Jump to content
The Education Forum

Watergate: What was it all about?


John Simkin

Recommended Posts

CIA-PENTAGON PAPERS-WATERGATE TIMELINE

Friday, 10 April 1970

Richard Helms has rubber-stamped E. Howard Hunt's "early retirement" and has written a letter to Robert R. Mullen on behalf of Hunt, urging Mullen to hire him. Mullen is head of a public relations firm in D.C. that is a front company for CIA. One of the Mullen offices, in Stockholm, Sweden, is "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." Also at the Mullen firm is Douglas Caddy.

Monday, 13 April 1970

Daniel Ellsberg quits Rand in California, flies to Boston and signs a contract at MIT. He remains, though, a "consultant" for Rand.

Friday, 1 May 1970

E. Howard Hunt ostensibly "retires" from CIA. He goes to work for the Mullen company in D.C. There, he is told by Robert Mullen that he and Douglas Caddy have been selected by Mullen to take over running the CIA front company soon, when Mullen retires.

Tuesday, 5 May 1970

Daniel Ellsberg flies to Washington, D.C. and is there for three days, flies to St. Louis for a day, then flies back to D.C. [FORUM NOTE: Caddy wouldn't answer the question of whether he or Hunt had been in touch, either directly or through intermediaries, with Ellsberg.]

Thursday, 28 May 1970

A CIA Covert Security Approval is requested under Project QK/ENCHANT for the "retired" E. Howard Hunt.

August 1970

Just four months after E. Howard Hunt, James McCord "retires" from CIA.

September 1970

Daniel Ellsberg stops seeing Beverly Hills psychiatrist Lewis Fielding.

November 1970

Douglas Caddy leaves the Mullen firm to work for Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen. Around the same time, E. Howard Hunt becomes a "client" of Caddy and of Gall, Lane. Caddy consults with Hunt regarding wills and "other matters." Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy is approached by Robert Mardian, asking Liddy to take a position that Mardian describes as "super-confidential."

February 1971

A hidden taping system is installed in the Oval Office of the White House.

Saturday, 17 April 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in Miami and meets with Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. Bernard Barker has a history of almost seven years with CIA. Eugenio Martinez is on "retainer" with CIA. [NOTE: A little over four months later, these same three men will be involved with Hunt in a purported break-in of the offices of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding, ostensibly in response to Daniel Ellsberg having leaked the Pentagon Papers. But the Pentagon Papers haven't been leaked to the press yet, and won't be for almost two months.]

Early June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg makes "a series of phone calls" to psychiatrist Lewis Fielding shortly before the Pentagon Papers are published. Around this same time, Douglas Caddy meets with E. Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. [NOTE: Caddy will claim that this is the one and only time that he ever met Bernard Barker.]

Saturday, 12 June 1971

The day before the "Pentagon Papers" are published, Morton Halperin, Leslie Gelb, and Defense Department official Paul Nitze make "a deposit into the National Archives" of "a whole lot of papers." [NOTE: This turns out later to be copies of the not-yet-published Pentagon Papers that will make Daniel Ellsberg famous and launch everything that later comes to be known as "Watergate."]

Sunday, 13 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg, having highest possible clearances from CIA, leaks the "Pentagon Papers." The New York Times publishes the first of three installments of secret documents that have been passed to Times reporter Neil Sheehan by Daniel Ellsberg. [NOTE: Ellsberg had been connected to Sheehan in Viet Nam by CIA's Edward Landsdale and CIA's Lucien Conein.]

Tuesday, 15 June 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is abruptly transferred from being "Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury" to "Staff Assistant of the President of the United States," part of the White House Domestic Council. Liddy is supplied with White House credentials.

Monday, 28 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for the leak of the Pentagon Papers.

Wednesday, 30 June 1971

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that the government has not shown compelling evidence to justify blocking further publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Thursday, 1 July 1971

David Young—who is with NSA—is appointed to the White House Domestic Council to work with Egil Krogh. On or about the same date, Carol Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg's ex-wife, calls the FBI. She tells them that Daniel Ellsberg had seen a psychiatrist. She says that Ellsberg has "assured her" that he "had told this analyst all about what he had done" (referring to the Pentagon Papers). She volunteers the name of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist: Lewis Fielding. [NOTE: Daniel and Carol Ellsberg have been living apart since January 1964, divorced since 1966. Daniel Ellsberg didn't begin with Fielding until two years after the divorce, in March of 1968 (see), and had quit seeing Fielding in September 1970 (see)—nearly a year before "what he had done."] On or about the same date, John "Jack" Caulfield, Staff Assistant to President Nixon, has created a 12-page political espionage proposal called "Sandwedge." Ostensibly as part of it, Anthony Ulasewicz has rented an apartment at 321 East 48th Street (Apartment 11-C), New York City. G. Gordon Liddy is given the complete "Sandwedge" plan. [NOTE: The apartment is in close proximity to the lab and school of CIA's Cleve Backster. It provides a backstopped New York address and phone. Note, too, that the reference for date of Sandwedge is a document in the National Archives titled "7/71 Sandwedge proposal," despite most anecdotal accounts placing it later in 1971.]

Friday, 2 July 1971

CIA Director Richard Helms is pushing behind the scenes to get E. Howard Hunt into a position connected with the White House in response to the Pentagon Papers having been leaked. H. R. Haldeman tells Nixon that Helms has described Hunt: "Ruthless, quiet and careful, low profile. He gets things done. He will work well with all of us. He's very concerned about the health of the administration. His concern, he thinks, is they're out to get us and all that, but he's not a fanatic. We could be absolutely certain it'll involve secrecy... ." On the same day, Charles Colson sends a memo to H. R. Haldeman with a transcript of a phone conversation he had with E. Howard Hunt the previous day—which he happened to record. Colson says: "The more I think about Howard Hunt's background, politics, disposition and experience, the more I think it would be worth your time to meet him."

Wednesday, 7 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt is hired as a "White House consultant" while keeping his full-time job at CIA front company Mullen. Hunt is supplied with White House credentials.

Thursday, 8 July 1971

The day after starting with the White House, E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Lucien Conein, Hunt's acquaintance of almost 30 years. [NOTE: Conein had been part of the team that Daniel Ellsberg had gone with to Vietnam, headed by CIA's Edward Landsdale, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Tuesday, 20 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Edward G. Landsdale. [NOTE: Landsdale had taken Daniel Ellsberg and Lucien Conein to Vietnam in 1965-66, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Thursday, 22 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt goes to CIA headquarters and meets privately with Deputy Director of CIA Robert Cushman.

Friday, 23 July 1971

The CIA supplies E. Howard Hunt with counterfeit ID in the name of "Edward J. Warren." Hunt meets CIA's Stephen Greenwood in a CIA safehouse where a fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, are given to Hunt.

Saturday, 24 July 1971

Based on a memorandum by Egil Krogh and NSA's David Young, the Special Investigations Unit is established at the White House under them. It comes to be known as the White House Plumbers. [NOTE: David Young gives the unit its nickname, supposedly because it is there to "stop leaks." It never stops a single leak, or accomplishes anything effective regarding security leaks. Liddy and Hunt are already established in their positions weeks before the unit is created. The creation of the Special Investigations Unit does nothing to alter the operational status or position of either of them. Young is running everything that leads to the Fielding office break-in. Young will later be given immunity by Watergate prosecutors, then will report the Fielding "burglary," backed up by CIA-supplied photos]

Friday, 30 July 1971

A highly secure facility has been set up in Room 16 of the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House that G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt use. It includes a secure phone used "mostly to talk to the CIA at Langley."

Early August 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is in regular communication with "State and the CIA," having direct conversations with CIA Director Richard Helms. Liddy is briefed by CIA on "several additional sensitive programs in connection with his assignment to the White House staff." Liddy is also making regular trips to the Pentagon. E. Howard Hunt is making regular trips to the State Department. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations at the time is George H.W. Bush (Sr.)

Monday, 2 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 6 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt again meets clandestinely in a CIA safehouse, this time with CIA's Stephen Greenwood and also with CIA's Cleo Gephart. Hunt purportedly discusses CIA providing a "backstopped address and phone" in New York city. Hunt also asks for CIA to provide phony ID and a disguise for "an associate"—G. Gordon Liddy. [NOTE: Hunt is asking for ID and disguise for Liddy prior to any proposal to break into Lewis Fielding's office. Also, there's already a backstopped address and phone in New York city at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C, New York City, set up by Anthony Ulasewicz as part of the Sandwedge proposal, which Liddy and Hunt have. See 1 July 1971.]

Wednesday, 11 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy again comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Soon after, Liddy and Hunt recommend an attempt at surreptitious entry for "acquisition of psychiatric materials" on Daniel Ellsberg from the files of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding. They claim the need, first, for a "feasibility study" of Fielding's Beverly Hills office

Friday, 20 August 1971

The CIA supplies G. Gordon Liddy with counterfeit ID in the name of "George F. Leonard." Hunt and Liddy meet CIA's Stephen Greenwood (called "Steve" in Hunt's account) in a CIA safehouse where a CIA-created fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, and a camera are issued to Liddy.

Thursday, 26 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Los Angeles. Hunt takes pictures of Liddy, in his CIA-issued black wig (which doesn't disguise him), standing in front of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding's office door, with Fielding's name on the door. Liddy also takes pictures of Hunt in his CIA-supplied non-disguise. The photos are taken with the camera supplied to them by CIA.

