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Watergate and the Assassination of JFK


John Simkin

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I have been doing some research into Gerry Droller (Frank Bender) this morning (more on this later). While searching for information on Droller I came across Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein first story on the Watergate case in the Washington Post (19th June, 1972). As well as Droller (Bender) it includes other people associated with the JFK assassination. What is interesting is that as this stage of the reporting, Woodward and Bernstein, seem to looking closely at the "Miami" connection. Given Haldeman's comments about the Bay of Pigs, is it possible that Watergate breakin was closely connected to CIA activity in Cuba? If so, did Woodward and Bernstein get side-tracked. Maybe that was the real role of "Deep Throat".

One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon's reelection committee.

The suspect, former CIA employee James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds a separate contract to provide security services to the Republican National Committee, GOP national chairman Bob Dole said yesterday.

Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, head of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, said yesterday McCord was employed to help install that committee's own security system.

In a statement issued in Los Angeles, Mitchell said McCord and the other four men arrested at Democratic headquarters Saturday "were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent" in the alleged bugging attempt.

Dole issued a similar statement, adding that "we deplore action of this kind in or out of politics." An aide to Dole said he was unsure at this time exactly what security services McCord was hired to perform by the National Committee.

Police sources said last night that they were seeking a sixth man in connection with the attempted bugging. The sources would give no other details.

Other sources close to the investigation said yesterday that there still was no explanation as to why the five suspects might have attempted to bug Democratic headquarters in the Watergate at 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, or if they were working for other individuals or organizations..

"We're baffled at this point.... the mystery deepens," a high Democratic party source said.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien said the "bugging incident... raised the ugliest questions about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter century.

"No mere statement of innocence by Mr. Nixon's campaign manager will dispel these questions."

The Democratic presidential candidates were not available for comment yesterday.

O'Brien, in his statement, called on Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst to order an immediate, "searching professional investigation" of the entire matter by the FBI.

A spokesman for Kleindienst said yesterday. "The FBI is already investigating. . . . Their investigative report will be turned over to the criminal division for appropriate action."

The White House did not comment.

McCord, 53, retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1970 after 19 years of service and established his own "security consulting firm," McCord Associates, at 414 Hungerford Drive, Rockville. He lives at 7 Winder Ct., Rockville.

McCord is an active Baptist and colonel in the Air Force Reserve, according to neighbors and friends.

In addition to McCord, the other four suspects, all Miami residents, have been identified as: Frank Sturgis (also known as Frank Florini), an American who served in Fidel Castro's revolutionary army and later trained a guerrilla force of anti-Castro exiles; Eugenio R. Martinez, a real estate agent and notary public who is active in anti-Castro activities in Miami; Virgilio R. Gonzales, a locksmith; and Bernard L. Barker, a native of Havana said by exiles to have worked on and off for the CIA since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

All five suspects gave the police false names after being arrested Saturday. McCord also told his attorney that his name is Edward Martin, the attorney said.

Sources in Miami said yesterday that at least one of the suspects - Sturgis - was attempting to organize Cubans in Miami to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention there next month.

The five suspects, well-dressed, wearing rubber surgical gloves and unarmed, were arrested about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when they were surprised by Metropolitan police inside the 29-office suite of the Democratic headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate.

The suspects had extensive photographic equipment and some electronic surveillance instruments capable of intercepting both regular conversation and telephone communication.

Police also said that two ceiling panels near party chairman O'Brien's office had been removed in such a way as to make it possible to slip in a bugging device.

McCord was being held in D.C. jail on $30,000 bond yesterday. The other four were being held there on $50,000 bond. All are charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other conversations.

McCord was hired as "security coordinator" of the Committee for the Re-election of the President on Jan. 1, according to Powell Moore, the Nixon committee's director of press and information.

Moore said McCord's contract called for a "take-home salary of $1,200 per month and that the ex-CIA employee was assigned an office in the committee's headquarters at 1701 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.

Within the last one or two weeks, Moore said, McCord made a trip to Miami beach -- where both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions will be held. The purpose of the trip, Moore said, was "to establish security at the hotel where the Nixon Committee will be staying."

In addition to McCord's monthly salary, he and his firm were paid a total of $2,836 by the Nixon Committee for the purchase and rental of television and other security equipment, according to Moore.

Moore said that he did not know exactly who on the committee staff hired McCord, adding that it "definitely wasn't John Mitchell." According to Moore, McCord has never worked in any previous Nixon election campaigns "because he didn't leave the CIA until two years ago, so it would have been impossible." As of late yesterday, Moore said. McCord was still on the Re-Election Committee payroll.

In his statement from Los Angeles, former Attorney General Mitchell said he was "surprised and dismayed" at reports of McCord's arrest.

