Gary Hart

[Mark Knight]

Tim, perhaps you are unaware of the culture of the United States in the 1960's. There was a double-standard going on then. It was accepted culture that corporate executives were having affairs, sexual liasons, whatever you choose to call them; but it was taboo in "middle America." The executive's conquest of the "babe" was part and parcel of popular culture, from movies to TV [implied rather than explicit] to stand-up comedy...Milton Berle, that most-visible icon from the infancy of TV, always seemed to have a joke alluding to the office affair with the "boss."

But the press' relationship with the presidency, at least prior to the Nixon administration, was one apparently based upon respect for the office. There appears to have been, historically, a "code" among journalists: attack the policies of the president all you wish, but the president's personal life is out of bounds...unless the personal item has a positive "spin" to it. Attacks on a public figure's personal life, unless criminal charges were involved, were fodder for the tabloids in those days. While knowledge of a president's personal failings may have given some journalists some leverage[Drew Pearson comes to mind here] as far as getting first crack at a story [J. Edgar wasn't the only person who knew the power of leverage], most reputable journalists of the day would simply file derogatory information away for another day when it might prove useful to them.

And while the uniform code of military justice applies to uniformed officers and enlisted men, I know of no single case in the history of the republic in which the prohibition of adultery in that code has been used to file charges against a sitting commander-in-chief...not once. Whether it could or should be is a matter to be discussed and argued...but probably elsewhere, since the topic of this thread is "Gary Hart," and the fact remains that Mr. Hart never held this high office; so any discussion of this in the context of Mr. Hart would be moot. Whether this would suggest to the reader that an attempted hijack of the thread has occurred, I will leave that conclusion solely to the reader.

Discretion is the better part of quite a lot of things. In the days of JFK, no reputable newspaper would have published the photo of Hart and Rice...in fact, until it was published in the Enquirer, no reputable newspaper DID publish the photo. I believe that it was at this point that journalists declared the sex lives of politicians as "fair game," as they evidently believed they'd been "scooped" by the Enquirer. Had something such as the Gennifer Flowers or Monica Lewinski stories been discovered in the '60's, it's my firm belief that, Republican or Democrat, there would've been no mention in the mainstream press...because, in that era, such stories simply weren't published in "family" newspapers.

Of course, had the public's perception of divorce not changed since 1960, I would suggest that Ronald Reagan would never have been elected on a national ticket, either. Back then, divorce and sexual affairs had the same type of double-standard applied: sure, they happened, but nice folks didn't participate in either one. The public's standards of what is and what is not acceptable in a national leader has changed, as well as what is and is not subject to discussion in the pages of a newspaper...or on TV, as in the '50's, you might recall, on I Love Lucy the word "pregnant" was considered taboo by the networks. Not that pregnancies didn't occur; they just weren't mentioned in those terms in "polite society."

"...History has turned the page, uh-huh...", as Salvatore "Sonny" Bono once said it.

Edited August 13, 2005 by Mark Knight

[John Simkin]

Good post Mark.

Can you image Ben Bradlee running a story about JFK love life. After all, they used to go out on double dates.

Phil Graham actually gave a talk on JFK affairs at a convention to newspapers owners in 1963. He asked why people were not reporting this story. They would have said that it was the same reason why Graham did not publish the story in the Washington Post. Graham attended the conference with his current girlfriend.

Here is the picture that did Gary Hart all the damage:

[Mark Stapleton]

Clearly anyone with knowledge of the facts could have ruined JFK's presidency by publishing the fact that he shared a friend with a major Mafia don and that he had an affair with a lady suspected of ties to an Eastern bloc intelligence organization.  Or, they could have used their knowledge of those plots to blackmail Kennedy.

Why, then, the assassination?

Several possibilties suggest themselves: (1) the conspirators were unaware of either relationship (but Rosselli and Giancana were aware of Campbell); or (2) the conspirators hated JFK enough they wanted to murder him, not just drive him from office.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Politics in the early 1960s was very different to the late 1960s. It was Richard Nixon who really developed the idea of “black propaganda” in American politics (I would have thought you would have remembered that Tim).

Of course lots of journalists knew about JFK’s affairs but they also knew that no newspaper would publish these stories. This includes those newspapers that hated JFK. It was an agreement that held until Nixon. It was an arrangement that suited both parties. The Republicans had not published stories about the sexual activities of F. D. Roosevelt and the Democrats had not written about Dwight Eisenhower. Nor did they write about Nixon’s homosexual relationship with Bebe Rebozo.