Friday, 27 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly back to Washington, D.C. CIA's Stephen Greenwood meets them at the airport, where Hunt gives Greenwood the film for developing by CIA. Greenwood delivers prints to Hunt the same day. The CIA keeps a copy of the photos of Liddy and Hunt (in CIA-provided "disguises" that don't disguise them at all) mugging in front of Lewis Fielding's identifiable door. [NOTE: The CIA later turns their copies of the photos over to Watergate investigators, which results in all criminal charges against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers to be dropped.]

Saturday, 28 August 1971

On a Saturday, Hunt and Liddy purportedly are in Room 16 when Liddy tells Hunt that the plan to do a break-in of Fielding's office is approved, but that the two of them are not "to be permitted anywhere near the target premises." [see 27 August 1971, immediately above.] E. Howard Hunt then purportedly calls Bernard Barker in Miami and asks if Barker can "put together a three-man entry team." Barker calls back to say it will be Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. [NOTE: As luck would have it, this happens to be the same three men Hunt had met with in Miami two months before the Pentagon Papers were published. See 17 April 1971.]

Friday, 3 September 1971

A break-in takes place at the office of psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding in Beverly Hills, California. The break-in is made obvious by the smashing of a window. Accounts of the break-in are irreconcilably conflicting. According to Bernard Barker, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, the three Cubans—Barker, Martinez, and De Diego—had entered the office and searched thoroughly, and there was no file on Daniel Ellsberg anywhere. According to Lewis Fielding, there was a file on Ellsberg in his office, which Fielding says he found on the floor the next morning. Fielding claims it was evident that someone had gone through the file. The same night, Hunt and Liddy are in New York City—where Hunt has made an issue of needing "a backstopped address." They check into the Pierre hotel and remain in New York through at least Sunday, 5 September 1971. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that either Liddy or Hunt had been in Los Angeles at all for the Fielding office break-in. Only the anecdotal claims of the co-conspirators account for the whereabouts of Hunt and Liddy that weekend. This is similar to the later purported Watergate first break-in that involves the same personnel.]

October 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in telephone contact with CIA Chief European Division John Hart, and has several telephone conversations with CIA Executive Officer European Division John Caswell. [NOTE: L. Patrick Gray will later order FBI to hold off on interviewing Caswell.]

Friday, 15 October 1971

E. Howard Hunt meets privately with CIA Director Richard Helms.

Early November 1971

CIA's James McCord, purportedly retired in August 1970, signs a contract with the Republican National Committee to handle "security." The contract is in the name of "McCord Associates, Inc." [NOTE: The corporation will not be created until several weeks after the contract is signed; incorporation papers are not filed until 19 November 1971 (see) in Maryland.]

Friday, 19 November 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt contacts CIA's Office of Security Director Robert Osborne. On the same day, CIA's James McCord files incorporation papers in Maryland for McCord Associates, Inc., ostensibly a security company, but the incorporation papers say nothing about providing security, and the company is not licensed for security. Included on the board are McCord, his wife, and his sister, Dorothy Berry, who works for an "oil company in Houston." [NOTE: Berry later claimed she had "no idea" she had been listed on the board. Also, the Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation—an "oil company in Houston" that controls half the world's supply of lithium—will later provide checks that get converted to traceable $100 bills for part of what becomes known as Watergate. See 15 April 1972.]

Wednesday, 8 December 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in touch with senior CIA officer Peter Jessup, who is with the National Security Council staff. On or about the same day, Hunt meets privately again with CIA's Lucien Conein.

Sunday, 12 December 1971

NSA's David Young meets with Egil Krogh and CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy.

Thursday, 16 December 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt is in Dallas, Texas—an airline hub. Lt. George W. Bush is living in Houston, Texas. He is a pilot trained on T-38 Talons, a type of plane used as a chase plane.

January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt are collaborating on a "political espionage" plan to replace the Sandwedge proposal. One of the items they have factored into the budget, ostensibly for "political espionage," is a chase plane. [NOTE: Budgeting and planning for this "chase plane" comes up over and over, but it is utterly ludicrous for any kind of "political espionage" purposes.]

Monday, 10 January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy is in New York city at the apartment Ulasewicz has established at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C.

Early February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt fly to Miami, home of Bernard Barker and other CIA-connected Cubans. Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy "recruits" CIA's James McCord as a "wire man," purportedly to be able to do electronic eavesdropping for "political espionage" purposes. [NOTE: At the time, Liddy has no approved budget for any such activities, nor are there any approved plans for, or targets for, any such activities.]

Thursday, 17 February 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy again fly to Miami, ostensibly to meet with Donald Segretti (a.k.a. "Donald Simmons"). While there, Hunt is in contact with CIA's Bernard Barker.

Tuesday, 22 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy meets with CIA personnel at Langley in connection with CIA "special clearances" he has been granted.

Thursday, 24 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt meet with a "retired" CIA doctor, introduced by Hunt to Liddy as "Dr. Edward Gunn," to get briefed by him on various covert means of murder for a possible assassination.

Late February 1972

E. Howard Hunt travels to Nicaragua on an "undisclosed mission." [NOTE: See entry for 3 March 1972.]

Wednesday, 1 March 1972

Douglas Caddy, who has E. Howard Hunt as a client, begins to do "legal tasks" for John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy.

Friday, 3 March 1972

Gary O. Morris, psychiatrist of E. Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy, vanishes while on vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. No trace is ever found of the pleasure boat he had left on for a cruise with his wife and a local captain, Mervin Augustin.

Monday, 27 March 1972

G. Gordon Liddy's job abruptly changes to general counsel of the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President.

Wednesday, 29 March 1972

Two days after Liddy's job changes, E. Howard Hunt "terminates" in his paid capacity as a White House consultant—yet he keeps his office and the safe he'd used as such, and keeps his White House credentials because he continues to "work there a few hours each week."

Early April 1972

CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Chicago and delivers an undisclosed amount of cash in a sealed envelope to W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation. [NOTE: Dorothy Hunt later will die in a plane crash en route to Chicago carrying an envelope of cash.]

Saturday, 15 April 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Miami and deliver checks drawn on a Mexico City bank to CIA's Bernard Barker. [NOTE: Several of the checks have originated from Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation in Houston, which at the time controls half the world's supply of lithium, used in the making of hydrogen bombs and in psychiatric drugs.]

Monday, 24 April 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker cashes a cashier's check for $25,000 at his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This $25,000, from the Dahlberg check, plus two later withdrawals by Barker will equal $114,000. See 2 May and 8 May 1972.]

Monday, 1 May 1972

CIA's James McCord contacts an ex-FBI agent, Alfred Baldwin, who is living in Connecticut. McCord purportedly doesn't know Baldwin, but wants Baldwin to come to Washington, D.C. that night.

Tuesday, 2 May 1972

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is found dead in his home in the early morning hours. L. Patrick Gray—who has no background in law enforcement—is appointed as Acting Director of FBI. [NOTE: Hoover's death is attributed to a heart attack, and no autopsy is done. L. Patrick Gray will steer the FBI investigation of Watergate, destroy material taken from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, then will resign.] Alfred Baldwin meets with James McCord. McCord issues Baldwin a Smith & Wesson .38 snub-nose revolver. Baldwin is assigned to travel as a bodyguard with Martha Mitchell on "a trip to the midwest." On the same day, CIA's Bernard Barker withdraws an unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This is the second of three transactions by Barker that will total $114,000.]

Thursday, 4 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush is ordered to "report to commander, 111 F.I.S., Ellington AFB, not later than (NLT) 14 May, 1972." [NOTE: Bush does not report as ordered. See 19 May 1972.]

Friday, 5 May 1972

CIA's James McCord rents room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. The room is registered in the name of McCord Associates.

Monday, 8 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. from his trip with Martha Mitchell. He is told by James McCord to keep the .38 revolver because "he might be going on another trip." G. Gordon Liddy, in D.C., calls CIA's Bernard Barker in Miami. Bernard Barker withdraws another unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami which, with two other transactions, now totals $114,000. James McCord receives $4,000 in cash from G. Gordon Liddy.

Tuesday, 9 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C., ostensibly going to his home in Connecticut to "get more clothes." He takes the .38 revolver with him, purportedly because he has been told by James McCord that he might be going on another trip with Martha Mitchell that is scheduled for 11 May 1972. [NOTE: Baldwin doesn't return until 12 May 1972.]

Wednesday, 10 May 1972

CIA's James McCord is in Rockville, Maryland. He pays $3,500 cash for a "device capable of receiving intercepted wire and oral communications." [NOTE: Rockville, Maryland is about six miles from Laurel, Maryland. Five days later presidential candidate George Wallace will be shot in Laurel, Maryland by Arthur Bremer with a .38 calibur revolver. See 15 May 1972.]

Friday, 12 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. James McCord tells Baldwin he won't be going with Martha Mitchell so he can "turn in his gun." Baldwin purportedly gives the .38 revovler to McCord. McCord tells Baldwin to move from the Roger Smith hotel, where Baldwin has been staying, into room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel.

Monday, 15 May 1972

Presidential candidate George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland, ending his presidential campaign and partially paralyzing him.

