Legacy of Secrecy (143 page)

The Plumbers’ first, unsuccessful, attempted break-in at the Water-

gate offices of O’Brien occurred eight days after the Chilean Embassy

burglary, on May 22, with another failed attempt on May 23. The group

finally succeeded at the Watergate on May 28, 1972. Anthony Summers

writes that “Hunt’s Cubans photographed papers [and] planted bug-

ging devices . . . on two telephones.” Fiorini said that “we looked high

and low for this document” but didn’t find it. As with the final Watergate

bugging three weeks later, Nixon was far from Washington during the

May attempts.22

Several important developments took place before the group returned

to the Watergate for another burglary in June 1972. J. Edgar Hoover

had died on May 1, 1972, and his “personal and confidential” files were

reportedly destroyed soon after. In Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972,

Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace, who was running for the Demo-

cratic presidential nomination.23 Wallace’s injury removed a serious

threat to Nixon’s reelection, and though White House tapes show that

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Nixon and Colson discussed planting leftist literature in Bremer’s apart-

ment after the shooting, no earlier connection between Nixon’s men and

Bremer was found.24

Richard Helms had several meetings in May 1972, including some

with top entertainment executives, about turning E. Howard Hunt’s

spy novels into a weekly pro-CIA television series. That Helms pressed

the issue several times that month is important, because it confirms the

ongoing close relationship between Helms and Hunt, which is com-

pletely at odds with the image Helms would always present after Hunt’s

arrest. It also indicates the Watergate arrests were not engineered by

Helms and the CIA, as many authors and officials have claimed, since

Helms wouldn’t tie himself and the CIA so closely to Hunt in May,

knowing that Hunt would become infamous in June.25 Also in May,

Helms appointed former Miami Station Chief Ted Shackley to head the

CIA’s Western Hemisphere division. After Watergate, Shackley would

make several suspicious trips to Miami and Mexico City—where much

of the Watergate money was laundered—without telling the local CIA

Station Chief.26

In addition to Artime, Haig, Hunt, and the others mentioned so far in

this chapter, two more veterans of the covert war against Castro were

in positions in 1972 that would let them play key roles in the aftermath

of the Watergate burglaries. Alexander Butterfield had first worked

with Haig and Joseph Califano to resettle the Cuban-American troops

from Fort Benning. Charles Colson said Joseph Califano recommended

that Butterfield be hired as a Nixon aide. By June 1972, Butterfield was

responsible for arranging Nixon’s extensive taping system—which he

would dramatically reveal during questioning by Fred Thompson, just

over a year after McCord, Barker, and the others were arrested.27

General Alexander Haig, working in Nixon’s White House as Kiss-

inger’s aide in June 1972, had remained friends with his old boss from

1963, Joseph Califano. By June 1972, Califano was a partner at Williams

and Connally, the powerful Washington law firm of Edward Bennett

Williams. Though Williams had originally introduced Johnny Rosselli

to Robert Maheu, and had represented Hoffa and Giancana (and still

represented the Teamsters), Williams had spent his recent years building

a more reputable image. At the law firm, Califano’s clients included both

the Democratic National Committee (target of the Watergate burglaries)

and the
Washington Post
.28

Chapter Sixty-three

In events well-chronicled for decades, early on the morning of June 17,

1972, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Frank Fiorini, Eugenio Martinez,

and Virgilio Gonzalez broke into the Watergate offices of the Demo-

cratic National Committee, while E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy

watched from across the street. Ostensibly, their mission was to fix or

move a bug on the phone of Lawrence O’Brien’s secretary, but they

brought no additional bugging equipment. Instead, they had more than

a hundred rolls of film, and Frank Fiorini later said, “Our assignment

was to photograph 2000 documents that night.” In addition to looking

for the crucial Castro assassination document, Hunt had also told them

to watch for “anything that had to do with Howard Hughes,” which

would include items about Robert Maheu. They were also looking gen-

erally for anything that could damage Nixon or hurt the Democrats.1

For reasons still debated, the five burglars wound up being arrested by

Carl Shoffler and others, while Hunt and Liddy fled.

Joseph Califano’s key role in focusing attention on the Watergate

story has been overlooked by most historians and journalists. At 5:00

AM on the morning of the arrests, Califano was called with news of the

break-in at the offices of his client, the Democratic National Committee.

According to Evan Thomas, Califano was told that “the burglars had

been caught copying files and bugging telephones. Califano hung up

and called another of [his] firm’s clients, the
Washington Post
. Califano

suggested to . . . the managing editor that the Watergate burglary might

be a good story,” setting in motion the coverage that would make Wood-

ward and Bernstein famous. Califano’s instincts and timing continued

to be amazing later that morning, because after “Califano was told that

the police had found the phone number of the Committee to Re-Elect

the President on one of the burglars,” Califano asked Williams, “What

if this goes all the way to the White House?”2

The following evening, “Califano decided to file a suit for the Demo-

crats against [CREEP].” Though little-remembered today, the suit was

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important because the pre-trial discovery process kept the story barely

alive at a time when most American journalists continued to ignore the

incident. In Califano’s recent autobiography, he detailed for the first time

the many extralegal and illegal steps the Nixon White House attempted

in order to stymie the Democrats’ suit.3 Those were just some of the

illegal actions authorized by Nixon, to ensure that Watergate wouldn’t

impact the 1972 presidential election.

