Without Johnson and Kennedy, former Vice-President Richard NIxon
finally managed to become the 37th President of the United States,
with no serious opposition. After taking office Nixon discussed the
Warren Re****t with aides H.R. Haldeman and Charles Colson and said,
"It was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated."
The new Preident soon created a "dirty tricks" department to harass
politcal opponents that included CIA veterans E. Howard Hunt, Frank
Fiorini Sturgis, Bernard Barker, James McCord, G. Gordon Liddy, and
many anti-Castro Cubans from Miami. Their job was to create
situations and fabricate do***ents to embarrass and humiliate those
who opposed Nixon and his policies. Their targets were the most
pominent democratic leaders of the late 1960's and included Senator
Edward Kennedy, and Presidentail hopefuls Edmund Muskie and George
McGovern.
By early 1970 the war in Vietnam continued to divide the country and
haunted Nixon as it had President Johnson before him. In Febrary
National Security advisor Henry Kissinger began secret one-on-one
meetings with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho outside of Paris,
and by the end of the year the Nixon administration ordered large
numbers of troops were withdrawn from combat. As increasing numbers
of troops were withdrawn and peace negotiations with the North
Vietnamese dragged on, Nixon began to pursue detente with both
communist China and the Soviet Union. He was eager to end the war in
Vietnam and win back the sup****t of the public before the election in
the fall of 1972. But like Presidents Kennedy and Johnson before him,
Nixon earned the animosity of the military industrial establishment as
he tried to end their war in Vietnam.
As Nixon and his political machine geared up to run for a second term,
the Committee to RE-Elect the President was formed. Known as "CREEP"
the committeee was comprised mostly of CIA agents and was funded by
the Mullen Company, a notorious CIA front. On June 17, 1972 members
of CREEP, including Frank Sturgis, Bernard L. Barker, Virgllio R.
Gonzales, Eugenio R. Martinez, and James W. McCord, broke into the
Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate apartment-office
complex in Wa****ngton. These people had access to the most
sophisticated electronic and burglary tools in the world, yet they
used an ordinary piece of tape to keep the latch on the door unlocked.
A security guard, Frank Wills, noticed the tape and called the
Wa****ngton, D.C. police. When the police arrived at 2:30 A.M. and the
men were arrested, and had in their possession a walkie-talkie, 40
rolls of unexposed film, two 35 mm cameras, lock picks, pencil-sized
teargas guns, and bugging devices. Their tools made it appear that
they though they were going to "bug" the Democratic National
headquarters, but most political analysts agree that their efforts
were unnecessary. President Nixon was so far ahead of his opponents
in the polls that to most political observers the "Watergate break-in"
didn't make any sense.
In jail the veteran intelligence agents said nothing, but the police
found E. Howard Hunt's telephone number on one of the men. The
following day the police learned that one of the men worked for the
Committee to Re-Elect the President, which soon led investigators to
the White House. The FBI soon began an investigation.
(According to E. Howard Hunt, the burglars were trying to learn what
information the Democrats had concerning President Kennedy's
assassination. Frank Sturgis(Fiorini) said, "The reason we
burglarized the Watergate was because Nixon was interested in stopping
news leaking related to the photos of *our role* in the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy." OUR ROLE IN THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT KENNEDY??? Hunt and Sturgis' accusations made it appear as
though Nixon was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy,
which would have destroyed his political career.)
Less than a week after the break-in, and long before the Watergate
burglary made national headlines, Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H.R.
Halderman, discussed how to stop the FBI investigation. Nixon told
Haldeman to ask CIA Director Richard Helms to pressure FBI Director L.
Patrick Gray into curtailing the FBI's investigation. Helms refused,
perhaps because he may have been part of the plot to destroy Nixon
politically.
Two months later veteran CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy
were arrested as co-conspirators and indictments were issued on
September 15, 1972. Within a month it became clear that all of the
men involved in the Watergate break-in were linked to the CIA and to
the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).
(Hunt, while in jail, attempted to blackmail the President by
threatening to expose many of Nixon's "secrets." White House Chief of
Staff John Ehlichman responded by ordering FBI Director L. Patrick
Gray to remove the contents of Hunt's safe and "deep six" them. On
December 8, 1972 Hunt's wife, former CIA agent Dorothy Wetzel Hunt,
was carrying a large amount of cash and was killed when United
Airlines flight #553 crashed prior to landing at Chicago's Midway
Air****t. Her death ended Hunt's threats to reveal Nixon's "dirty
secrets."
After CIA Director Richard Helms refused Nixon's requests to pressure
the FBI into curtailing their investigation, Nixon fired him on
February 2, 1973. Five days later, on February 7, 1973, the Senate
Watergate Committee was formed as public interest in the affair grew.
(Helms was replaced by 53-old William Colby, a lawyer and OSS veteran
from WWII.)
After firing the Director of the CIA President Nixon's days in the
White House were numbered, just as Kennedy's days were numbered after
he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles. Six weeks after Helms was fired
his close friend James McCord, who had worked for the CIA in the
Security Research Staff, wrote a letter to Watergate Special
Prosecutor Judge John Sirica and said that he and other defendants had
been under pressure by the White House to remain silent about the
Watergate break-in.