"The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system," said Mitchell. "He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests and we have no knowledge of these relationships."

Referring to the alleged attempt to bug the opposition's headquarters, Mitchell said: "There is no place in our campaign, or in the electoral process, for this type of activity and we will not permit it nor condone it."

About two hours after Mitchell issued his statement, GOP National Chairman Dole said, "I understand that Jim McCord... is the owner of the firm with which the Republican National Committee contracts for security services . . . if our understanding of the facts is accurate, added Dole, "we will of course discontinue our relationship with the firm."

Tom Wilck, deputy chairman of communications for the GOP National Committee, said late yesterday that Republican officials still were checking to find out when McCord was hired, how much he was paid and exactly what his responsibilities were.

McCord lives with his wife in a two-story $45,000 house in Rockville.

After being contacted by The Washington Post yesterday, Harlan A. Westrell, who said he was a friend of McCord's, gave the following background on McCord:

He is from Texas, where he and his wife graduated from Baylor University. They have three children, a son who is in his third year at the Air Force Academy, and two daughters.

The McCords have been active in the First Baptist Church of Washington.

Other neighbors said that McCord is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and also has taught courses in security at Montgomery Community College. This could not be confirmed yesterday.

McCord's previous employment by the CIA was confirmed by the intelligence agency, but a spokesman there said further data about McCord was not available yesterday.

In Miami, Washington Post Staff Writer Kirk Schartenberg reported that two of the other suspects - Sturgis and Barker - are well known among Cuban exiles there. Both are known to have had extensive contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, exile sources reported, and Barker was closely associated with Frank Bender, the CIA operative who recruited many members of Brigade 2506, the Bay of Pigs invasion force.

Barker, 55, and Sturgis, 37, reportedly showed up uninvited at a Cuban exile meeting in May and claimed to represent an anticommunist organization of refugees from "captive nations." The purpose of the meeting, at which both men reportedly spoke, was to plan a Miami demonstration in support of President Nixon's decision to mine the harbor of Haiphong.

Barker, a native of Havana who lived both in the U.S. and Cuba during his youth, is a U.S. Army veteran who was imprisoned in a German POW camp during the World War II. He later served in the Cuban Buro de Investigationes - secret police - under Fidel Castro and fled to Miami in 1959. He reportedly was one of the principal leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the exile organization established with CIA help to organize the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Sturgis, an American soldier of fortune who joined Castro in the hills of Oriente Province in 1958, left Cuba in 1959 with his close friend, Pedro Diaz Lanz, then chief of the Cuban air force. Diaz Lanz, once active in Cuban exile activities in Miami, more recently has been reported involved in such right-wing movements as the John Birch Society and the Rev. Billy James Hargis' Christian Crusade.

Sturgis, more commonly known as Frank Florini, lost his American citizenship in 1960 for serving in a foreign military force - Castro's army - but, with the aid of then-Florida Sen. George Smathers, regained it.

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Interesting material.

The powerful Dallas and the Warren Commission cabal

wanted the blame for the WATERGATE BURGLARY

to get kicked upstairs, which would take the heat

off of BARKER MCCORD HUNT GONZALES STURGIS & MARTINEZ .....

Bush as the deep throat for Woodward points this way.

Was Bush a surrogate for Nelson Rockefeller at this point?

A "Liberal" GOP Wall street insider with a strong interest in intelligence and

central america....

Certainly G.BUSH took the last of the Nixon GOP Party 1974 slush funds.

He then used them in '76 for Ford and in '80 (for himself)......

Bush and Haig were transitional figures as Nixon resigned,

power brokers throughout the resignation- impeachment drama....

they had a separate if not secret agenda.......

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Bush as the deep throat for Woodward points this way.

Was Bush a surrogate for Nelson Rockefeller at this point?

A "Liberal" GOP Wall street insider with a strong interest in intelligence and

central america....

Bush and Haig were transitional figures as Nixon resigned,

power brokers throughout the resignation- impeachment drama....

they had a separate if not secret agenda.......

_________________________

You are not alone in thinking this. On 2/4/05 Woodward and Bernstein biographer Adrian Havill- ("Deep Truth")- announced that this is exactly who he has "discovered" to be Deep Throat.

I guess the cigs are just a cover story?

It's been long clear that the Watergate burglary was a CIA set-up to get Nixon out, now who at the CIA might have wanted that presidential gig?

I just hope W and B stick to their promise to reveal the id of this person after his demise.

Dawn

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Dawn,

Hey, we agree!

There was probably CIA involvement in Watergate. I assume you have read both "Secret Agenda" and "Silent Coup"?

Of course, ultimately Nixon was responsible for his own destruction by the manner in which he handled the whole affair.

And there were other abuses in the Nixon presidency, sometimes wraped up in the "Watergate" label, that had nothing to do with the CIA.