Dorothy Kilgallen was a close friend of Florence Smith, who had been having an affair with JFK since 1944. A friend asked her why she did not write an article about JFK’s love life (Kilgallen held right-wing views and was the country’s leading gossip columnist at the time). Kilgallen replied that journalists did not do that kind of thing. Anyway, if they did write such stories, the papers would never print these stories. You should read Seymour Hersh’s book, The Dark Side of Camelot, to see how this worked.

This is why JFK was so reckless with his sexual activities. For example, the FBI had evidence of him making regular visits to Cuba in the 1950s in order to carry on his affair with the ambassador’s wife.

In the 1950s and early 1960s it was information about financial corruption that most worried politicians. People like Lyndon Johnson used this information to blackmail politicians. If the politician did not play ball, the story would be leaked to people like Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. They would publish stories about corruption but as far as I am aware, they never went with stories about sex.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

John,

Nixon was a fudgepacker? That's new. Are you sure about that?

[Dawn Meredith]

John, it shows how dumb journalists were in the sixties,

Now all journalists realize that sex is sexier than money!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

____________________________

Sadly sex sells. And our totally controlled press will use it when they are "told" to bring someone down. When Bush senior was asked by Stone Phillips about his- (Bush') alleged relationship with a female aid Bush was permited to refuse comment and that was the end of that story. Then comes Clinton and the right wing faction of the media was all over him. Backed by rich and powerful Richard Melon Scaife and the Scaife funded " American Spectator", Richard Brock writes of one of the special projects, called "The Arkansas project", "a multimillion dollar dirty tricks operation against the Clintons". The plan being to "drive Clinton from Office". (Blinded By the Right)

Stories were NEVER fact checked, according to Brock, as the "facts" were not relevent.

"Blinded By the Right" is a great lesson in history by Brock, a writer who allowed himself to be used to by the "vast rtight wing conspiracy" to smear Anita Hill, ("a little bit slutty and a little bit nutty", in "The True Anita Hill", then wrote the first Troppergate story, (which was later shown to be lies, this is detailed in Brock's confessional "Blinded", )- leading to the Paula Jones lawsuit and the rest is history: SEX: which is all Starr could ever get on Clinton.

Yes Clinton lied under oath, but it was sex with Monica that brought him down.

Did long time dirty trickser Lucianne Goldberg have a hand in putting these two together? (more later on Goldberg).

Dawn

[Tim Gratz]

Dawn, "honey traps" only work if the victim likes the honey enough to cheat on his spouse (trying not to be sexist but usually the man is the victim).

Do not understand your reference to Clinton. He survived and his wife may become the first female president. (She has enough sense to be strong on national defense and security issues; Kerry just didn't get it.)

The probable victim of "Monicagate"? Al Gore.

[Tim Gratz]

Time to answer my trivia question since no one else has in twenty-four hours.

It is my understanding that Don Johnson of Miami Vice hosted a New Years Eve Party at his home in Aspen, Colorado.

Attendees included Don Henley of the Eagles, Donna Rice and Sen. Hart (the party was in Colorado after all).

If my memory is correct, Henley introduced Hart to Rice.

If the CIA set up Hart with Rice, I am not, of course, implying that either Johnson or Henley were witting of the role of the CIA.

[Dixie Dea]

Possibly, the New Years Day Party was at Don Johnsons home, but it was hosted by Don Henley.

Donna Rice Hughes - Women

http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/6w5/6w5042.html

How did you meet Senator Hart?

DONNA: Although I'd first seen Senator Hart in Aspen, Colorado, at a New

Year's Day party in 1987, we hadn't talked. On March 27, 1987, I went to a fundraiser at a Miami resort. The event was crowded, so a group of us went outside to a yacht owned by the resort's owner. Upon boarding, we were surprised to discover it had been chartered by Gary Hart and Bill Broadhurst, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist. Apologizing, we turned to leave, but they invited us to stay on board. Before the group left, Gary asked for my phone number, and the next day he called to ask me to dinner that night. I had no idea he was married, but I found out that night.

The next day, Gary and Bill invited me and my new friend, Lynn, to go out into the ocean with them on a yacht called the Monkey Business. We ended up in Bimini, in the Bahamas, and didn't return until the following day. I'd gone through a lot of guys in the past year, trying to get over my old boyfriend, but Gary was the one who swept me off my feet. Before the boat docked, however, he confessed because he was contemplating running for president, he couldn't separate from his wife. I believed him when he told me he faced a difficult choice between pursuing personal happiness and his political destiny.