Jack Anderson bailed Fiorini out of jail, while Hunt and Liddy were

eventually tied to the break-in and arrested. Even before that, the Nixon

White House was in damage control mode. On June 20, 1972, Richard

Nixon called H. R. Haldeman and said to “tell Ehrlichman this whole

group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.” A confused Haldeman asked,

“The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this?” Nixon simply

said, “Ehrlichman will know what I mean.”4

Three days later, in the Oval Office, Nixon told Haldeman, “Well, we

protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things . . . Hunt will uncover

a lot of things. You open up that scab, there’s a hell of a lot of things . . .

tell [the CIA] 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.”5

Thus began Nixon’s effort to get Helms to persuade the FBI to back

off their Watergate investigation on national security grounds. Nixon

later told Haldeman that “when you get the CIA people in say, ‘Look,

the problem is that this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs things again.’

So they should call the FBI in and for the good of the country don’t go

any further into this case.”6

Just before Haldeman was to meet with Helms and General Walters to

discuss Watergate, Nixon said to “tell them that if it gets out . . . it’s likely

to blow the whole Bay of Pigs which we think would be very unfortu-

nate for the CIA.”7 Helms had been reluctant to obstruct the FBI, even

though three of those involved (McCord, Hunt, Barker) had worked for

the CIA and another (Martinez) was still on monthly retainer for the CIA

at the time of the break-in. So, Haldeman tried Nixon’s suggestion dur-

ing a June 23, 1972, meeting with Helms, saying, “The President asked

me to tell you this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs and

if it opens up, the Bay of Pigs may be blown.”

Helms erupted in rage. According to Haldeman, there was suddenly

“turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair leaning for-

ward and shouting, ‘The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this! I have

no concern about the Bay of Pigs!’” Haldeman was “absolutely shocked

by Helms’ violent reaction [and] wondered what was such dynamite in

the Bay of Pigs story?” Whatever it was, it worked, at least for a while,

since Helms soon issued a memo saying the CIA was requesting the FBI

“desist from expanding the investigation into other areas which may

well, eventually, run afoul of our operations.”8

Later, Haldeman said in his autobiography he realized that “in all

those Nixon references to the ‘Bay of Pigs,’ he was actually referring

to the Kennedy assassination.” In other words, “when Nixon said,

‘It’s likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing,’ he might have been

reminding Helms, not so gently, of the cover-up of the CIA assassination

attempts on the hero of the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro—a CIA operation

that may have triggered the Kennedy tragedy, and which Helms des-

perately wanted to hide.”9

In later years, Richard Helms would make a point of telling journal-

ists that he had never succumbed to pressure to get the FBI to back

off from their Watergate investigation, something repeated by Stephen

Ambrose and other historians. But the record clearly shows Helms did

call off the FBI, at least for a time—all while withholding crucial infor-

mation about the backgrounds of Hunt, Fiorini, and other Watergate

participants from government investigators.

While many books, documentaries, and films have chronicled the

basic facts of Watergate, some points remained unresolved. While there

is a famous eighteen-minute gap in one of the crucial Nixon tapes, other

tapes are missing entirely or also contain erasures. An example is the

tape from the day when Nixon said that Watergate could “blow the

whole Bay of Pigs thing.” Anthony Summers discovered that tape, kept

at the National Archives, had “at least six unexplained erasures.”10

By the fall of 1972, Helms and the CIA had stopped helping the White

House block the FBI on several fronts, though Helms continued to with-

hold information from investigators that could negatively impact him

or the CIA. Nixon easily won reelection in early November, since Water-

gate was not a factor in the race. After his victory, Nixon began cleaning

house, asking on November 5, 1972, for most of his officials to submit

their resignations. Helms thought he would be an exception, but Nixon

fired him at Camp David on November 20, 1972. Apparently Helms

still had some leverage left, because he was able to get Nixon to appoint

him as ambassador to Iran, a post he wanted that was also far from the

Watergate investigations.

Richard Helms’s last day at the CIA was supposed to be February 14,

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1973, but Nixon moved the date up to February 2 on just two weeks’

notice, so that new CIA Director James Schlesinger could take office.

Helms and his secretary spent the next ten days destroying four thou-

sand pages of transcripts from Helms’s own office taping system, plus

the tapes themselves. According to Helms biographer Thomas Powers,

the destruction also included all of Helms’s “personal records from six

and a half years as Director,” including everything relating in any way

to Watergate. Because so many of the figures involved in Watergate had

also been involved in the JFK-Almeida coup plan, the Mafia’s infiltration

of the plan, or the CIA-Mafia plots, this effectively allowed Helms to

complete the cover-up he’d been conducting since 1963. There was no

way his successor would have the information needed to really expose

Helms, even if the new Director were so inclined. Helms didn’t destroy

the only copy of the IG Report, because it had left out so much crucial

information and all of its supporting files had already been destroyed.11

When coupled with the destruction of Hoover’s private files the pre-

vious year, Helms’s housecleaning put many details about the assas-

sination of JFK, and likely some aspects of Dr. King’s and Bobby’s,

permanently beyond the reach of history.12

Three months later, when new CIA Director Schlesinger issued an

order for senior CIA officials to tell him about past or ongoing CIA

activities outside its charter, he received almost seven hundred pages

of misdeeds. Eventually named “The Family Jewels,” the full list—kept

secret until June 2007—was woefully incomplete, for several reasons.

Aside from the unlikelihood that CIA employees and officials would

willingly volunteer their most serious crimes or charter violations, there