Wednesday, 17 May 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker makes two calls from Miami to G. Gordon Liddy, and two calls to CIA's E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 19 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush (Jr.), a chase plane pilot, contacts a superior officer in the reserves to discuss "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." The memo recording the conversation says that Bush "is working on another campaign for his dad." The memo writer thinks Bush is "also talking to someone upstairs." [NOTE: George H. W. Bush (Sr.) is U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at this time.] On the same day, President Richard M. Nixon, about to embark on an historic trip to the Soviet Union, writes the following in a letter to Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig: "The performance in the psychological warfare field is nothing short of disgraceful. The mountain has labored for seven weeks and when it finally produced, it produced not much more than a mouse. Or to put it more honestly, it produced a rat. We finally have a program now under way but it totally lacks imagination and I have no confidence whatever that the bureaucracy will carry it out. I do not simply blame (Richard) Helms and the CIA. After all, they do not support my policies because they basically are for the most part Ivy League and Georgetown society oriented." On the same day, E. Howard Hunt makes two calls to Bernard Barker in Miami.

Saturday, 20 May 1972

Richard Nixon leaves Washington, D.C. on his trip to Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland. He will not return until 1 June 1972. James McCord sends Alfred Baldwin to Andrews Air Force Base, where Nixon is leaving on Air Force One, purportedly because there might be demonstrations and McCord wants Baldwin to be there for more "surveillance activities." [NOTE: The "reason" supplied by McCord in testimony for this trip by Baldwin is too thin to slice, particularly in light of the amount of security surrounding Nixon's departure. Besides Air Force One, there is a fleet of White House planes at Andrews for use by VIPs and various staff connected with the White House.] On or about the same day, CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Miami and meets with Bernard Barker.

Monday, 22 May 1972

Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow and is toasting Soviet leaders at a dinner. On the same day, the CIA "Cuban contingent" arrives in Washington, D.C. from Miami: Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. They are in D.C. purportedly to carry out a "first break-in" on the following weekend of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate with G. Gordon Liddy, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and CIA's James McCord. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place. For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma. Note also that while E. Howard Hunt claims that six Cubans arrived on 22 May 1972, the referenced criminal appeals court ruling names only four.]

Tuesday, 23 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C. again, purportedly going to his home in Connecticut again. No reason is given for his departure.

Friday, 26 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a failed attempt to break into the Watergate—the "Ameritas dinner" attempt. [NOTE: There was no such attempt at a break-in See 26 May 1972: The "Ameritas Dinner" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Saturday, 27 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a second failed attempt to break into the Watergate. [NOTE: But there was no such "second attempt." See 27 May 1972: The "second failed attempt" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Sunday, 28 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a successful "first break-in" at DNC headquarters at the Watergate. According to their later claims, McCord placed two electronic bugs in the DNC headquarters during the "first break-in," and Bernard Barker purportedly had photos taken of the office of the Chairman, Lawrence O'Brien, and of documents on his desk. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place, or the purported two earlier failed attempts on the same holiday weekend. Barker later testified that he never was in O'Brien's office at all, and a telephone company sweep found no electronic bugs in the DNC at all (see 15 June 1972). For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma and There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate. There is nothing to account for the whereabouts of Liddy, Hunt, McCord, and Baldwin over the entire Memorial Day Weekend except the conflicting and contradictory anecdotal accounts of the co-conspirators themselves, which they volunteered when "caught" inside the building on 17 June 1972, while being represented by Douglas Caddy. See also 3 September 1971 for similarities in the purported "Fielding office break-in," including personnel involved and the use of a holiday weekend, in that case the Labor Day weekend.]

AFTERWORD: Douglas Caddy will later appear in court ostensibly representing all four of the arrested CIA-connected Cubans, plus CIA's James McCord, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, who has "special CIA clearances." Later, on Wednesday, 3 January 1973, the very day that Daniel Ellsberg goes on trial, CIA's Anthony Goldin hand delivers to the Department of Justice Watergate prosecutors copies of 10 photos of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy taken at the office of Ellsberg psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding, with Fielding's name on the door clearly visible. These will later be turned over to the Ellsberg court, and all charges against Ellsberg will be dropped. [NOTE: See 26 August 1971, when Liddy and Hunt flew to Los Angeles to take the photos of each other.]

Ashton Gray

Over the years I have argued on the forum that Richard Nixon was removed by the CIA. The strategy used by the CIA was more sophisticated than the one used against JFK. Both men attempted to undermine the power of the CIA. The source of JFK’s demise was Cuba. Nixon’s removal was the result of appointing James Schlesinger as director of the CIA. Nixon’s removal became inevitable after Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees on 9th May, 1973: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.” Meyer, who had been deeply involved in Operation Mockingbird, was one of those who feared the consequences of Schlesinger’s directive.

Nixon backed down after three months Nixon and replaced him with William Colby. Colby did what he could to protect the CIA. However, by this time Congress had become more interested in the CIA’s illegal activities. When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Frank Church details of the CIA's recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency's attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America's oldest democracy and to the installation of a military dictatorship.

His testimony resulted in his predecessor, Richard Helms, being indicted for perjury. Colby was attacked by right-wing figures such as Barry Goldwater for supplying this information to the Frank Church and on 30 January 1976, President Gerald Ford replaced him with George G. W. Bush. The “Secret Team” now led by Ted Shackley, was back in control.

In my view, to really understand what Watergate was all about the timeline needs to start with Nixon’s decision to establish an in-house investigative capability that could be used to obtain sensitive political information. Jack Caulfield was hired to do this by H. R. Haldeman in May 1968. The following year (March, 1969) Caulfield employed Tony Ulasewicz. His first job was to investigate Bobby Baker’s relationship with various Democratic politicians. However, he mainly concentrated on Edward Kennedy, the man who Nixon believed had the potential to defeat him in 1972.

According to the testimony of Tony Ulasewicz, on 19th July, 1969, he received a phone call from Jack Caulfield: "Get out to Martha's Vineyard as fast as you can, Tony. Kennedy's car ran off a bridge last night. There was a girl in it. She's dead." This phone call took place less than two hours after the body of Mary Jo Kopechne, the former secretary of Robert Kennedy, had been found in a car that Caulfield suspected Edward Kennedy had been driving.

In my view Ulasewicz was already at the scene of the crime before it took place. Ulasewicz admits that he was able to interview several key witnesses before the police got to them. This included Sylvia Malm who was staying in Dike House at the time. Dike House was only 150 yards from the scene of the accident. Malm told Ulasewicz that she was reading in bed on the night of the accident. She remained awake until midnight but no one knocked on her door.

Ulasewicz also discovered that the request for an autopsy by Edmund Dinis, the District Attorney of Suffolk County, had been denied. Dinis was told that the body had already been sent to Kopechne's family. This was untrue, the body was still in Edgartown. Ulasewicz also interviewed John Farrar, the scuba diver who pulled Mary Jo Kopechne out of Kennedy's car. Farrar told Ulasewicz that the evidence he saw suggested that she had been trapped alive for several hours inside Kennedy's car.

He also discovered that the "records of Edward Kennedy's telephone calls in the hours after the accident at Chappaquiddict were withheld by the telephone company from an inquest into the death of Mary Jo Kopechne without the knowledge of the Assistant District Attorney who asked for them".

Ulasewicz was also used to meet Timothy Gratz in December, 1972. Gratz, who used to be a member of the forum, has been linked by Richard E. Sprague with Arthur Bremer. This is what Sprague says about this relationship in “The Taking of America”.

“What evidence is there that Bremer's attempt on Wallace was a directed attempt by a conspiratorial group? Bremer himself has told his brother that others were involved and that he was paid by them. Researcher William Turner has turned up evidence in Milwaukee and surrounding towns in Wisconsin that Bremer received money from a group associated with Dennis Cassini, Donald Segretti and J. Timothy Gratz.”

My view is that Nixon was blackmailed by the CIA into taking the rap for Watergate in return for not being exposed for his role in the removal of Edward Kennedy and George Wallace from the 1972 presidential election. It was part of the deal that Nixon did not expose the CIA’s role in the assassination of JFK (Nixon had got this information from William Sullivan who carried out the investigation of the assassination on behalf of the FBI).

I also believe that an investigation of Jack Paisley is essential in understanding both the JFK assassination and Watergate. Ashton, have you done much research into Paisley? I will post what I have on him later today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 84
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I also believe that an investigation of Jack Paisley is essential in understanding both the JFK assassination and Watergate. Ashton, have you done much research into Paisley? I will post what I have on him later today.

I know that John Paisley has been identified in one source as the very secretive CIA liaison to Hunt and Liddy during their stint as the most ineffective "plumbers" in history.

I also know he was an accomplished sailor who sailed out into Chesapeake Bay on his sloop "Brillig" on September 24, 1978, and that a man's body later was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition with a gunshot wound behind his left ear, weighted with two sets of diving belts. The body was four inches shorter than Paisley, and Paisley's wife said it wasn't him, but it was ruled to be Paisley, and a suicide, and the body was summarily cremated.

So I don't disagree with you at all that bringing Paisley out of the crowd of extras and into the spotlight is entirely justified, and anything at all you have on him I'd be very interested in seeing.

I've been aware that there is no mention of Paisley in the timeline that I've referred to and that you post an excerpt from above, and I've wondered about it. All I can deduce is that whoever put it together just didn't have any solid source for putting him in the Watergate picture, or they weren't aware of him at all.

On the many other points you bring up above, some I agree with strongly, some I'm not sure of.

