Dade County state attorney.

“He was like a character out of pulp fiction,” Miami Herald columnist and author Carl Hiassen, a friend of Dardis, said in the Herald’s obituary Thursday.

Hiassen called him “an incredible sleuth.... He could get any piece of information he wanted from anyone.”

After the Watergate probe was finished, Dardis helped break up some drug rings in South Florida and probed financial scams at a dog track and a hospital in Miami. He later worked for Sports Illustrated as an investigative reporter looking into high-stakes gambling and possible point shaving by members of the Detroit Pistons during the 1989-90 NBA playoffs. He was also one of the authors of the book “Money Players: Days and Nights Inside the New NBA” (1997).

Perhaps the oddest coincidence of his investigative career came during the probe of the Watergate money. While questioning Dahlberg to see if Florida laws had been violated, the two men exchanged World War II stories.

Dahlberg, a flier, recalled being shot down behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge and of his eventual rescue by an Army sergeant, whom he almost shot.

The rescuer was Dardis, and years later he did become the enemy.

“I should have shot him when I had the chance,” Dahlberg once wryly told a reporter.

Dardis will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.