American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us (12 page)

We know today—but it wasn't public knowledge back then—that Desmond FitzGerald, who died of a sudden heart attack on the tennis court in 1967, had ended up in charge of all the anti-Castro plots in 1963. And he'd had his CIA Special Affairs Staff keeping tabs on a fellow named Lee Harvey Oswald.

A few days before the break-in to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, the CIA called John Ehrlichman to say that their own assistance to Hunt was being terminated. Ehrlichman says he hadn't realized the CIA was aiding Hunt in the first place. Hunt told Ehrlichman that the latest operation was a failure: the Ellsberg dossier had not been found—even though one of the Cuban exiles involved in that break-in remembered photographing the psychiatrist's notes on Ellsberg. The film taken by the Minox spy camera was passed along to Hunt, who apparently turned it over as part of his regular deliveries to Richard Helms at the CIA. This tells me that Hunt was misleading the White House, at the same time that he was still playing ball with the Agency.

Soon after this, Nixon renewed his pursuit of the CIA's records. He sent an order to Ehrlichman: Tell Helms to fork over “the full file [on the Bay of Pigs] or else.” So Ehrlichman went to see Helms, twice within four days. At the second meeting, Helms asked to see Nixon privately once again. A transcript of their tape-recorded session in the Oval Office on October 8, 1971, was released by the National Archives in 2000. Would somebody tell me why a potential bombshell like this had to wait thirty years for us to know about, after all of the participants are dead? Before Helms came into the room, Ehrlichman briefed Nixon on the CIA director's latest excuse for not turning over the documents:

“[Helms] said that his relationship with past presidents had been such that he would not feel comfortable about releasing some of this very, very dirty linen to anyone without first talking it through with you, because he was sure that when you become a former president you would want to feel that whoever was at the agency was protecting your interests in a similar fashion. This is incredibly dirty linen.” Ehrlichman then continued: “Helms is scared to death of this guy Hunt that we got working for us because he knows where a lot of the bodies are buried. And Helms is a bureaucrat first and he's protecting that bureau.”

When Helms arrived, Nixon pounded his desk and shouted: “The president needs to know everything! The real thing you need to have from me is this assurance: I am not going to embarrass the CIA! Because it's (certainly?) important. Second, I believe in dirty tricks.” (Ehrlichman's notes quote Nixon as saying to Helms: “Purpose of request for documents: must be fully advised in order to know what to duck; won't hurt Agency, nor attack predecessor.”)

Helms, at least pretending to be contrite, responded: “I regard myself, you know, really, as working entirely for you. And everything I've got is yours.” He held up a file folder and continued, “Should I turn this over to John [Ehrlichman]?” Nixon said, “Let me see it.”
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It was a slim report by a Marine colonel who'd been assisting the CIA during the Bay of Pigs planning. In his memoirs, Nixon would complain that what Helms gave him was “incomplete ... The CIA protects itself, even from presidents.”

The day after the meeting with Helms, Ehrlichman sent a staffer to Las Vegas for a four-hour chat with Hank Greenspun. It wasn't long after that when Hunt and his team of Cuban exiles began their discussions about burglarizing Greenspun's safe. The CIA's Office of Security already had 16 agents shadowing columnist Jack Anderson, who then was invited by Helms to a long lunch. Ostensibly Helms wanted to try to dissuade Anderson “from publishing certain sensitive classified material in his forthcoming book.” A week after that, Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy started drawing up plans to “neutralize” Anderson. The CIA Office of Security was using another “retired” agent, James McCord, to keep tabs on the columnist. McCord also began working part-time at the White House for the CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President). Nixon would be gone when, in 1975, the CIA admitted to Congress its “practice of detailing CIA employees to the White House and various government agencies,” including “intimate components of the Office of the President.” And we thought double agents only worked against foreign elements!

Hunt and McCord had been acquainted since the mid-Fifties, although Hunt lied under oath that they didn't meet until April 1972. McCord, according to the
New York Times
, was “believed to have played a role in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.” The CIA denied that, but recently released documents show that in early 1961, “James McCord and David (Atlee) Phillips ... launched a domestic operation against the FPCC.” That's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the same organization that Oswald suddenly joined in 1962. And David Phillips was not only involved in the anti-Castro plots, but was also said to have met with Oswald in the summer of' 63 in Dallas.
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Early in 1972, Hunt's Plumbers and McCord's CREEP security unit had merged into the Gemstone plan, a wide-ranging series of illegal White House-based projects. Then, sometime on the night of May 1-2, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died in his sleep. Nixon's attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, immediately ordered Hoover's office sealed. Then the search for Hoover's secret files began. His personal secretary, Helen Gandy, later told Congress she destroyed many files marked “personal” at his home over the next few weeks. At Hunt's urgent request, Bernard Barker brought the Miami crew of Cuban exiles to Washington, where they made plans to break into Hoover's residence. But what happened to Hoover's trove remains unknown to this day.

Around this same time, in a conversation about the shooting that paralyzed Alabama governor George Wallace, Nixon suddenly flashed back to the Kennedy assassination and called the Warren Commission “the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated.” Somebody might have been able to ask what the president meant by that, except the tape transcript wasn't released by the National Archives until 2002!