I'm much less sanguine about the celebrated "exposures" by CIA, Schlesinger's apparent clean-up efforts, the infamous "Family Jewels," and the subsequent congressional committees. In broad strokes, I'm inclined to believe that Richard Helms was all set up, with the help of Bush at State, for his sudden departure to his cushy ambassadorship far, far away in Iran, before Watergate even went down. While all attention was on the fall-out from that (and on the White House)—end of 1972-beginning of 1973—he and Gottlieb destroyed everything they could find that they and their own little band of Brooks Brothers-suited thugs could be hung for, and both Helms and Gottlieb pretty quietly slinked off into obscurity.

With all real incriminating evidence destroyed, the big "clean-up" act looks to me exactly like a "one step back, two steps forward" dog-and-pony show, because no matter how much braying is done about it, the fact is that none of it ever exposed the blackest secret that CIA had running the entire time the "investigations" were going on, and CIA budgets ultimately grew exponentially, despite any temporary setbacks.

CIA also never, ever even claimed to have admitted to any and all assassinations they had been party to. In February 1975, Colby would only say to Daniel Schorr, when pressed, that assassinations had been "formally prohibited in 1973." Hmmm. Well, McCord, Hunt, Liddy, and Baldwin were somewhere doing something over Memorial Day weekend 197TWO, and it sure as hell wasn't where they said they were, doing what they claim to have been doing.

You've given me lots more to chew over.

While we're all masticating, though, there's still the thorny problem of how far back CIA, Ellsberg, Fielding, and Hunt had the "Pentagon Papers" operation planned and in the works for the obvious co-purpose (they always have several) of shoe-horning Hunt into the White House, where Hunt not only could do the primary Memorial Day weekend 1972 black bag job and its follow-up, he also could arrange the Hunt/Liddy photo-op trip to Fielding's office that would guarantee Ellsberg a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

No shortage of things to chew on.

Ashton Gray

Edited by Ashton Gray
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='Ashton Gray' date='Jul 1 2006, 11:08 AM' post='66822']

John:

Welcome back. Missed your insightful posts around here. Lots to think about .

Great to see Jack White reading this stuff too. (You can't be 80 Jack, that was a joke,right?).

And to the nay sayers on all of this - at this point- I have no comment. I think that since this forum is open to points of view each participant is entitled to believe what he or she wishes. That said, posts that are

disruptive fall into three catagories: 1. those who have a genuine disagreement with the evidence presented her, 2. those who just don't/ can't /refuse to "get it" and 3. those who are purposefully changing the subject, with an agenda. Said aganda not being truth, but furtherance of confusion and disruption.

Ashton has made clear he will no longer respond to the posts of one such person.

Preferring to see the best in people I hold out hope that these people simply views these matters

differently than we do.

Dawn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='Ashton Gray' date='Jul 1 2006, 11:08 AM' post='66822']

John:

Welcome back. Missed your insightful posts around here. Lots to think about .

Great to see Jack White reading this stuff too. (You can't be 80 Jack, that was a joke,right?).

And to the nay sayers on all of this - at this point- I have no comment. I think that since this forum is open to points of view each participant is entitled to believe what he or she wishes. That said, posts that are

disruptive fall into three catagories: 1. those who have a genuine disagreement with the evidence presented her, 2. those who just don't/ can't /refuse to "get it" and 3. those who are purposefully changing the subject, with an agenda. Said aganda not being truth, but furtherance of confusion and disruption.

Ashton has made clear he will no longer respond to the posts of one such person.

Preferring to see the best in people I hold out hope that these people simply views these matters

differently than we do.

Dawn

Whathe heck are you talking about, Dawn? How is it that Ashton is a hero for driving Caddy and Baldwin from the Forum through his incessant and rude questions, but I'm a disrupter or CIA lackey, simply because I ask Ashton to make sense of his theory? He throws out ideas like "there was no first break-in" and "there were no Diem cables" and fails to back them up beyond his demonstration that different people told different stories over the years, which you, as a lawyer MUST know is to be expected, and then refuses to acknowledge my questions once I start pinning him down on the FACTS. If he offered you Kool-aid, would you drink it? I wouldn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whathe heck are you talking about, Dawn? How is it that Ashton is a hero for driving Caddy and Baldwin from the Forum through his incessant and rude questions, but I'm a disrupter or CIA lackey, simply because I ask Ashton to make sense of his theory? He throws out ideas like "there was no first break-in" and "there were no Diem cables" and fails to back them up beyond his demonstration that different people told different stories over the years, which you, as a lawyer MUST know is to be expected, and then refuses to acknowledge my questions once I start pinning him down on the FACTS. If he offered you Kool-aid, would you drink it? I wouldn't.

Pat,

No one called you a "CIA lackey." And Ashton did not "drive Caddy and Baldwin from the forum." They came here to answer questions about their respective roles in the event known as Watergate. They have [/i]chosen to stop answering questions. In fact, Caddy has gone so far as to request that Ashton be banned from the forum.

Ashton answered many of your questions ad nauseum until you began to twist both your questions and his answers. It is not Ashton Gray's "theory" that there was "no first break-in." He has provided evidence for this farce and has asked, " then what was really going on that Memorial Day weekend?"

You have "pinned him down" not with "facts" my friend, but your own "pet theories," which happen to be different from the very ones you addmittedly once held yourself, until you were "corrected" by Watergate burglar James McCord's book. (I love the title A Piece of Tape. It should be titled: Two pieces of tape. :lol:

It was you Patrick who said you could provide the "proof" of the Diem cables. WHERE IS IT???

As to people "changing stories over the years," Pat, I have learned a few things in this relatively long life of mine and one of them is that if people are telling the truth their story remains consistent. And "as a lawyer" I utilize this particular "thing" all the time, to decide if my client is lying to me. In cross-examination this is called "impeachment by prior inconsistent statements." Truth does not "change over time."

Ashton has not stopped answering your questions because you have presented him with"facts." This is a misstatement of what has occurred at this forum.

Yes, if Ashton offered me kool aid I would drink it. Or are you insinuating here he would poison me? :)

Dawn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also believe that an investigation of Jack Paisley is essential in understanding both the JFK assassination and Watergate. Ashton, have you done much research into Paisley? I will post what I have on him later today.

I know that John Paisley has been identified in one source as the very secretive CIA liaison to Hunt and Liddy during their stint as the most ineffective "plumbers" in history.

I also know he was an accomplished sailor who sailed out into Chesapeake Bay on his sloop "Brillig" on September 24, 1978, and that a man's body later was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition with a gunshot wound behind his left ear, weighted with two sets of diving belts. The body was four inches shorter than Paisley, and Paisley's wife said it wasn't him, but it was ruled to be Paisley, and a suicide, and the body was summarily cremated.

So I don't disagree with you at all that bringing Paisley out of the crowd of extras and into the spotlight is entirely justified, and anything at all you have on him I'd be very interested in seeing.

The John Paisley case is covered in some detail in Widows (William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph Trento). It is extremely well researched but I totally reject their analysis. In their opinion, Paisley was a KGB spy who escaped back to the Soviet Union. I will later explain why I think Paisley was murdered. However, first an account of Paisley's life.

John Arthur Paisley, the son of Joseph and Clara Paisley, was born in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on 25th August, 1923. His father, was a follower of Tom Mooney, the trade union leader in San Francisco, who in the 1920s led a campaign for a six-day, ten-hour-a-day work week. Joseph was arrested several times during this campaign and Clara, a deeply religious woman, eventualy left her husband and moved to Bellefonte, Arkansas. Later the family settled in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 1941 John Paisley enrolled at the Maritime Service Training and the following year he graduated as a radio officer. During the Second World War Paisley served as a radio operator in the Merchant Marine. Paisley spent time in Cuba and the Soviet Union where he learnt Spanish and Russian.

After the war Paisley returned to Arizona where he worked as a radio operator for the highway patrol in Phoenix. In September 1946, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. Six months later he was expelled after the authorities caught him in his dormitory room with a young woman.

In 1948 Paisley went to work as a radio operator for the United Nations. Employed as a radio operator with the Bunche-Bernadotte Peace Mission in Palestine. This included visiting Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordon.

On his return to the United States Paisley married Maryann McLeavy and enrolled in the University of Chicago and studied international relations. A fellow student, Leonard Masters described Paisley as "left idealistic" who was devoted to civil rights.

Paisley officially joined the Central Intelligence Agency in December, 1953. However, his friend, Leonard Masters, believes that Paisley was in fact recruited several years earlier at university by Richard Innes. Paisley joined the CIA's new Electronics Branch as an Economics Intelligence Officer. While based in Washington, Paisley became friends with Bernard Fensterwald.

In 1953 Paisley went to Washington where he was given the job of monitoring the development of electronics in the Soviet Union. Two years later the CIA loaned him out to the National Security Agency (NSA) where he analyzed the electronic data coming back from the Berlin Tunnel, an electronic listening post that William Harvey and his staff managed to establish in Germany.

Paisley returned to the United States in 1957 and was placed in charge of the CIA's Electronic Equipment Branch, Industrial Division. In 1959 Paisley spent a great deal of time in Eastern Europe where he analyzed developments being made in Soviet technology. According to Joseph Trento, Paisley joined the CIA's inner circle: "Using the new technology of spy satellites, evesdropping satellites and listening posts, Paisley combined that electronic data with information from agents in place to give startling new pictures of Soviet society."