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Just to throw some other names into the mix. Droller's connection to two other exiles who were not arrested in the Watergate affair is an interesting aspect which may link back to events of 1963.

Felipe De Diego and Reinaldo Pico Ramon. It seems a small collection of exiles were banded together and trained for special operations (Virgilio Gonzalez and Eugenio Martinez being a part of this). Hunt may have been behind this and his clash with Droller could have been over the use of these guys in rogue operations.

IMO of course.

James

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I understand a Cuban had a hotel room near where the break-in occured but he was never arrested.  Is anyone familiar with this story?

Tim,

That does ring a faint bell.

As a sidebar; Felipe De Diego was one of the burglars at Daniel Ellsberg's office. He was interviewed by Mark C. Frazier and said in the winter of 1972 that Hoover's house was twice broken into - the first time to retrieve documents to be used for blackmail purposes against the White House. During the second break-in, a poison (thyonphosphase genre) was placed amongst Hoover's toiletries. Hoover died shortly after this. The drug in question induces heart seisures and can not be detected without a detailed autopsy. Remembering that there was no autopsy performed on Hoover.

Could this kind of murder been employed for others like David Morales who died of heart related problems?

Some food for thought.

James

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I have an letter way back that does state how much Barry SEal and Bush were together in so much.

Also it is found that this is true. Barry Seal was killed with Bush's home phone number in his pocket.

There were phone calls up to the point of him being killed for what he knew.

Barry Seals operations liked to Bush way back.

Also in the letters I have from Files each confirms this fact and who was behind some of the set ups.

Nixon was set up but Bush was involved.

No George Bush per say isn't deep throat.

But very much involved.

Someone said that. Sen. Bob from Utah was Deep Throat. I don't know about that.

But we know for a fact that the first name of Deep Throat IS BOB from Bob Woodwards footnotes.

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James, re Felipe de Diego, fascinasting info indeed.

Do you have access to the de Diego interview with Mark C. Frazier?

Query whether any Forum member knows a pharmacist or physician who can comment on the toxicology of thyonphosphase.

Hi Tim,

I'm not sure where this interview has been published other than a mid 1970's copy of Australian Post magazine. There is however reference made to it in Nodule 0 on A. J. Weberman's site.

I have Googled the mentioned drug and didn't find much at all.

Felipe De Diego had a brother, Carlos De Diego who was also tied up with the Agency's dirty tricks department.

James

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Regarding Deep Throat, most people who've studied the case have narrowed it down to three people. The revelation that any of these three men was Deep Throat will have a major effect on how the Watergate history is viewed. #1 candidate for most is Fred Fielding, John Dean's assistant, who went on to become Ronald Reagan's attorney and an adviser to the current President. #2 candidate is Al Haig, who, of course became Nixon's chief of staff and Reagan's Secretary of State. John Dean in his book Lost Honor did a good job of establishing that Haig and Woodward knew each other from the days Woodward worked as a courier between the Pentagon and the White House. #3 candidate is Bob Bennett, the current Senator from Utah, who was at that time Howard Hughes' man in Washington and Hunt's boss at the Mullen Company, a CIA front.

Bush would have to be ruled out as Deep Throat for many reasons. One is that he was reported to have nearly crapped his pants when he heard the "smoking gun" tape in which Nixon pressured Haldeman the get the CIA to call off the FBI. One of the reasons one would have to guess Bush nearly lost it was that Nixon cited the money-laundering techniques used by his committee in Mexico as somehow being CIA-related. This money,of course, came from Bush's top financial backers, including his former partner in Zapata Oil, William Lietdke, who at the time of Watergate ran Pennzoil. That his prime backers were engaged in funding CIA activities in Mexico is not something Bush would have helped bring to the surface.

It should also be pointed out that Bush failed in his election bid in 1970 and was considered to be completely dead in politics until Nixon made him the ambassador to the U.N. and then pushed him to run the GOP. The fact that Bush's backers had provided Nixon with a secret slush fund of course had nothing to do with this. Bush was so loyal to Nixon, in fact, that Nixon put him on the short list of VP candidates replacing Agnew. Ford was more acceptable to congress, however, since he was one of them, and won out over Bush simply because Nixon didn't want to fight congress on any other front besides the Watergate committee.

It's undoubtedly interesting, of course, that this 2 term congressman from Texas with no known language skills should be ambassador to the U.N. under Nixon, special envoy to China under Ford, and Director of the CIA under Ford. One might assume from this that Bush had some other experience that has never been made public. The belief that his company Zapata Offshore was a CIA front is of course widespread. On a more practical level, since Zapata Offshore had had extensive dealings in both Latin America and the Mid-East, it might simply be that Nixon and Ford knew Bush would represent U.S. oil interests in these vital areas, and that his backers would back them as long as they backed him.