_______________________________________

washingtonpost.com: Newspaper Stakeout Infuriates Hart

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local...candal/hart.htm

Hart apparently met Rice last New Year's Eve in Aspen, Colo., at a party hosted by Don Henley, a member of the Eagles rock group. He said that Lee Hart was with Hart at the party.

Hart and Rice met again in March --

March 1, according to the Miami Herald -- when Hart and Broadhurst were in Miami, where Hart had a Don's the Question Man!

______________________________________

http://www.eaglesfans.com/info/articles/question_man.htm

But Henley noted that his role in Rice's liaison with presidential aspirant Gary Hart has been overstated. Yes, he hosted the New Year's Eve party where they met; no, he didn't introduce them.

________________

Dixie

[Tim Gratz]

Great post, Dixie. I thought Don Johnson was involved as well. Perhaps the party was at his home or ranch.

It is certainly possible that someone with an agenda was placing this pretty lady in Hart's past.

Query whether anyone knows whether when Rice did marry rice was thrown at her? (GROAN!!) I almost lacked the heart to say that!

Edited August 15, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

Gary Hart was elected to the Senate in 1972. In 1975 Hart became a member of Frank Church’s Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This committee investigated alleged abuses of power by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence.

In September, 1975, a sub-committee made up of Hart and Richard Schweiker was asked to review the performance of the intelligence agencies in the original John F. Kennedy assassination investigation. Hart and Schweiker became very concerned about what they found. On 1st May, 1976, Hart said: "I don't think you can see the things I have seen and sit on it." However, Hart was to discover that the CIA had the power to stop him publishing the information he had discovered concerning the links between the CIA and the JFK assassination.

Hart called for a new Senate Committee to look into the events surrounding the assassination of JFK. He said it was necessary to take a closer look at Lee Harvey Oswald and his relationship with the FBI and the CIA. Hart went on to state that he believed Oswald was probably operating as a double-agent. He thought this was one of the reasons why the FBI and CIA had made "a conscious decision to withhold evidence from the Warren Commission."

In 1985 Hart and William S. Cohen, another member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, published the novel Double Man. Is it possible that Hart was trying to get this information out via a novel? I decided to get a copy of the book.

The hero of Double Man is Tom Chandler. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that Chandler is Hart. Chandler is a member of Frank Church’s Senate Intelligence Committee. During the investigation he becomes interested in the JFK assassination. However, he finds his investigations blocked by E. W. Trevor, the Director of the CIA. Trevor appears to be based on Richard Helms. Chandler becomes convinced that Trevor, who was involved in organizing the CIA assassination attempts against Castro, speculates that this Anti-Castro Cuban assassination team, for some reason, decided to assassinate JFK (this is of course the theme of David Atlee Phillips’s unpublished novel).

Chandler remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and at the beginning of the book (set at some unspecified date in the future) he is asked to investigate the deaths of several western politicians who have been assassinated. These politicians had all been advocating an end to the Cold War. Chandler speculates that these assassinations are being carried out by right-wing extremists in the USA or a renegade group within the KGB who want the Cold War to continue.

Chandler begins an affair with a young staff member of his investigating team, Elaine Dunham. She is actually a CIA covert operative working for Trevor who is doing all he can to sabotage Chandler’s investigation.

A Deep Throat character (Hart gives him the name "Memory") makes contact with Chandler. He is a Cuban who worked as a double-agent in the early 1960s. He knows who killed JFK. He does not provide names to Chandler but directs him towards the CIA’s ZR/RIFLE operation. He also puts him into contact with OJWIN. The description of OJWIN is obviously of Jean Souetre/Michel Mertz. According to OJWIN he was not involved in the assassination plots against Kennedy or Castro. However, he informs Chandler that Trevor was told by a double agent working for both the US and Cuba about the plot to kill JFK. Chandler does not know if Trevor was part of the plot or was just incompetent.

Elaine falls in love with Chandler and confesses that she is working for the CIA. She then resigns from the CIA but while travelling on a plane from Washington to Chicago to visit her sister, she is killed when a bomb explodes during the flight. Chandler speculates that the bomb had either been placed on the plane by the CIA or that it was a just "coincidence like the plane crash that killed Dorothy Hunt".

Chandler is now getting too close to discovering the truth. It turns out that Elaine was the daughter of Memory, the Deep Throat character. As a result of his daughter's death, Memory is likely to tell Chandler the full story.