Trento adds "like most of the early CIA recruits, Paisley shared the passionate liberalism that dominated the men recruited in the late forties and early fifties." Trento claims that Paisley's friends claim that he was a "liberal who was outraged by injustice." Another friend, Gladys Fishel, claims that Paisley did more than just talk about political philosophy and in his spare time taught "disadvantaged children in the District of Columbia".

Paisley was eventually appointed as deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. According to Dick Russell, Paisley may have been linked to the decision of Lee Harvey Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union. One of Paisley's jobs was to interview Soviet defectors such as Anatolyi Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Paisley also worked with Oleg Penkovsky, who was executed by the Soviets in 1963.

Edward Proctor, director of the Office of Strategic Research (OSR), and Paisley believed in supplying the president with accurate information about the estimates of Soviet military strength. For example, in the early 1960s the OSR rejected the idea that the Soviet Union had dramatically closed the "missle gap" and posed a serious nuclear threat to the United States.

However, in 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger began putting the OSR under pressure to publish exaggerated estimates in order to justify increased military spending in the United States. It was also hoped that these high estimates would convince the Senate to give its support to the SALT 1 negotiations.

Paisley found these political pressures and began talking about leaving the CIA. It was agreed that Paisley should take a sabbatical studying at the Imperial Defence College in London. Paisley returned from England in January, 1971. One of his first tasks was to put together negotiating teams for the SALT 1 talks. An OSR colleague, Clarence Baier, claimed that Paisley came back a different person. "He just didn't speak out, he seldom stuck his neck out." Instead, he accepted the demands made by Nixon and Kissenger.

In 1971 Egil Krogh, gave a White House assignment to David R. Young, a member of the National Security Council Staff. His official job concerned the classification and declassification of documents. However, his real task was to discover the people "leaking" classified documents and secret information. G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were appointed as Young's assistants.

The White House then asked the CIA for help with this investigation. James Angleton suggested that the man they should approach was John Paisley. Joseph Trento suggests that Angleton was growing increasingly suspicious of Henry Kissenger and that he "wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along." Trento adds that Kissenger was very interested in "how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program". Angleton had been the man responsible for this and feared that if this story was discovered, he would be sacked from the CIA.

Paisley agreed to help the White House to search for the source of these leaks. His first task was to investigate the activities of Daniel Ellsberg. By August 1971, the project to descredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers became known as Operation Odessa. It is not known what role Paisley played in Watergate. He kept details of these activities from friends and family, including colleagues in the CIA. However, Joseph Trento has speculated that Paisley might have been Deep Throat.

In 1971 Paisley began organizing sex parties in Washington. Along with CIA colleague, Donald Burton, Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation. According to Trento, "Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge." Those who attended these parties included politicians and journalists. Burton admitted that a "high-level Nixon appointeee enjoyed tying up women and beating them" at these parties. Another person who attended was the beautiful Hana Koecher, an agent with the Czech intelligence service.

Trento argues that another regular at these parties was Carl Bernstein. "In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, 'I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley'. Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971."

Bernstein also denied that Paisley was Deep Throat. Trento does not believe him and claims that the sex parties was the reason why their main source on Watergate was given the name Deep Throat (a popular pornographic movie at the time these events took place). Trento poses the question: "Was the fact that Bernstein was attending sex parties with the CIA's liaison with the White House Plumbers just a coincidence, or was that how the source really obtained his name?"

In March 1973, James Schlesinger became director of the CIA. According to Donald Burton, Paisley "despised Schlesinger". Burton adds that "Schlesinger told Paisley that he did not like OSR's estimates and wanted them changed". Paisley ignored Schlesinger's orders and in less than six months he had been replaced by William Colby. According to Sam Wilson, Colby's Deputy Director, Paisley became very close to the new head of the CIA. It is therefore surprising that Paisley officially retired from the CIA in 1974. In reality Paisley continued to work for the CIA. He carried out several highly secret assignments where he reported directly to Colby.

In August 1975, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford proposing that an outside group of experts be given access to the same intelligence as the CIA analysts and be allowed to prepare a competing National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and then make an evaluation. The outside group would be called the B Team. The CIA and the intelligence community estimates would be the A Team.

William Colby, the director of the CIA, rejected the idea. On 30 January 1976, Ford sacked Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Soon afterwards Bush agreed to the setting up a B Team. As a result of this move, outsiders would now have access to all of America's classified knowledge about the Soviet Military. Hank Knoche, Bush's deputy, was ordered to organize this new system. Interestingly, Paisley was brought out of retirement to become the CIA 'coordinator' for the B Team. It was Paisley who would control the documents that they saw and the information they received.

Members of the B Team included Clare Boothe Luce, John Connally, Daniel Graham, Edward Teller, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard E. Pipes. One member of the A team, David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, came to the conclusion that Paisley had been put into place to prevent the B Team from seeing important classified material. As a result, Sullivan began leaking classified documents concerning the SALT 1 negotiations to Pipes and Graham. He also passed these documents to Richard Perle, who at that time was working for Senator Henry Jackson.

On 26th December, 1976, David Binder reported in the New York Times that the B Team had changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees. The CIA was furious claiming that right-wing members of the B Team had leaked classified documents to the New York Times and in doing so had compromised national security. Daniel Graham reacted to these charges by claiming that the leaks had come from John Paisley, who he described as a "weepy liberal who was too soft on the Soviets".

David S. Sullivan began telling friends that John Paisley and Henry Kissenger were working as Soviet agents. Sullivan told CIA security chief Robert Gambino that there were ten moles in the CIA. On 25th August, 1978, Sullivan informed Gambino that "John Arthur Paisley, the former Deputy Director of Strategic Research, was working for the KGB." Sullivan does not appear to have any evidence that Paisley was a spy: "I guess, in the end, I never trusted him... I never liked him. There was something that wasn't right. He seemed like some kind of burned-out old fart who had a beard and looked like a queer. I am convinced he was the mole."

When President Jimmy Carter took office he sacked George H. W. Bush and replaced him with his old friend, Stansfield Turner. Paisley continued to do work for the CIA and records show that Paisley briefed Turner in 1977 and 1978. Paisley's address book included both Turner's home and White House telephone numbers.

In May 1978 Paisley began working for the Washington accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. The job had been obtained for Paisley by Dr. K. Wayne Smith, who was a fellow member of the CIA's Military and Economic Advisory Panel. However, Joseph Trento discovered that the CIA was actually paying his $36,000 salary. As Trento points out: "It is clear that the Coopers position was needed as some sort of cover job for Paisley during the spring, quite possibly without the knowledge of Dr. Smith."

Dr. K. Wayne Smith's secretary, Kay Fulford, claims that Paisley rarely visited the Coopers & Lybrand office and most of the time she contacted him via his telephone number at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Trento points out: "four years after his retirement, Paisley still had an office at the CIA."

On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. He anchored his boat at Hooper's Light and in a radio conversation with his friend, Mike Yohn, Paisley explained that he had an important report to write. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED. If all these men remembered everything exactly the same, THEN it might be logical to conclude they'd studied a script, and were part of an ongoing conspiracy.

Ashton's theory makes no sense, and you're completely misguided in stating that he has tried to answer my questions. He has never answered any of the relevant questions. And when I got a little too close to exposing him for the total fraud he undoubtedly is, he started suggesting I was working with the CIA. The relevant questions? When he DROVE Baldwin to the Forum by telling him he was done with him and his evil lying soul-less conspirators, he said that Baldwin and his co-conspirators had destroyed the lives of numerous people. (If anything is GUARANTEED to drive an INVITED GUEST to a Forum away, it is for them to be insulted in such a manner and have the moderator do nothing.) I have REPEATEDLY asked Gray of whom was he speaking, as, by his account, just about everyone to serve time and have their lives destoyed was a KNOWING CONSPIRATOR out to destroy Richard Nixon. (Yes, Virginia, there were dozens of men willing to go to prison in order to destroy Nixon, the man they'd been working for for years, in order to help the CIA, for which none of them was currently employed, and only a handful had had any contact, and Gerry Ford, who failed to reward ANY of the Watergate conspirators, outside Nixon, in any way. Included in Mr. Gray's list of conspirators, by the way is the head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, whose career was ruined by Watergate. Mr. Ashton Gray would have us believe L. Pat sacrificed his career to help the CIA. Anyone who knows anything about the FBI and CIA knows that the director of one would NEVER sacrifice his career to help the other.)

Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray. Still another is is he really stands by his assertion there were no Diem cables. I won't waste my time posting the information indicating they existed if he is just going to say "never mind, they're not all that important."

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED. If all these men remembered everything exactly the same, THEN it might be logical to conclude they'd studied a script, and were part of an ongoing conspiracy.

