Legacy of Secrecy (140 page)

between November 1970 and March 1971 that caused Helms to change

his mind and help Rosselli?19

In a move that would change the course of Nixon’s presidency, Johnny

Rosselli had resumed contact with columnist Jack Anderson on January

11, 1971. On January 18, Anderson ran the first of two new articles about

the CIA-Mafia plots, asking again, “Could the plot against Castro have

backfired against President Kennedy?” The new articles discussed “six

[CIA] attempts against Cuba’s Fidel Castro,” including those involving

CIA-trained “Cuban assassination teams equipped with high-powered

rifles.” Anderson said the Castro assassination plot he was writing about

“began as part of the Bay of Pigs operation . . . to eliminate the Cuban

dictator before the motley invaders landed.” Anderson’s linking the Bay

of Pigs and the CIA-Mafia plots to JFK’s assassination would hit Nixon

especially hard. In addition, Anderson wrote that the plots continued

until March 1963 and for the first time named some of the participants:

Rosselli, Harvey, O’Connell, and Maheu.20

Anderson’s column didn’t mention Trafficante, Giancana, or David

Morales—meaning that someone as knowledgeable as Helms would

realize Rosselli had more bombshells to drop, if he chose. Even worse for

Helms, Anderson had spoken to former CIA Director John McCone, who

“vigorously denied that the CIA had ever participated in any plot on

Castro’s life. Asked whether the attempts could have been made with-

out his knowledge, [McCone] replied: ‘It could not have happened.’”

Helms knew how much he’d kept hidden from McCone, more than

Anderson had written about—which might help to explain the inac-

tion of INS while Rosselli was in prison. Even though the US Attorney

in Los Angeles requested that Rosselli not be deported until after he’d

served his sentence, that doesn’t explain why the INS didn’t continue

their proceedings while Rosselli was incarcerated, so they could deport

Rosselli immediately upon his release.21 Helms could have had the CIA

intervene with INS to stall Rosselli’s deportation on national security

grounds, without leaving a paper trail.

In another odd twist, Rosselli’s attorneys’ plea to the original judge

in July 1971, to reduce Rosselli’s sentence because of his service to the

CIA, was rejected in open court by the judge. Yet three months later, for

no apparent reason and with no additional hearing, the judge suddenly

took one year off Rosselli’s sentence. Rosselli would wind up serving

barely half of his original sentence.22

Jack Anderson’s early-1971 columns about Rosselli also alarmed the

Nixon White House, triggering concerns that would eventually lead to

the Watergate scandal. The day Anderson’s second column ran, Nixon’s

attorney general, John Mitchell, called Robert Maheu, who was being

pressured by a grand jury at the time. Maheu immediately flew to

Washington and told Mitchell what he knew about the CIA-Mafia plots.

Maheu later told Anthony Summers that Mitchell was “shaking” when

he finished, which explains why Mitchell let Maheu avoid the grand

jury, in return for keeping the plots secret. Mitchell then had his assistant

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

attorney general look for any Justice Department files about the plots.

They hoped to prove that JFK and Bobby “had tried to kill Castro,” to

harm Edward Kennedy’s chances of running for president. However,

Summers points out that “Maheu’s information about the CIA-Mafia

plots . . . posed a threat as much to . . . Nixon as to the Kennedys.”23

The Anderson stories also “triggered a spate of memos inside the

Nixon White House,” according to Peter Dale Scott. A February 1, 1971,

memo to John Dean about “Jack Anderson’s column” and “Maheu’s

covert activities . . . with [the] CIA” warned President Nixon that

“Maheu’s controversial activities . . . might well shake loose Republican

skeletons from the closet.” Nixon’s young aides, like Chief Counsel John

Dean and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, didn’t know about the CIA-