The CIA leak information that one of Chandler's early business ventures was financed by the Mafia. Photos are published of Chandler with a member of the Soviet Embassy. One of the pictures shows the Russian diplomat passing an envelope to Chandler (in fact the envelope contained tickers to see a Russian ballet). Trevor uses his contacts in the KGB to kidnap Chandler and take him to the Soviet Union. Trevor denounces Chandler as a Soviet spy and this of course undermines the report he has written suggesting that the CIA were involved in the assassination of JFK and other politicians involved in bringing an end to the Cold War.

The book ends with the message that the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex are so powerful that the truth about the JFK assassination will never emerge.

The interesting thing about Hart is that after the publication of The Double Man, he attempted to become president of the United States. He claimed that once in power he would order a full investigation into the assassination of JFK.

In 1987 he emerged as the Democratic Party front-runner. However, on 3rd May, 1987, the Miami Herald published a story that suggested that Hart was having a sexual relationship with Donna Rice. Hart's wife supported him claiming that his relationship with Rice was non-sexual. Two days later the Miami Herald obtained a photograph of Hart with Rice aboard the "Monkey Business". This photograph was subsequently published in The National Enquirer. This had a devastating impact on Hart’s campaign and he was later forced to withdraw from the race. In fact, the incident brought an end to his career.

I wonder if it was the CIA who set Hart up. If so, what was the motive? Was it because they really were behind the assassination of JFK or were they just angry about what he had said about the CIA in his novel, The Double Man?

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

I wonder if it was the CIA who set Hart up.

It was that under-cover CIA operative Don Henley.

[John Simkin]

John wrote:

I wonder if it was the CIA who set Hart up.

It was that under-cover CIA operative Don Henley.

Do you really believe that the CIA could not arrange it for Gary Hart and Donna Rice to be invited to the same party. The last thing that they would have done was to direct them to a party being held by a person with links to the CIA. Come on Tim, disinformation agents can do better than that.

[Tim Gratz]

John, are there records of the CIA using the "honeytrap" technique outside of the United States?

By the way I assume yoour last sentence was intended humorously as was my comment about Henley.

[Dawn Meredith]

The book ends with the message that the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex are so powerful that the truth about the JFK assassination will never emerge.

[sadly, is this not exactly what we have discovered?

]The interesting thing about Hart is that after the publication of The Double Man, he attempted to become president of the United States. He claimed that once in power he would order a full investigation into the assassination of JFK.

Just like RFK in 1968. Gary Hart was such an idealist back then. I had SUCH high hopes for him. (I had spent a year working as a City Co-ordinator for the McGovern Campaign in 72, in 4 different states, so I came to know Gary's passion and capabilities quite well. (Tho I never actually met him).

[]In 1987 he emerged as the Democratic Party front-runner. However, on 3rd May, 1987, the Miami Herald published a story that suggested that Hart was having a sexual relationship with Donna Rice. Hart's wife supported him claiming that his relationship with Rice was non-sexual. Two days later the Miami Herald obtained a photograph of Hart with Rice aboard the "Monkey Business". This photograph was subsequently published in The National Enquirer. This had a devastating impact on Hart’s campaign and he was later forced to withdraw from the race. In fact, the incident brought an end to his career.

Of course, Hart was way too knowledgeable to be permitted to become president.

Interesting that it was the Miami Harold's pic. Even tho it was the Enquirer who published it, the national media trounced him, the coverage was non- stop and Hart was forced to drop out of the race. (I remember feeling devestated, because I truly believed he'd push for the JFK assassination to be fully investigated)

I wonder if it was the CIA who set Hart up. If so, what was the motive? Was it because they really were behind the assassination of JFK or were they just angry about what he had said about the CIA in his novel, The Double Man?

[COLOR=blue]I think the answer to this is pretty obvious. And when I use the term "CIA" I mean it in the generic sense. The "Company" killed JFK but they had assistance at the top levels of the MIC. (IMHO)[/color](And I am certain Mr Gratz will chime in here; to again bring up JFK's having sex with Exner, or some other form of hijacking ...his usual MO.)

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

By the way I assume yoour last sentence was intended humorously as was my comment about Henley.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tim:

I fail to see ANY humor in Gary Hart's being prevented from being president.

You seem to find humor in the STRANGEST places.

Dawn

[Mark Knight]

Gary Hart authored an insightful article on the Iraq war that appeared In the Washington Post on August 24, 2005:

Who Will Say 'No More'?

[Of course, since it was published in that "liberal rag," I don't expect Mr. Gratz to read it...but perhaps someone could give him a synopsis of it.]

Edited August 31, 2005 by Mark Knight