Meantime, plans for a break-in to Lawrence O'Brien's office at Democratic National Committee headquarters moved ahead. One of the burglars, Frank Sturgis, said Hunt told him they were looking for “a thick secret memorandum from the Castro government, addressed confidentially to the Democrats ... a long, detailed listing [of the] various attempts made to assassinate the Castro brothers.”
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The burglars were also coached to look for “anything that had to do with Howard Hughes.”

On the night of June 17, five men, all using aliases, were caught red-handed inside the Watergate complex. McCord, the White House's “Security Chief,” was booked at the jail along with Sturgis, Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. Hunt's name was in two of the burglars' address books and his link to the operation became known within 24 hours. He quickly left Washington.

In later years, evidence came to light that McCord had likely botched the break-in intentionally. First, he went back and re-taped a garage-level door, which served as a telltale sign to the cops. McCord claimed to have removed the tape from all the doors, but actually several had been taped to stay unlocked. A few days later, all of McCord's papers were destroyed in a fire at his home, while a CIA contract agent stood by.
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Hunt made a whole series of “mistakes,” too, surrounding the Watergate burglary. Nixon, in his
Memoirs
, suggested—referring to the break-in to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office—that Hunt could have been “a double agent who purposely blew the operation.”
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There was also the matter of a $25,000 cashier's check that had been deposited into the bank account of a Miami real estate company owned by burglar Barker. This check, laundered through a fund-raiser for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, was the first link connecting the burglars to the CREEP—after Carl Bernstein of the
Washington Post
broke the story about it. Well, it turns out the check wasn't deposited by the CREEP. Liddy had given it to Hunt, who put it in Barker's account. So, money that should have stayed anonymous and untraceable then became an easy “mark” to track.

Three days after the break-in, Nixon called Haldeman, instructing him to “tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.... Ehrlichman will know what I mean.” Six days after the break-in, Hunt sent word through his boss at the Mullen Company that he wanted the White House to find him a lawyer. That same day, June 23, came Nixon's “smoking gun” conversation with Haldeman. When the presidential tape was released two years later, it became proof positive that Nixon had been involved in trying to cover up the burglary—and this led to his resigning before he could be impeached.

“Well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things,” Nixon said on the tape, referring to the CIA director. “Of course, this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things and we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.”
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On details of the Watergate burglary, the president seemed confused. Who ordered it? he asked Haldeman. Who was so stupid as to have given a CREEP check for $25,000 to Barker? Then Nixon instructed his aide to tell Helms: “The President's belief is that this is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because ah these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and we feel that ... that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case, period!”

That afternoon, Helms and his deputy were summoned to the White House, where Haldeman passed on Nixon's message. In his memoirs, Haldeman wrote: “Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, ‘The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.' Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms's violent reaction.” Haldeman reported back to Nixon that there was “no problem,” any leads “that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to the government” would be ignored.

The White House tape of that conversation trails off cryptically, full of “unintelligible” remarks. “Dulles knew,” Nixon said, referring to Allen Dulles, CIA director at the time of the Bay of Pigs who was fired by JFK and later named by LBJ to the Warren Commission. “Dulles told me. I know, I mean [unintelligible] had the telephone call. Remember, I had a call put in—Dulles just blandly said and knew why [unintelligible] covert operation—do anything else [unintelligible] .” Those “unintelligibles” might have told us something, wouldn't you guess?

The next day—seven days now since the Watergate burglars' arrest—on the tapes Nixon made some more “unintelligible” remarks about Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman who had been another member of the Warren Commission and a dissenter to its conclusion that Oswald acted alone. A few weeks after whatever Nixon said about him, Boggs died in the crash of a light aircraft over Alaska. Some suspected sabotage. The
Los Angeles Star
(November 22, 1973) reported that “Boggs had startling revelations on Watergate and the assassination of President Kennedy.”
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The Mullen company's man in Washington, Robert Bennett, met with his CIA case officer, Martin Lukoskie, in a Washington cafeteria. Lukoskie's memo was considered so sensitive that he hand-carried it to Helms, saying Bennett had steered reporters at the
Washington Post
and
Star
away from pursuing a coup d'etat-type scenario that would tie the CIA into a Watergate conspiracy. Bennett later admitted feeding stories to Bob Woodward at the
Post—
“with the understanding that there be no attribution.” It's yet another black mark against our media that the
Post
chose not to examine potential CIA complicity to any extent—despite the fact that every one of the Plumbers had a clear-cut CIA connection!

Eleven days after Hunt was arrested, the FBI's acting director, L. Patrick Gray, was summoned to the White house and instructed by Ehrlichman to deep-six the files from Hunt's personal safe. Gray recalled being told that the files were “political dynamite and clearly should not see the light of day.” Gray said he took the material home and burned it in his fireplace.
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Hunt began to threaten the White House with public disclosure of his other secret activities, unless he was paid off.

The House Banking Committee was starting to look into the Watergate break-in, so Nixon brought up the name of congressman Gerald Ford. “Gerry has really got to lead on this,” Nixon said. “I think Ehrlichman should talk to him. ... He's got to know it comes from the top.” Not long after that, the banking committee voted against issuing subpoenas concerning the break-in.

Why Ford? Almost a decade earlier, it was Nixon who recommended to President Johnson that Ford be put on the Warren Commission. There, Ford served as the FBI's informant about what the commission was up to. This was confirmed long afterward, in an FBI memo stating: “Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the commission. He stated that would have to be done on a confidential basis, however, he thought it had to be done.”
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