Mafia plots, but they were worried about Maheu’s involvement with

Howard Hughes. Their worries ranged from money Nixon had received

from Hughes to Maheu’s friendship with Lawrence O’Brien, chairman

of the Democratic National Committee, which was headquartered at the

Watergate office complex. But Nixon’s concerns about the Jack Anderson

columns were even more serious than those of his aides.24

It has been long documented that in 1959 and 1960, Vice President

Nixon was President Dwight Eisenhower’s point man for Cuban opera-

tions. Peter Dale Scott, Anthony Summers, and other authors have made

an excellent case (detailed in
Ultimate Sacrifice
) that pressure from Nixon

spawned both the original 1959 CIA-Mafia plots brokered by Jimmy

Hoffa (with Jack Ruby on their fringe), and the more extensive plots

that began in the summer of 1960, with Maheu, Rosselli, Trafficante,

Giancana, and Fiorini.

Rosselli’s work for the CIA had continued through the time of JFK’s

assassination, when former Cuban president Carlos Prio—an associate

of both Nixon and Trafficante—infiltrated part of the JFK-Almeida coup

plan. A fall 1963 CIA memo says two of Prio’s partners “have become

associated [with] Richard Nixon in accordance with [a] Republican Party

plan [to] bring up the Cuban case before [1964] elections.”25

Nixon could ill afford to have it come out that his associates had

infiltrated a plot that backfired on JFK, or that the CIA was plotting

assassinations with the Mafia while he was vice president. Nixon had

enough direct and indirect ties to Trafficante and Hoffa that—as H. R.

Haldeman later indicated—Nixon probably suspected the CIA-Mafia

plots that spawned the Bay of Pigs invasion were somehow tied to JFK’s

murder.26

Nixon couldn’t share his concerns about the CIA-Mafia plots with

most of his closest aides; perhaps he told only his chief domestic advi-

sor, John Ehrlichman. However, Nixon’s other aides were worried about

other inside information Maheu might have told his friend O’Brien,

whom they felt wanted to help Senator Edward Kennedy run for presi-

dent in 1972. This included information about campaign contributions

from Hughes to Nixon that totaled at least $100,000 and possibly much

more.27 While most Nixon aides worried about the money secrets O’Brien

might know, Nixon’s biggest concern was the CIA-Mafia plots.

To deal with the overall problem, Nixon aides John Dean and H. R.

Haldeman turned to the Mullen Company, a Washington public rela-

tions firm. The company often worked for the CIA, offering services that

included providing cover for CIA employees, and also counted Howard

Hughes as a client. Robert Bennett (in 2008, a longtime Republican US

senator from Utah) had recently taken over the firm. In a January 26,

1971, memo, Nixon aide Chuck Colson described Bennett as “a trusted

and good friend of the Administration.” Though he was not mentioned

in that White House memo, working for Bennett at the Mullen Company

was a man who had supposedly retired from the CIA the previous year,

a figure whose name would soon be forever linked with those of Nixon,

Dean, Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman: E. Howard Hunt.28

E. Howard Hunt, who would figure so prominently in the Watergate

scandal, had apparently left the CIA in 1970 to work for the Mullen

PR firm at least in part because President Nixon was pressing Richard

Helms on two fronts. As detailed by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist

Thomas Powers in his 1979 biography of Helms, the CIA Director had

faced increasing demands from Nixon in 1970 for more CIA involvement

in domestic operations against his critics.29 Nixon also didn’t want other

federal agencies, or US military intelligence, to find out about his ever-

increasing illegal campaign contributions, not just from Hughes, but

from foreign governments (South Vietnam, the US-backed junta running

Greece), large corporations, and mob-linked sources. The President and

his staff tried to take control of the US government’s large, mostly illegal

domestic surveillance operation, with a view toward using it against

Nixon’s enemies and keeping damaging intelligence about the crimes

of Nixon and his allies under their control.30

One solution Helms developed was to have CIA personnel per-

form such operations, but only after they were apparently no longer

employed by the CIA.31 As for who would be chosen for such assign-

ments, Helms had another consideration. Even before the early-1971

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Jack Anderson articles, Nixon knew the potential political problems that