Ashton's theory makes no sense, and you're completely misguided in stating that he has tried to answer my questions. He has never answered any of the relevant questions. And when I got a little too close to exposing him for the total fraud he undoubtedly is, he started suggesting I was working with the CIA. The relevant questions? When he DROVE Baldwin to the Forum by telling him he was done with him and his evil lying soul-less conspirators, he said that Baldwin and his co-conspirators had destroyed the lives of numerous people. (If anything is GUARANTEED to drive an INVITED GUEST to a Forum away, it is for them to be insulted in such a manner and have the moderator do nothing.) I have REPEATEDLY asked Gray of whom was he speaking, as, by his account, just about everyone to serve time and have their lives destoyed was a KNOWING CONSPIRATOR out to destroy Richard Nixon. (Yes, Virginia, there were dozens of men willing to go to prison in order to destroy Nixon, the man they'd been working for for years, in order to help the CIA, for which none of them was currently employed, and only a handful had had any contact, and Gerry Ford, who failed to reward ANY of the Watergate conspirators, outside Nixon, in any way. Included in Mr. Gray's list of conspirators, by the way is the head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, whose career was ruined by Watergate. Mr. Ashton Gray would have us believe L. Pat sacrificed his career to help the CIA. Anyone who knows anything about the FBI and CIA knows that the director of one would NEVER sacrifice his career to help the other.)

Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray. Still another is is he really stands by his assertion there were no Diem cables. I won't waste my time posting the information indicating they existed if he is just going to say "never mind, they're not all that important."

Please try to keep this on topic. There are already enough threads on the forum discussing the behaviour of Ashton Gray.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED

Pat:

I will respond to this one last question then I am done with this. Yes I am familiar with research regarding memory and particularily so with eyewitness testimony. They are really two different issues. As to issue 1, I repeat that I said: If someone is telling the truth the story will remain consistent. If one lies and has to remember his or her lie, then different stories will emerge. Especially over time when said person does not quite remember their first lie. Like the old saying "oh what a tangled web we weave". Deception does leave a bunch of tangles.

Now we can agree that there are great problems with eyewitness testimony. This has been consistently shown to be most unreliable, both in studies and in real cases. Sadly I know of several instances where a defendant has been convicted based upon faulty eyewitness testimony.

But Pat we are not talking about eyewitness testimony here are we?

I am here for the purpose of education, sharing new information and discussion of Watergate, political conspiracies, and on the other part of the forum, the assassination of Jack Kennedy.

I formed my own views early on in these matters. John calls people like us "critical thinkers". Ashton did not "change" my thinking in ANY manner. But I did learn some new information on the case. And it is consistent with what I already believed.

I concur with John- no more discussion of Ashton Gray-who I can assure you is NO RELATION to Pat Gray-

Time to move on to the topic at hand.

Dawn

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED. If all these men remembered everything exactly the same, THEN it might be logical to conclude they'd studied a script, and were part of an ongoing conspiracy.

It is equally illogical to assume that the anomalies and discrepancies in the testimonies and recollections of all the Watergate conspirators [for there was a conspiracy] are of little or no importance. People who were working together in common cause had substantially different versions of what should have been a roughly singular truth, and I don't think trying to resolve those disparities does a disservice to anyone. As to how Ashton pursues his line of questioning, well, that does leave something to be desired. Without the power to compel answers from his witnesses, Ashton now has none, as they've decided to no longer participate. That's a shame.

Ashton's theory makes no sense, and you're completely misguided in stating that he has tried to answer my questions. He has never answered any of the relevant questions. And when I got a little too close to exposing him for the total fraud he undoubtedly is, he started suggesting I was working with the CIA.

Those who bristle when others use rhetorical comments should avoid calling anyone a "total fraud" and the like. It doesn't enhance the debate in any way, and leads only to a pissing contest that leaves all involved wet.

The relevant questions? When he DROVE Baldwin to the Forum by telling him he was done with him and his evil lying soul-less conspirators, he said that Baldwin and his co-conspirators had destroyed the lives of numerous people. (If anything is GUARANTEED to drive an INVITED GUEST to a Forum away, it is for them to be insulted in such a manner and have the moderator do nothing.) I have REPEATEDLY asked Gray of whom was he speaking, as, by his account, just about everyone to serve time and have their lives destoyed was a KNOWING CONSPIRATOR out to destroy Richard Nixon.

Pat, you've framed this in a two dimensional "either-or" fashion that fails to consider a number of other possibilities. Elsewhere, I've drawn your attention back to the Tom Houston plan, the instigation of which clearly showed that the Nixon White House wanted its own intelligence gathering mechanism. While the Houston plan seems to have been dropped at Hoover's insistence, a similar program was adopted which led to both the Plumbers and Segretti's Ratxxxxers, of which Hoover seemed unwitting [no doubt by White House design.]

It seems wilfully myopic to ignore the fact that the Plumbers, to a man, all shared a prior history of working for the Agency, and continued to use resources provided to them by that same Agency even while being notionally employed by the Nixonites. Perhaps Hunt and his crew were simply tapping into the Old Boy Network to obtain what they needed. But, please, ask yourself why CIA would provide any assistance to those it no longer employed, to further Nixonian plans in which, you seem to suggest, CIA had no interest. Either CIA and Nixon wishlists were largely identical, which would explain the help given Hunt by Langley, or CIA's help was extended to the Plumbers to achieve something else of which Nixon may not have even been aware. [This is not a defense of Nixon, whom I still regard as one of the most loathesome and craven creatures to walk the planet. It is merely to note that despite a lengthy list of crimes against his own country and humanity, he may have been squeezed out of office over the political equivalent of a parking ticket, for to fight that charge would have led to disclosure of his greater crimes. If so, irony is rich indeed, innit?]

If we can agree that the Plumbers achieved no known tangible results for Nixon, then we are left to discern whether they were simply grossly incompetent or worked on some other agenda, using their White House employment as cover. [Those might not be the only two possibilities, but they'd be chief among the choices available, I suspect.]

(Yes, Virginia, there were dozens of men willing to go to prison in order to destroy Nixon, the man they'd been working for for years, in order to help the CIA, for which none of them was currently employed, and only a handful had had any contact, and Gerry Ford, who failed to reward ANY of the Watergate conspirators, outside Nixon, in any way. Included in Mr. Gray's list of conspirators, by the way is the head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, whose career was ruined by Watergate. Mr. Ashton Gray would have us believe L. Pat sacrificed his career to help the CIA. Anyone who knows anything about the FBI and CIA knows that the director of one would NEVER sacrifice his career to help the other.)

Again, this "either-or" construct fails to consider other possibilities suggested by the evidence at hand. Who knows who would sacrifice what, without also knowing the covert leverage employed to exact that "voluntary" sacrifice? We know now, which we didn't then, that Hoover maintained his own set of 'confidential' files that allowed him to extort into submission all those who had something dirty to hide from the public; just as Hoover himself was vulnerable to blackmail by virtue of his own sexual orientation.

To argue that all those who got themselves jammed up in Watergate made a voluntary sacrifice to destroy Nixon ignores two critical facts: power in Washington isn't achieved through purity and virtue; and, the demonstrable lack of purity and virtue is a powerful tool to compel compliance from those who must, to prevent a greater calamity befalling them, make a sacrifice that seems voluntary only because we do not know what instrument was used to achieve that compliance. We are not supposed to know; that's the whole point of the exercise when dealing in extortion and blackmail, Washington's favourite game.

For my own part, I'd be far more sanguine about accepting the received version of Watergate history but for a few key details:

* the sum of the parts doesn't add up to a tenable whole;

* the machinations behind the curtain have never been fully plumbed [you should pardon the expression], and full disclosure was precluded by Nixon's resignation and the Ford pardon;

* that received version of Watergate history was provided by former CIA asset Ben Bradlee, former ONI man Bob Woodward, and the so-called "source" known as Deep Throat, whose own intelligence background and personal agenda remain undetermined;

* the recurring use by Nixon of "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" as a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon CIA into doing his bidding;

* the fact that a crew of nothing but seasoned CIA operatives screwed the pooch so badly while achieving no demonstrable gain for Nixon.

Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray.

Fair dues. What about it, Ashton?

Still another is is he really stands by his assertion there were no Diem cables. I won't waste my time posting the information indicating they existed if he is just going to say "never mind, they're not all that important."

While that may be an important issue for you and Ashton to resolve, it seems to my mind rather secondary to a more crucial question about why Hunt sought to falsify whatever cable traffic remains extant to place the blame for Diem's death at Kennedy's door. Were Kennedy truly responsible for the deaths that resulted from that coup, surely it would be unnecessary to falsify anything, no? Am I the only one who notes the similarity between Hunt's mission there and the recurring rear-guard actions by CIA apparatchiks to shift blame for CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro from Langley back into the Kennedy White House? So, in seeking to falsify the Diem-related cable traffic, whose agenda was Hunt serving: Nixon's, or CIA's? Or in this instance, did their interests converge?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.

To argue that all those who got themselves jammed up in Watergate made a voluntary sacrifice to destroy Nixon ignores two critical facts: power in Washington isn't achieved through purity and virtue; and, the demonstrable lack of purity and virtue is a powerful tool to compel compliance from those who must, to prevent a greater calamity befalling them, make a sacrifice that seems voluntary only because we do not know what instrument was used to achieve that compliance. We are not supposed to know; that's the whole point of the exercise when dealing in extortion and blackmail, Washington's favourite game.

For my own part, I'd be far more sanguine about accepting the received version of Watergate history but for a few key details:

* the sum of the parts doesn't add up to a tenable whole;

* the machinations behind the curtain have never been fully plumbed [you should pardon the expression], and full disclosure was precluded by Nixon's resignation and the Ford pardon;

* that received version of Watergate history was provided by former CIA asset Ben Bradlee, former ONI man Bob Woodward, and the so-called "source" known as Deep Throat, whose own intelligence background and personal agenda remain undetermined;

* the recurring use by Nixon of "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" as a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon CIA into doing his bidding;

* the fact that a crew of nothing but seasoned CIA operatives screwed the pooch so badly while achieving no demonstrable gain for Nixon.

Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray.

Fair dues. What about it, Ashton?

Hi Robert:

FINALLY, a voice of reason emerges. Good to see you back, RCD. I was getting worried that we'd have to recall Gratz to get you heard round here. :rolleyes:

Am I the only one who notes the similarity between Hunt's mission there and the recurring rear-guard actions by CIA apparatchiks to shift blame for CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro from Langley back into the Kennedy White House? So, in seeking to falsify the Diem-related cable traffic, whose agenda was Hunt serving: Nixon's, or CIA's? Or in this instance, did their interests converge?

[/color]

No RC, their MO is always the same, that's why it's always been so damn obvious, to me ast least.

Dawn

ps Happy Canada day (yesterday ) :angry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The John Paisley case is covered in some detail in Widows (William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph Trento). It is extremely well researched but I totally reject their analysis. In their opinion, Paisley was a KGB spy who escaped back to the Soviet Union. I will later explain why I think Paisley was murdered. However, first an account of Paisley's life.

John, saying "thanks" for this is the biggest understatement I've ever been guilty of in my life. (I think. Maybe it was: "What cookie jar?")

I've got a lot to process fully from this, and will try to get hold of the source book.

I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but the description of the "sex parties" seemed such a parallel to the CIA "national security brothels" in Greenwich Village and San Francisco earlier run by George Hunter White, with two-way mirrors and cameras, where CIA used addict prostitutes to lure people in for criminal LSD experiments and film them. (There's no antiseptic that quite gets you clean enough after coming into even distant contact with CIA, is there?)

Continuing my brief tangent: one thing that I was aware of in some of the CIA "confessions" to the Watergate committee (as in all such CIA "confessions") is their constant slicing-and-dicing of the language of those "confessions." One of these sliced-and-diced statements was related to Mullen, and was actually a question for my next round with Mr. Caddy to try to pull apart, which was the phrase "witting and cleared." Those are two separate things.

There's ample but circumstantial indication to me, from years of wading through the fetid swamp of CIA BS, that clearances aren't the only leashes they have in the mud room to keep their dogs on. And blackmail makes a very short, tight choke-collar leash. So who was "witting" and not cleared is its own question.

As for any bearing on the "who was Deep Throat" question, I still believe that's just another bottomless pit trap they dug in the path for people to fall into and keep on falling. Just like "who ordered the first break-in" when there was no "first break-in." Once you step in, you just keep on falling endlessly.

I'll study all this carefully. Thank you very much.

Ashton

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now we can agree that there are great problems with eyewitness testimony. This has been consistently shown to be most unreliable, both in studies and in real cases. Sadly I know of several instances where a defendant has been convicted based upon faulty eyewitness testimony. But Pat we are not talking about eyewitness testimony here are we?

You made that one ring like a ten-penney finishing nail hit with a greasy ballpeen hammer.

That's exactly why I haven't even bothered responding to the ridiculous cat-calls before. The testimony I've compared and shown to be completely beyond any possible reconciliation is the testimony of perpetrators all supposedly giving the same confessions. It's not the "eyewitness" syndrome, and I consider the tireless attempt by a few here to spin it that way to be tranparently willful. I simply don't think anybody can actually be that obtuse, and also be able to type.

These are the only "confessions" in the history of the world where you have to have six or seven different parallel universes, each with its own time continuum, running simultaneously to accomodate all of them!

The "confessions" about the so-called "first break-in" and those ensuing first two weeks of June are all snakefeathers. If you simply made an unnarrated catalog of all the contradictions it would run for pages and pages. They can't even get their stories straight about how many "units" their were, or how many "bugs" were where, or whether Hunt was in a liquor closet or at McGovern headquarters, or whether anybody was ever in O'Brien's office at all, or even whether there was a "second attempt" on May 27 or not.

They also can't even get their stories straight about how many "cables" Hunt purportedly forged, which the cat-caller is going to learn as a very hard lesson if he ever tries to make good his hollow threat to "slap me down big time" on that issue. (Which he won't. He's still got an empty topic sitting there, with nothing but school-yard taunts at me.)

I'm beginning to suspect that the only possible reason the Watergate committee didn't get to the truth is that people can get elected to Congress who can't count the fingers of one hand.

It's all such bilge that it would insult the intelligence of a tapeworm once it's actually held up to scrutiny, as has been done—the exact kind of scrutiny it should have been held up to over thirty years ago.

So one vital mission of the Committee to Re-Open Watergate, in my opinion, must also be to find out what faction of the "investigators" played an active role in the cover-up.

Ashton

Edited by Ashton Gray
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ashton, since you find something so mysterious about Mr. Caddy's role at Mullen, can you tell us what procedures would have had to have taken place before Mr. Caddy could ever take over Mullen?

If Mullen was constructed and/or operated as a CIA proprietary front, may I suggest that the notional owner would have exercised no influence over who was chosen to replace him? If it was an Agency front, that choice would have resided solely and exclusively with Langley, irrespective of whatever suggestions were made by its notional "owner."

Would there not have been a security check on Mr. Caddy before he would EVER be told the company was a CIA cover company overseas?

Can I suggest that such a security check would have been run on Mr. Caddy before he was ever even accepted for employment? What kind of CIA front company puts non-cleared personnel into the mix and risks that personnel becoming witting of things that are intended to remain secret? If Mr. Caddy was checked and cleared, his orientation was either unknown to CIA [unlikely, imho] or viewed as something other than a disqualifier.

Would this security check not have disclosed Mr. Caddy was gay? Would the CIA not have told Mr. Mullen that Mr. Caddy was gay and was therefore ineligible to run a CIA cover company?

This jumps to an unsustainable conclusion. It is one thing to accept on faith that a person will perform as instructed, based on prior track record, etc. It is quite another to know that you can compel a person to perform as instructed, based upon the leverage you have to reveal their sexual orientation, if they do not perform as instructed. Since Mr. Caddy was still in the closet at the time, we should assume he would have preferred his orientation to remain a secret. It was when Mr. Caddy decided to "out" himself that all such parties who knew of his secret lost that particular leverage to compel his compliance.

Your contention that Mr. Caddy was, and remains, a CIA asset of some sort is ridiculous on its face. The FBI, under the deeply-closeted Hoover, LIVED to find dirt on homosexuals, and expose them as security risks. Even if the CIA loved Mr. Caddy, it's highly unlikely they would consider using him for fear J. Edgar would use him to embarrass them.

This assumes that CIA had no knowledge of Mr. Hoover's own orientation, which is what, I would suggest, is "ridiculous on its face."

I URGE you and anyone swayed by your nonsense to read any and everything you can about the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration, the FBI and the CIA. Read the Pentagon Papers. Read the Watergate Report. Read the Rockefeller Report. Read the Church Report. Read the Pike Report. These documents hold together for the most part and are HEAVILY critical of the executive branch and intelligence agencies. Anyone thinking these documents are nothing but whitewashes created and engineered by the CIA is dangerously out of touch with reality, IMO.

Pat, I find this a remarkably blinkered statement. We here know all about the failures, errors, omissions, distortions and inventions included in the Warren Report and, to a marginally lesser extent, the HSCA Report. We know how political pressures, obfuscation, suppression of evidence, intimidation of witnesses, etc., influenced the final result in each instance. We also now know that a variety of government agencies - CIA certainly not alone, but chief among them - failed to disclose pertinent detaills to panels struck by the President and presided over by duly elected officials. The end result was hardly the "Gibraltar of truth" that was claimed.

It is true that the Rockefeller Report, the Church Report, the Pike Report [which, you'll recall, wasn't even published by the very government that instigated it] the Watergate Report and the Pentagon Papers said some nasty things about the institutions involved. However, it is a grossly distorted assertion that because of those "nasty things," the above Reports were necessarily wholly accurate, or contained the entire truth to the extent that such a thing is knowable.

Ever hear of a limited hangout? You know, the semi-voluntary admissions of lesser crimes to preclude the forced disclosure of greater crimes? It is akin to claiming that if a Mafioso admitted committing a single murder in which he was caught red-handed, he must therefore have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Having done the extent of reading and research that we know you've done, based upon your contributions here, you - more than most - know the degree to which the "truth" about the President's murder in 1963 has been fashioned by political expedience, bureaucratic considerations, "national security" concerns, etc. [Hell, half the Warren Commission itself was browbeaten into subservience by the President who appointed it.] In light of this, to claim that all the above Reports you cited must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is, imho, "dangerously out of touch with reality," to use your characterization.