Edited by Pat Speer
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Great thread.

The Cuban team was a bit larger and dirtier than the press about Watergate indicated, and of course, James, you had the GOODS, as usual.

(The person they were looking for in the POST article John posted was Howard Hunt, and of course Gordon Liddy was arrested after they raided the Cuban's hotel room. For former CIA agents, these guys were terrible at spycraft.

Names, phonebooks, photos, I.D., cash, it really looked like they wanted to get caught.

The most interesting thing to me about the Watergate burglary is this image I have of Frank Sturgis hammering and wrenching a door in the corridor, pounding loudly in the stair well, if I remember.

We all wonder how this extended family of Cuban CIA mercenaries connect

Watergate [6/19/72] to Dallas [11/22/63]

As far as an extra man with a hotel room --- Lou Russell was the sixth man.

He may have been McCord's CIA contact, and he slipped away the night of the

arrest. If there was another Cuban at the Howard Johnson or Sheraton I have never heard of it before..........

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Regarding Deep Throat, most people who've studied the case have narrowed it down to three people.  The revelation that any of these three men was Deep Throat will have a major effect on how the Watergate history is viewed.  #1 candidate for most is Fred Fielding, John Dean's assistant, who went on to become Ronald Reagan's attorney and an adviser to the current President.  #2 candidate is Al Haig, who, of course became Nixon's chief of staff and Reagan's Secretary of State. John Dean in his book Lost Honor did a good job of establishing that Haig and Woodward knew each other from the days Woodward worked as a courier between the Pentagon and the White House. #3 candidate is Bob Bennett, the current Senator from Utah, who was at that time Howard Hughes' man in Washington and Hunt's boss at the Mullen Company, a CIA front.

Ok there were TWO people who did give money over to Nixon one was Howard Hughes down in Florida at that time of the money exchange and at that time who was down in Florida was John Mitchell. Mitchell had to have brought the money all in large bills back north and over to Dean to give to Hunt.

So, the money that Nixon did get was not from slush funds and that was not all there was one other bank that the bills came from and marked for Phildadelphia bank.

You know it could very well be Bob Bennett that is Deep throat in looking at this.

But It is known for a fact that more than one person did in fact make up Deep Throat.

One was in the White House treasurary committee and from Nixon's Web site they do announce who that person is. NO KICKS BACKS SO FAR so I do think they are right on target.

Also know that BOb was the first name of DT.

I have said one other Bob for some time because of Woodwards Bradlee and Bruinstein's reactions after a certain mail they one time received and their reactions and going on the news. Probably didn't wish to get involved in any further hassells maybe. NOT SURE.

But more than that made up DT. Dean fealt in the book Unmasking Deep Throat that it is at least two to three people who make up DT now. By the way facts were twisted and some facts were not even right. That was his opinions and feelings after reading Woodwards notes. Many things came to light after he read that.

Also something Files states from one of his letters to me does match in what unmasking DT book said which came out later on. About the hush money.

So, the hust money never was from the slush fund at all.

Making what Nixon said to be right I AM NOT A CROOK.

NO Nixon was NOT. The money was given and donated to him from TWO FRIENDS. NOT ONE BUT TWO. I do know who the other one was. WYETH.

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Shanet wrote:

As far as an extra man with a hotel room --- Lou Russell was the sixth man.

He may have been McCord's CIA contact, and he slipped away the night of the

arrest. If there was another Cuban at the Howard Johnson or Sheraton I have never heard of it before.

Remember Russell died prematurely under somewaht unusual circumstances. This story is in Hougan's "Secret Agenda". I'll try to post it tomorrow.

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Making what Nixon said to be right I AM NOT A CROOK.

NO Nixon was NOT. The money was given and donated to him from TWO FRIENDS. NOT ONE BUT TWO. I do know who the other one was. WYETH.

Nixon was a crook, with a list of crimes as long as my arm. The fact that he perceived that many of his crimes were in the interest of "national security," doesn't change that.

The money that came in from Mexico was not the hush money but the cash in the Watergate burglars' pockets, which was removed from Bernard Barker's personal account, after he cashed a check from a Mexican account, which was created by a Mexican lawyer with money given to the Nixon campaign by George Bush's buddies in Texas. This is not the way innocent people behave. They knew what they were doing was illegal and sought to hide it to the end. The only question (outside of Deep Throat's identity and agenda) is whether McCord deliberately got them all caught at the Watergate in order to send Nixon a message from Helms, or whether it was just a big oops.

Woodward has sworn that Deep Throat was one person, and that he will tell us who it was once the person dies. I see no reason not to believe him. It's not as if he needs the attention.

Edited by Pat Speer
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