could be caused by the exposure of his role in the covert operations that

developed into the Bay of Pigs. As Nixon Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman

wrote in his autobiography, President Nixon had been trying since just

after he took office in early 1969 to get “all the facts and documents the

CIA had on the Bay of Pigs.”32

Amazingly, Helms had turned down the President’s order, which had

been conveyed by John Ehrlichman. After six months of waiting, Nixon

commanded that Helms come to the Oval Office, so he could personally

“give him a direct order to turn over” the material. However, after Nixon

and Helms had “a long secret conversation” in private, Nixon told his

staff “to forget all about [it]” and stop “trying to obtain” the Bay of Pigs

information, though Nixon would soon change his mind.33

Helms’s refusal, and the fact that the Republican Nixon had retained

Helms as his CIA Director from the previous Democratic administration,

raises the possibility that Helms had subtly blackmailed Nixon to keep

his post in the new administration. Helms might have told Nixon that

as long as he was CIA Director, he would make sure that material in CIA

files embarrassing to the President (which Helms could have described

only vaguely) would be kept secret. As Senator Howard Baker would

say years later, after the Watergate investigation, “Nixon and Helms

have so much on each other, neither of them can breathe.”34

In 1960, E. Howard Hunt had been a key player in the political plan-

ning that led up to the Bay of Pigs, when he worked with Vice President

Nixon’s national security advisor, General Robert Cushman. In 1969,

Nixon had appointed General Cushman to be Deputy Director of the

CIA, under Helms—and yet Nixon still couldn’t get the Bay of Pigs

material.35 Even so, Nixon’s pressure on Helms continued, for both the

material and for more domestic covert operations.

From that perspective, it’s logical that Helms would turn to his trusted

protégé, E. Howard Hunt, to help him deal with the two Nixon issues.

Just as Hunt had apparently “retired” from the CIA in 1965, for his covert

assignment to Spain at the time of the Cubela-Artime plots, Hunt once

more appeared to retire from the CIA on April 24, 1970. Only 51, Hunt

immediately joined the Mullen Company, which had long assisted the

CIA. According to a handwritten note on Hunt’s CIA retirement memo,

Helms’s Deputy Director for Plans told Hunt to “‘stay in touch’—that

the firm does provide cover” for CIA operatives.36

Declassified CIA memos, some possibly withheld from Watergate

investigators, make it clear that even after his retirement Hunt was still

involved in CIA matters. Four weeks after Hunt’s “retirement,” two CIA

officials said a Covert Security Approval “under project QKENCHANT

was requested concerning Mr. Hunt.” Five months later, the “Corpo-

rate Cover Branch” of the CIA granted the “Covert Security Approval”

allowing Hunt to be used for CIA operations.37

Peter Dale Scott summed up Hunt’s CIA status after his official

retirement date by saying “we now have the CIA’s first post-Watergate

memo on Howard Hunt, showing that in 1970 he had not retired from

the CIA, but instead had been released on covert assignment to the

Mullen Agency.”38 An internal CIA investigation—after Watergate and

the firing of Richard Helms—found that during Hunt’s first so-called

retirement in 1965, when he went to Spain, “the statement disseminated

for consumption within the Agency was that Mr. Hunt was retiring,”

but a former CIA official told investigators that “this was not generally

believed” within the Agency.39

The bottom line is that after his “retirement,” Hunt was available to

handle domestic operations in a more deniable way for Helms. Much of

the time, the CIA assisted Hunt as if he were still an Agency employee,

supplying fake identities, a disguise, technical equipment, and photo

processing. When Hunt asked the CIA “for an individual having skills

in the area of locks and surreptitious entry [for a break-in involving] the

Howard Hughes organization in Las Vegas,” the CIA referred a former

Agency employee to Hunt.40

Hunt could be useful not only in handling domestic operations Helms