I don't believe I said these documents were the WHOLE truth. We know they were not. I was trying to assert that they were at least partially true. Mr Gray is asserting, as near as I can tell, that everything from the Pentagon Papers to the Church Committee was a CIA script put into play to deceive the American people and cover up that the Government and L. Ron Hubbard were experimenting in extra-sensory perception. In order to push this agenda, he has asserted that NEARLY EVERYONE involved in this period of history, from Daniel Ellsberg to John Dean to Gerry Ford, was working for the CIA, in a combined effort to destroy Poor Richard Nixon, among other things. In his view, Nixon was an unimportant figure in this period. I have been fascinated by Nixon since a child. I have studied his words and the words of those who knew him, and have come to view him much the same as Oliver Stone portrays him in his film Nixon, that is, as a deeply troubled and disturbed man, who wilted under the pressure of high office, and who sought to use his office to destroy his personal "enemies" in the name of "national security". Now Mr. Gray, if that's really his name, comes along and attacks Baldwin and Caddy as evil conspirators in an actual not-in-Nixon's mind plot to destroy Nixon and give the Presidency to the CIA and Gerry Ford. His theory is as wacky as a religion based upon the precept that the souls of long-dead aliens travel the world looking to attach themselves to peoples' psyches in times of pain. I am mortified that his ridiculous ideas have gained a foothold on this forum. While there are many unanswered questions surrounding the period of Watergate, Mr. Gray is asking the wrong questions, IMO. It should not even be debated that Daniel Ellsberg had an attack of conscience and tried to do something about Vietnam. For years, the debate has been whether he was truly heroic or just a jerk out for attention. Now Gray comes along and says that Ellsberg was under Richard Helms' remote control the whole time, and that Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, right-wing wackos if there ever were a pair, were working WITH Ellsberg and Helms to try to overthrow Nixon. If it meant damaging the war effort they fervently believed in and supporting those hippies they SO LOVED TO HATE, oh well, no big deal, whatever makes Helms happy. Is this truly wirth discussing?

I suppose this then is the basis is of my absolute contempt for Mr. Gray and his views: his absolute lack of understanding of humanity and history. In his mind, men like Caddy, Baldwin, Dean, Hunt, and Ellsberg are all CIA robots controlled by an evil CIA computer run by...who was it exactly? Helms? The man so vastly powerful that he spent half the Ford years testifying before congress and admitting to his involvement in crimes? The man so powerful he was convicted of perjury? The man so powerful that the supposed beneficiary of his largesse, Ford, turned around and told the media that he'd been involved in assassination attempts, which led to congress' discussion of why Helms had never mentioned this to the Warren Commission, which led to creation of the HSCA?

In Mr. Gray's world, NOT ONE man involved in this period of time EVER tried to do the right thing or tell the truth. They were all deliberate liars, playing out a script. This is incredibly self-serving, IMO. Why should we believe that only he, and perhaps his alter-ego Huntley Troth, like the GREAT KARNAK before them, using their mystical and borderline divine ways, can ascertain the answer without first having been asked the question. All the man needs is some box to stand on and some tonic to sell.

While I welcome a closer inspection of Watergate, an inspection that starts off with the notion that Nixon was an unwitting dupe and not a dangerously out of control megalomaniac, and then seeks to re-interpret all the evidence of his crimes as part of a CIA frame-up, is akin to a re-inspection of WWII that starts with the premise that Hitler knew nothing of the holocaust, and that he was framed by some of his closest associates, who were in fact western spies. Bunkum.

As far as the Caddy/Mullen situation, there is no evidence that ordinary employees at Mullen in Washington were screened or cleared as CIA assets. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that Robert Bennett was not involved with the CIA UNTIL COLSON helped hook him up with Mullen, in order to bring the Howard Hughes account into the grasp of his loyal Republicans. Nixon went ballistic when he found out about Hughes and Maheu having hired O'Brien, as he was fearful Maheu would tell O'Brien about the cash given to Rebozo. Nixon then ordered Colson to help Hughes find Washington representation. Colson had heard through Hunt that Mullen was for sale, and arranged for Bennett to buy it and get the account. I don't believe there is any evidence tying Bennett to the CIA before this point. Later, when Colson found out about Bennett's ties to the CIA during the Watergate hearings, after the CIA VOLUNTEERED that both Martinez and Bennett were active assets, he flipped out, and started the whole CIA-did-it campaign, as detailed in Haldeman's book.

I first came across the theory that Hunt was working to undermine Nixon in Jim Hougan's book Secret Agenda. I have seldom been more impressed by a work of investigative journalism. The basic theory is that Hunt and McCord deliberately and covertly laid a trail of evidentiary gunpowder that led directly into the White House, and blew up Nixon, according to plan.

Hougan may be arguing that Nixon was an innocent dupe in regard to the Watergate break-in(s), but he certainly does not try to absolve Nixon of his real crimes. Nixon's real crime was the continued prosecution of the illegal war against Vietnam (and later Cambodia), with the consequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the wounding and maiming of God knows how many more, and the misery of millions. Nixon goes down in history, like Adolph Eichman, as another example of the banality of evil.

Compared to all that horror, Watergate truly was "a third-rate burglary."

As a back-handed defense of Nixon, if Congress had had the courage to impeach Lyndon Johnson as the Constitution required, Nixon would never have found himself in a situation like Vietnam, which he was morally and intellectually unqualified to handle.

Edited by J. Raymond Carroll
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Those who bristle when others use rhetorical comments should avoid calling anyone a "total fraud" and the like. It doesn't enhance the debate in any way, and leads only to a pissing contest that leaves all involved wet.

Hi, Robert. I appreciate your voice of reason, but I'm afraid that Mr. Speer's shouting that I'm a "total fraud" and other seditious efforts at discrediting me, personally, is the only arrow left in his quiver. He can't and won't address even a single conflict in the testimony and evidence that I've raised, and they run into the hundreds.

It's the oldest, dirtiest, filthiest, cheapest trick in the book: "When you can address the issues, attack the man. When you can't address what he actually has said, make up a fictional account of what he said (never quote him!), attribute your own outlandish fiction to him, and discredit the fiction you created."

It's the stuff of pity, not reason. It never responds to reason, because there is not an ounce of reason or integrity in it. The purpose is not to come together and reason on the issues: the purpose is to smear an individual by any means possible in order to discredit his information. That is the sole purpose.

It seems wilfully myopic to ignore the fact that the Plumbers, to a man, all shared a prior history of working for the Agency, and continued to use resources provided to them by that same Agency even while being notionally employed by the Nixonites.

And David Young came from NSA, slid over at just the right moment. His light was shadowed by the homonymic "Egil Krogh," but Young's hands are all over the Fielding operation, while running "plumbers" who never plugged a single leak.

Either CIA and Nixon wishlists were largely identical, which would explain the help given Hunt by Langley, or CIA's help was extended to the Plumbers to achieve something else of which Nixon may not have even been aware.

It's clear from the 17 March 1973 Oval Office tape—where Dean springs the Fielding op bear trap on Nixon, calling Hunt and Liddy "some idiots" for having posed in front of Fielding's door (yeah, sure, John)–that Nixon had been kept completely the dark. Dean just jerks the rug out from under him. A month later Dean goes into Congress and testifies to it, and the next day Hunt is trotted out in Congress to back Dean up.

It's a thing of beauty, a well-oiled machine.

See if you can get Mr. Speer to address the fact that the CIA hand-couriered the photos of Hunt and Liddy to Watergate prosecutors on the exact day that Ellsberg's trial started. (That was a joke, Robert. He won't go near it.)

This is not a defense of Nixon, whom I still regard as one of the most loathesome and craven creatures to walk the planet.

Works for me.

If we can agree that the Plumbers achieved no known tangible results for Nixon, then we are left to discern whether they were simply grossly incompetent or worked on some other agenda, using their White House employment as cover.

That ain't the half of it. "GEMSTONE" never accomplished a single one of its purported objectives. E. Howard Hunt never accomplished a single thing the entire time he was at the White House—at least to hear him tell it. Not a single one of his "secret agent man" operations that he says happened accomplished a single result. Not one. He takes hundreds of pages of his book telling about nothing but completely dead-end operations and trips to Miami and Los Angeles and Denver and all over hell and back, and never accomplished a goddamned thing. So either 1) he's the most incompetent moron who every sucked at the public teat, or 2) he was doing something else entirely the whole time, and all his and Liddy's D.C cowboy stories are a complete fiction to cover up what they actually were doing. (I'll take a No. 2, to go, please.)

To argue that all those who got themselves jammed up in Watergate made a voluntary sacrifice to destroy Nixon ignores two critical facts:

Robert, the facts you cited certainly have their own validity, but I need to point out for the record that Speer's completely specious claim that I ever said it was some evil CIA plot "to destroy Nixon" is his own fiction that he's trying to wrap me in and discredit so he can discredit me. That's all it is: another maliciously false fiction, a complete straw man of his own creation that he's running around beating to death.

PAT SPEER: Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray.

Fair dues. What about it, Ashton?

You can play his ad hominem smear games with him Robert. I won't. Not only is this not the "Ashton Gray" forum, the question is too ludicrous to countenance.

RE: DIEM CABLES:

While that may be an important issue for you and Ashton to resolve, it seems to my mind rather secondary to a more crucial question about why Hunt sought to falsify whatever cable traffic remains extant to place the blame for Diem's death at Kennedy's door. Were Kennedy truly responsible for the deaths that resulted from that coup, surely it would be unnecessary to falsify anything, no? Am I the only one who notes the similarity between Hunt's mission there and the recurring rear-guard actions by CIA apparatchiks to shift blame for CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro from Langley back into the Kennedy White House? So, in seeking to falsify the Diem-related cable traffic, whose agenda was Hunt serving: Nixon's, or CIA's? Or in this instance, did their interests converge?

I've reissued my call of Mr. Speer's bluff. Apparently he's attempting to make his case now, and so far doing a very bad job of it indeed. I'll wait until he says he's done.

Thanks for your insights and thoughts. I find them of great interest.

Ashton Gray

Edited by Ashton Gray
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...