From March 25-29 McCord testified before the committee and named
Nixon's former Attorney General, John Mitchell, as their "overall
boss" and said that John Dean and Jeb Magruder were also involved. He
also claimed that E. Howard Hunt had promised him an executive
(Presidential) pardon if he would plead guilty. CIA -asset James
McCord's revelations were the beginning of the end for Nixon's term as
President.
On June 25 White House counsel John Dean testified before the
committee and further inplicated the President. He said that Nixon
proposed to raise $1,000,000 to pay the Watergate burglars for their
silence. He also told the committee that for the past 4 years the
Nixon White House had used the powers of the Presidency to attack
political enemies by harassing those who disagreed with his policies.
Dean's testimony was sup****ted by Donald Segretti who also told the
committee about Nixon's "dirty tricks."
While Nixon continued to deny any knowledge of involvement in the
Watergate affair one of his aides, Alexander Butterfield, told the
Watergate committee on July 13 that Nixon had secretly recorded all
conversations to and from the Oval Office. On July 17, 1973 the
Senate Committee requested that President Nixon turn over the secretly
recorded White House Tapes. Nixon, who feared exposing the contents
of the tapes, refused and soon an 18-minute segment in one of the
reels was erased. One of the recorded conversations, in which the
President was talking with H.R.Haldeman, shows that Nixon was very
concerned that E. Howard Hunt's involvement in the "Bay of Pigs Thing"
would be exposed:
"....Hunt, you will-that will uncover a lot of things. You open that
scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that 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...the problem is
that this will open up the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing...Just
say....very bad to have this fellow Hunt, ah, he knows too damned
much, if he was involved....If it gets out that this is all involved,
the Cuba thing, it would be a fiasco. It would make the CIA look bad,
it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's going to blow the whole
*Bay of Pigs thing* which we think would be unfortunate-both for the
CIA and the country....."
(According to Haldeman, Nixon always used code words when talking abut
President Kennedy's assassination. Haldeman wrote in his book, "The
Ends of Power," that whenever Nixon referred to the "Bay of Pigs
thing," he was referring to President Kennedy's assassination. If
Haldeman is correct, then during their conversation President Nixon
was very concerned that E. Howard Hunt would expose the CIA's
involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.)
(During the same conversation Nixon also referred to the
"Cubans." (Felix Rodriguez, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, etc.)
and the "Texans" (George H.W. Bush, Robert Mosbacher, and James
Baker.).
Amid the political turmoil of Watergate Nixon's Vice President, Spiro
T. Agnew, resigned on October 10 after pleading "nolo contendere" (no
contest) to charges of tax evasion. Two days later, On October 12,
1973, Nixon nominated Gerald Ford as the new Vice-President a man
described by Newsweek as the CIA's "best friend in Congress."
As members of Nixon's staff continued to implicte him in the Watergate
affair he continued to deny any involvement and on November 17, 1973
told the nation in a nationally televised speech, "I'm not a crook."
On April 30, 1974 the Nixon White House released more than 1200 pages
of edited transcripts to the House Judiciary Committee, but refused to
release the tapes. The Committee then sought help from the Supreme
Court who, on July 24, ruled unanimously that President Nixon had to
turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations,
rejecting the President's claims of executive privilege.
In late July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee recommended that
President Nixon be impeached on three charges: 1) Obstruction of
justice, 2) Abuse of Presidential power, 3) trying to impede the
impeachment process by defying committee subpoenas. These charges
stemmed mainly from Nixon's refusual to turn over the secret White
House tapes to the Watergate Committee. We know that on one of the
tapes Nixon discussed E. Howard Hunt's involvement in the "Bay of Pigs
Thing" and we know that an 18-minute segement on one of the tapes was
erased. We also know that fter Congress heard some of these
recordings they went into secret session, and only *12 hours* of more
than 4000 hours of recordings were ever released to the public.
On August 7, 1974 oilman, CIA agent, and Republican National Committee
chairman George Herbert Walker Bush publicly called for the President
Nixon's resignation. The following day (August 8) Nixon resigned and
former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford (the CIA's best friend in
Congress) became the 38th President. A month later, on September 6,
the new President granted Nixon "a full, free and absolute
pardon....for all offenses against the United States which he .....
has committed or may have committed or taken part of while
President." President Ford protected the secretly recorded (White
House) tapes and soon nominated New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller
as Vice-President.
The public learned from nationally televised Watergate hearings about
Nixon's abuse of Presidential power, and also learned that former CIA
operatives were involved. As public attention began to focus on CIA
involvement in Watergate, and their abuse of power, some members of
congress suggested the Agency should be dissolved. President Ford
quickly interceded on the CIA's behalf and established the
"Rockefeller Commission" to conduct yet another investigation. He
appointed former Warren Commission counsel David Belin and other like-
minded individuals to investigate the alleged CIA abuses, *which
virtually guaranteed a political "whitewash."
Incidentals. Nelson Rockefeller was the brain-child of the CIA agency
after WW!!. Bernard Barker was identified as the 'SA' who was
brandi****ng a badge on the Grassy Knoll by Dallas Sheriff Weitzman,
right after the final headshot that killed President John F. Kennedy.
CREEP, how apt a name for Nixon's committee and the folks behind the
dirty tricks of the CIA and the murderers of John F. Kennedy.
CJ
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